Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) has admitted that Elon Musk “helped move the needle” in getting Donald Trump elected, adding that the president-elect will be able to “run the table” with Republicans winning the House and the Senate.
In an interview with Jake Tapper on CNN’s State of the Union, Fetterman said he had previously warned Democrats about the prospect of Republicans taking charge of national policy-making through smart politics.
“Trump is the strongest that he’s been in the three cycles,” he said Sunday, crediting his victory to several things that were “really unique” that happened in the election cycle.
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Among them, he said was “the assassination attempt that was in Butler, 45 minutes from where we’re sitting right now, and then Musk.”
“Musk is not just a typical kind of a surrogate. We’re all in that business. We have surrogates. We have endorsements, and many of them often don’t really matter much,” Fetterman said.
“But now Musk made himself really active. He was described as moving to Pennsylvania, and I do believe that helped move the needle in that too. So Trump came in in the strongest position, and he carried Pennsylvania and carried all of the swing states.”
Fetterman claimed that the Democrat Party was still the part of the working class, but he said that representatives and senators had to tread carefully in how they reacted to news about Trump’s picks for the cabinet.
“Trump gets the kind of thing… the kind of things that he wanted, like the freak-out,” Fetterman warned. “It’s not even Thanksgiving yet. And if we’re having meltdowns, you know, every tweet or every appointment and all those things, I mean, it’s going to be four years.”
Instead, Fetterman said, Democrats should be concerned about the control that Republicans have over the political agenda.
“I think the last time I was on your network I was warning about the jackpot, and I use that metaphor of the slot machine, the 777,” he said.
“He’s going to get the House, have the Senate, the presidency, and the real jackpot is the Supreme Court. And that’s been very clear – that’s a strong conservative slant. They can run the table right now and at least for the next two years.”
“That’s what I think we should all be concerned about, not small tweets or random kinds of appointments.”
Fetterman has repeatedly warned Democrats to “chill” when reacting to Donald Trump’s posts on X and Truth Social, while also breaking from traditional party lines by saying he would vote for Marco Rubio to become Trump’s Secretary of State.
He was elected senator in 2022 when he flipped a Republican-held seat in the key state.
