Tucker Carlson: John Fetterman is incapable of representing Pennsylvania in the Senate
Fox News host Tucker Carlson rips Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman's policies on 'Tucker Carlson Tonight.'
There are an awful lot of forgotten little towns in this country and Braddock, Pennsylvania, is definitely one of them. It's only 11 miles outside Pittsburgh, but Braddock is basically empty at this point. Only 1,700 people live there — that's down from a population of more than 18,000 during the Second World War.
Braddock is now so underpopulated that you can buy a four-bedroom home there with a two-car garage right in the middle of town for $3,000. Don't believe it? Check it out yourself on Realtor.com. So, you know the story: For decades, the biggest employer in Braddock was manufacturing something called the Edgar Thomson Steelworks. In fact, Andrew Carnegie built it there along with his first stone public library, which still stands.
For generations, Braddock, Pennsylvania, was a real place and then inevitably the steel plant closed and the usual disasters arrived — unemployment, hopelessness, drugs. People left by the thousands, but one man saw an opportunity in Braddock, Pennsylvania. Not an opportunity for the town, but an opportunity for himself. That man's name was John Fetterman. Fetterman was 35 years old and had never in his life had a real job. Fetterman was not from Braddock, hardly. He grew up in an affluent neighborhood four hours away.
Fetterman had spent his adult life going to school — first to business school, then to Harvard for a so-called Masters of Public Policy, which for the uninitiated, is an utterly meaningless document that you pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to get in order to tell people that you went to Harvard. But in Fetterman's case, it wasn't expensive at all. It was free. His dad paid for it and paid for everything else. As the Philadelphia Inquirer put it, "For a long stretch, lasting well into his 40s, deep into middle-age, Fetterman's main source of income came from his parents. They gave him and his family $54,000 in 2015 alone."
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In other words, John Fetterman was a classic trustafarian, a flaky, middle-aged man looking for a purpose in life and in Braddock, Pennsylvania, he found one. In 2005, a year after arriving in Braddock, Fetterman announced he was running for mayor and amazingly, boldly, given that he was a professional student living off his rich family, John Fetterman decided to run as a blue-collar populist — but the media asked no questions. They loved it.
In John Fetterman, the media saw themselves. He was just like them. So, Fetterman narrowly won the race and then the campaign to boost John Fetterman's career began in earnest. The Guardian newspaper described John Fetterman as the "coolest mayor" in the country. The New York Times told its readers, who didn't know any better, that John Fetterman had "turned the busted town of Braddock, PA, into a national symbol of hope, hard work and authentic blue jeans."
How inspiring. Fetterman thought it was. He went on a national tour to brag about how he was single-handedly saving this benighted mill town in western Pennsylvania. He gave a TED talk — of course, he did — about how he was running Braddock using the lessons that he learned at Harvard. In 2011, he went — of course he did — to the Aspen Ideas Festival to further brag. Here's what he said: "We created the first art gallery in the four-town region with artists' studios. We did public art installations. And I don't know if you consider it art exactly, but I consider growing organic vegetables in the shadow of a steel mill an art, and that has attracted homesteading."
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Lieutenant Governor of Pennsylvania and Democratic US Senate candidate John Fetterman addresses supporters during a rally on August 12, 2022 in Erie, Pennsylvania. (DUSTIN FRANZ/AFP via Getty Images)
It's so perfect: homesteading, organic vegetables, art installations and also, again, inevitably a heaping dose of climate theology, all imported from Harvard. Fetterman imposed on a town with no jobs, carbon caps on Braddock, Pennsylvania, and he claimed these carbon caps would somehow — he never explained how — bring more manufacturing jobs back. He called this initiative "Carbon Caps = Hard Hats." So expensive, unreliable energy will mean more manufacturing jobs and yet somehow no one laughed at him, so John Fetterman kept going.
In a 2009 advertisement for himself he promised that "with a smart, economically viable carbon cap policy in place, communities like Braddock can begin to build its manufacturing and middle-class back up. This whole notion that we can continue to operate as we have been and ignore climate change is ludicrous."
They loved it at the Aspen Institute and to be fair, John Fetterman did not ignore climate change. He talked about climate change endlessly. He made climate change the centerpiece of his administration in Braddock, Pennsylvania. As for actually running the town or improving the town of Braddock, he was not interested, not even a little bit interested, and that's provable. As mayor, according to public records obtained by the Washington Free Beacon, Fetterman missed more than a third of the borough's monthly meetings. He was off at the Aspen Institute.
