Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) is taking heat from the left after he boasted that he’s “not a progressive” to NBC News in defense of his outspoken support for Israel amid the increasingly bloody war in Gaza and his calls for tougher immigration laws.
Following his break from the left-wing of his party, a number of prominent liberals called him out for hypocrisy, taking him to task over the fact that he explicitly ran on a progressive platform to get elected last year.
In an interview with NBC News’ Sahil Kapur this week, the freshman senator’s previous ties to democratic socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) were mentioned, especially as it related to Fetterman’s 2022 GOP opponent Mehmet Oz claiming he’d be nothing more than Sanders’ “sidekick” if elected.
ADVERTISEMENT
However, now that Fetterman is taking heat from the left for fully backing Israel’s response to the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks, which has now led to over 18,000 Palestinian deaths, the Pennsylvania lawmaker is apparently leaning harder into his “maverick” persona.
“I’m not a progressive,” he told NBC News. “I just think I’m a Democrat that is very committed to choice and other things. But with Israel, I’m going to be on the right side of that. And immigration is something near and dear to me, and I think we do have to effectively address it as well.”
Fetterman also insisted that he could still be “pro-immigration” while also supporting policies that would restrict the flow of migrants into the country, placing him at odds with progressives who do not think the asylum rules need to have tougher restrictions.
“It’s a reasonable conversation — until somebody can say there’s an explanation on what we can do when 270,000 people are being encountered on the border, not including the ones, of course, that we don’t know about,” Fetterman said. “To put that in reference, that is essentially the size of Pittsburgh, the second-largest city in Pennsylvania.”
While distancing himself from the left has made Fetterman some new fans on the right, it has also sparked anger and “disappointment” among liberal activists and pundits, who feel that he is turning his back on a constituency that helped get him into office in the first place.
“He was ‘progressive’ when he was asking for money and votes, though,” former Sanders 2020 presidential campaign co-chair Nina Turner tweeted on Friday.
“Oh man, wonder where people would have gotten the idea that he considered himself a progressive,” media critic Parker Molloy noted, sharing a lengthy scroll of old Fetterman tweets bragging about his “progressive” credentials.
“Funny, he was a progressive when he was asking me for my fucking money,” former Ilhan Omar deputy communications director Isi Baehr-Breen added.
Chapo Trap House co-host Will Menaker didn’t mince words, snarking that Fetterman’s “own wife was undocumented” before claiming that “nothing is more important than supporting Israel for this fucking lurch.” That sentiment was echoed by independent journalist Glenn Greenwald, who also noted that Fetterman has “earnestly become one of the most beloved Senators among many Republicans.”
For the most part, though, much of the disapproval directed Fetterman’s way centered on how quickly he turned his back on the progressive base that vaulted him to the halls of the Senate.
“We spent $400 million to elect someone whose only policies going into the race were fracking, weed and shitposting,” The Intercept’s Akela Lacy bemoaned.
