New York magazine’s Ben Terris talks through his reporting on Sen. John Fetterman’s health and what it means for the future of the Democratic Party. This episode was produced by Devan Schwartz with help from Gabrielle Berbey, edited by Amina Al-Sadi, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, engineered by Patrick Boyd and Matthew Billy, and hosted by Sean Rameswaram. Listen to Today, Explained ad-free by becoming a Vox Member: vox.com/members. Transcript at vox.com/today-explained-podcast. Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) questions tech leaders in artificial intelligence during a Senate hearing. Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: Who is Senator John Fetterman and why is he unique?
Senator John Fetterman is not like his colleagues. Oh, yeah. For starters, he wears a hoodie and gym shorts to work in Congress. But he's also a Democrat who went down to Mar-a-Lago to meet with Donald Trump before he re-entered office back in January. He's bucked most of his party on the war in Gaza, saying his support of Israel and Benjamin Netanyahu was unconditional.
He went on the Joe Rogan experience to bro down.
And then the whole nation just had like a meltdown, like, oh my God, the Senate's on fire because I dress like a slob. And then there is health issues.
The man who got a lot of credit, rightfully so, for bringing his mental health struggles to the fore, to kind of destigmatizing depression and mental health issues in politics, may be struggling more than he had let on.
We're gonna ask if Jon Fetterman is okay on Today Explained.
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Today Explained, Sean Ramos from here with Ben Terrace, D.C. correspondent for New York Magazine. Ben just wrote a big profile of John Fetterman that made a lot of noise because it revealed that his health struggles may be far graver than people previously thought. We started back in 2023, around the time Fetterman checked into Walter Reed Medical Center in Maryland.
He has a difficult moment at a retreat for Democrats at the Library of Congress. He's supposed to be the talk of the town and everybody wants to talk to him and get to know him, but he's sitting quietly in a corner drinking Coke and not talking to anybody. Staff gets an alert a short time later from somebody who saw him walking in the street, almost into traffic, almost getting hit by a car.
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Chapter 2: What are John Fetterman's known health struggles?
And I think it threw some people for a loop. Staff got upset. Former staff got upset. Also, as I report in the piece, his wife Giselle was very upset. One time coming into the office crying, saying that, you know, they're bombing refugee camps. How can you support this? He responds that that's all propaganda.
And this kind of heightened tension that's happening in American politics as a whole, but especially in this office, I think just kind of derailed things for him and his staff in a way that made it very difficult to be working for him.
Yeah, I mean, I guess we should assume that senators clash with their staff all the time. But through your reporting, did this feel exceptional?
Yeah, it felt exceptional. So when John Fetterman leaves Walter Reed, he's kind of given a bunch of things he has to do to stay on his recovery plan, right? Obviously, he has to stay on his medication. He needs to hydrate. He needs to get exercise. The doctors also say you should probably stay off social media.
I've never noticed anyone to believe that their mental health has been supported by spending any kind of time on social media. And if they do, I'd love to meet that person, you know, who that is.
Fetterman himself has said in interviews that social media was an accelerant for his depression. And I think that this moment, as he becomes kind of a top talker on Israel and Palestine, is drawing him back into social media. There's one really kind of key moment early on where he puts up a tweet.
And I mean, it's a complicated backstory, but it's basically like he was upset that there were protesters that were protesting hummus that was made in Israel, but in his mind, were not concerned enough with the sexual assault that was happening on Israelis by Hamas. And he puts up a tweet with Drake kind of, you know, that somehow is supposed to be indicative of this.
And the staff kind of freaks out because it feels very offensive. It feels like it's making light of sexual assault. A bunch of women staffers in the office talk to senior staff trying to get it taken down. Fetterman holds his ground for a long time and he says anybody who doesn't like this tweet is welcome to quit. Eventually he does take it down.
But this kind of roiling of the staff, this wading into very difficult conversations via meme, it just feels like the office is like – it doesn't handle it very well.
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