Sen. John Fetterman was chairing a subcommittee hearing on Wednesday and his opening statement went predictably poorly, leading to the equally predictable savaging of him from commenters on Twitter.
Specifically, what went wrong was that Sen. Fetterman couldn’t string a sentence together and kept stumbling over his words, then proceeded to lose his train of thought. All while just trying to read a pre-written statement. Watch the incident here:
John Fetterman chaired a subcommittee hearing today.
Here is his opening statement. pic.twitter.com/Y6EHYkhkBZ
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) April 19, 2023
And Greg Price wasn’t the only one to notice. Outkick’s Clay Travis joined in as well, posting the video of the opening statement with the caption, “John Fetterman is chairing a senate subcommittee and this was his opening statement. Good lord. This dude is not remotely well or able to do this job. Embarrassing for Pennsylvania“.
One commenter on Travis’ post pointed out that while Fetterman is bad, Feinstein is probably worse, saying, “Unreal. Sad part is, he’s probably doing better than Feinstein at the moment. What an absolute mockery of our political system that prioritizes keeping these people in power over and decent representation of their constituents. Shameful…”
Similarly, one commenter on Price’s video said, “These are the kinds of leaders you get in an empire-in-decline.” Indeed. Caligula’s horse, appointed to the Senate by that horrid emperor, comes to mind.
And things went about as badly both during and after the hearing, as he struggled to ask a. question and had to have a staffer hold up and iPad while he was talking to people when the hearing ended:
John Fetterman has a staffer holding up his iPad as he talks to people after the hearing ended.
CSPAN cut away from that pretty quickly. pic.twitter.com/ujhOxIZuDk
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) April 19, 2023
The iPad was likely there because Fetterman struggles to understand what people are saying without closed captioning. Speaking on that, he admitted that he had to use closed captioning during his debate with Dr. Oz, saying, “As long as I have captioning, I’m able to understand exactly what’s being asked.”
He made the same admission in an interview with MSNBC, saying, “I sometimes will hear things in a way that’s not perfectly clear. So I use captioning so I’m able to see what you’re saying on the captioning. But it gets much, much better where I take in a lot. But to be precise, I use captioning, so that’s really the maiming, excuse me, that’s the major challenge. And every now and then I’ll miss a word. Every now and then. Or sometimes I’ll maybe mush two words together. But as long as I have captioning, I’m able to understand exactly what’s being asked.”
Greg Price highlighted that as well, as you can watch here:
NBC: "Can voters trust that you will be ready to do this job?"
Fetterman: "Yeah, of course," after reading the question off a giant MacBook that he needs to understand what is being said to him. pic.twitter.com/McBRfyd3R3
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) October 11, 2022
Similarly, TIME and The Daily Mail reported in May that the Senate had to provide accommodations in the Senate for Sen. Fetterman’s closed captioning needs, with The Daily Mail reporting that:
Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman is using assistive technology in the U.S. Senate as he continues to struggle with auditory processing issues after suffering a stroke in May.
On Wednesday, Time magazine reported on how the Senate accommodated the Democrat, who was sworn-in last month and participated in his first Congressional hearing that day.
Fetterman needs the assistance of closed captioning, so the Senate Sergeant at Arms installed a monitor on Fetterman’s desk in the Senate chamber that provides live captioning, and armed him with a wireless tablet for committee hearings.
Sen. Fetterman recently returned to the Senate from the hospital, appearing in shorts and a hoodie.
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video
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