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In his entire tenure as the mayor of Braddock, John Fetterman cast a single vote at a city council meeting and it was a meaningless one. It was a procedural vote for borough president. So, what happened next? This is always our favorite part of the story. What were the results? How did Braddock, Pennsylvania, fare under the leadership of John Fetterman? That's really the only question that matters and again, we want to be as fair and objective as we can be. So, we're going to tell you that under his tenure as mayor of Braddock, Pennsylvania, the seas did not rise. That is true. Braddock is still on dry land. Of course, it's very far from the ocean, but it's still dry. So, his climate policy worked. He can be proud of that. Unfortunately, everything else fell apart in Braddock.
People kept fleeing. Braddock's population is currently at its lowest level ever recorded. The median income in Braddock, Pennsylvania, is $14,000 a year. More than a third of households in Braddock live below the poverty line. Braddock, by the way, has one of the highest crime rates in the state of Pennsylvania. In 2018, shortly after Fetterman left office, Braddock's per capita murder rate was higher than it is in some of the most dangerous countries in the world. Honduras and Belize are safer than Braddock, Pennsylvania. So, that's a failure and in a functioning system, a record like this would have disqualified John Fetterman from ever running for anything again. He failed demonstrably as a leader. It had a higher murder rate than Honduras and the lowest population ever recorded. Sorry, climate change didn't improve the town.
In a fair system, a system that cared about achievement, a meritocratic system, John Fetterman would be leaving politics on the express train and moving on to something like interpretive dance. Try that. Maybe get his dad to pay for ski lessons and move to Aspen or something, but we don't have a functioning meritocracy, much less a functioning political system. We have a very broken one. So, John Fetterman set his sights even higher. Having wrecked Braddock, he became lieutenant governor and now he plans to run for the United States Senate. What's he going to do if he gets there? Well, his idea is to make the entire state of Pennsylvania and the entire country much more like Braddock with much higher crime rates, and we're not making that up. Here he is, John Fetterman, in 2020 as lieutenant governor, fantasizing about giving amnesty to thousands of violent criminals, including murderers.
JASON FLOM, ACTIVIST: If you had a magic wand and you could wave it and fix one thing, what would it be?
JOHN FETTERMAN: Life without parole in Pennsylvania. We could save billions in revenue long-term. We could save thousands of lives and not make anyone less safe and also expunge as many permanent records of people that have been living their best lives and have been paying well beyond where they should have for a charge that they caught, you know, 10, 15, 20 years ago.
In huge parts of Pennsylvania, which is a big state, real state, filled with really nice people, and it was an economic powerhouse for more than 100 years — in huge parts of that state, there are no jobs. There is poverty. There is hopelessness and there are huge numbers of drug ODs. That state has been devastated by opioids, by fentanyl, but John Fetterman, if he had one wish, if he could make one change in the state of Pennsylvania, he’d let the murderers out. Right. That's what he cares about.
So, in Pennsylvania, typically if you commit murder, you get life in prison, as you should. You're not allowed to kill people, but Fetterman would change that. He'd like you out of jail as quickly as possible. Talk about a rich kid concern, by the way. No actual populist or actual working-class person talks like this, worries about punishing murderers too much. Maybe if you achieve the first 115 things on your to-do list, you'd worry about, "Are the murderers serving too much time in prison?"
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That'd be after you got people jobs, after you convinced their children to stay in the state where they were born, after you fixed the fact that thousands are dying of drug ODs. Only rich kids think like that, and by the way, only rich kids wear hoodies to political events. "I'm a working man and wearing a hoodie." No working man actually wears a hoodie to a political event. All your stupid little fake tattoos. It's a costume, of course. Duh. It's not real, but John Fetterman, inspired by his time at Harvard and the Aspen Institute, would like to free a third of the prison population in Pennsylvania, and that's just for starters.
FETTERMAN: I was on a panel with Secretary Wetzel earlier before the pandemic hit, and he said something remarkable that I agree with. He said we could reduce our prison population by a third and not make anyone less safe in Pennsylvania, and that's a profound statement.
It's not a profound statement. It's absurd. It's ridiculous. "It's a profound statement." Where do you learn to talk like this? "It's a profound statement," says the hoodie guy. You're an idiot. You've never had a job and you wrecked the town that you ran. You didn't even show up at council meetings. What? "Climate change, let the murderers out. We'll have a much safer society when we let the incorrigibly violent roam among us." Right.
Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. and Democratic Senate nominee John Fetterman speaks to a crowd gathered at aa United Steel Workers of America Labor Day event with President Joe Biden in West Mifflin, Pa., just outside Pittsburgh, Monday Sept. 5, 2022. (AP Photo/Rebecca Droke) (AP Photo/Rebecca Droke)
This is the guy who made Braddock, Pennsylvania, more dangerous than Honduras and of course, the point is not simply to wreck what he inherited, what we all inherited. It's to change the state forever for his own political benefit. The point is to flood the state of Pennsylvania with brand-new voters, all of them loyal to the Democratic Party. More voter fraud, please. Fetterman has been in lockstep with the leaders of his party on that question from the very beginning and that's why he would like to get rid of all barriers to voter fraud, including and especially voter ID as soon as possible.
FETTERMAN: In my own state, they are going to pass, attempt to pass, a constitutional amendment making sure that universal voting ID for every time you vote, not just when you sign up to vote, but every time you vote, because they understand that at any given time, there's tens of thousands of Pennsylvanians who typically are on the poorer side and are people of color that are less likely to have their ID at any one given time.
So, poor people don't have IDs? Really? Because everyone who lives in our society over the age of 18 has a government issued ID because you can't live here, otherwise and you can't collect any government benefits without one. You can't do anything without one. So, that's a lie. He's affirmatively abetting voter fraud. Now we should tell you that the clips we just played were John Fetterman speaking before he had, and we say this with no glee, but instead with deep sympathy, a massive stroke.
His campaign says the stroke occurred shortly before he won the Democratic state primary in May. Whenever it happened or whatever caused it, the stroke has been profound. It has rendered Fetterman unable to speak coherently and again, we're not being mean. We say this with sympathy, but it's true because it's not just about John Fetterman and how he's feeling, it's about the country he hopes to control if elected to the United States Senate, and so it's bad. It's really bad. Here he was campaigning recently in Pittsburgh, for example.
FETTERMAN: Just earlier today, I was so proud to march with you in downtown Pittsburgh. Labor Day. Happy Labor Day. Send me to Washington, D.C., to send, so I can work with Sen. Casey and I can champion the union way of life, in Jersey, excuse me, in D.C. Thank you. Thank you very much and it's an honor. I live eight minutes away from here and when I leave tonight, I got three miles away, Dr. Oz in his mansion in New Jersey. You've got a friend and you have an ally. Send me to Washington, D.C.
You know, it's not even worth making fun of. It's sad, but when cognition goes, when the ability to think clearly disappears, and in his case, it obviously has, what's left? The talking points, that's all that remains and that's all he has. The talking points. "The union way of life." This is a kid who lived off his parents until he was in his mid-40s. What? He's never been in a union. What are you even talking about, you fraud?
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So, not surprisingly, Fetterman has refused up until today to schedule a debate with his opponent, Dr. Oz. Just hours ago, he announced he's willing to debate, but no details are forthcoming, sometime in mid-October, of course, when the early voting has already been well in progress. It's starting now, by the way, the early voting in Pennsylvania. So, if you delay the debate 'til right before the election, it's irrelevant because people have already voted. Only Democrats seem to understand this. He doesn't even talk to the media at this point because he can't. In some cases, here's one, his staffers won't even let him answer questions that he has posed.
MAN OFF-CAMERA: Hey, John. Are you afraid to debate Dr. Oz? Are you afraid to debate Dr. Oz? Are you going to debate him? He's offered five debates. Are you going to debate him?
His hoodie and his fraudulent tattoos. I mean, honestly, this is like the barista in Brooklyn dressing like a lumberjack. Oh, please go back to Oberlin, you fake. So, there's a huge problem here. The guy can't talk, OK? And even CNN has acknowledged that. John Fetterman, a candidate for the U.S. Senate, cannot speak.
CNN REPORTER: Members of the United Steelworkers Tuesday, Fetterman was on message, but often halting in his speech and occasionally dropped words mid-sentence.
FETTERMAN: Being anti-union is anti-American. What is wrong with demanding for an easy, safe kind of their income, a path to a safe place for them to win? Or, excuse me, to work?
CNN REPORTER: Fetterman declined to answer questions from CNN and other reporters at the event.
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So, we could go on and on and play more tape, but it's just too awful and nobody wants to watch that. We don't want to play it for you. We just want to make the point. This guy is completely impaired. That's not some kind of Republican talking point. It's completely real. So, think about what that means. The Democratic Party has not replaced him. This has been going on since he got the nomination, but he's still in the race.
That is shocking and it's insulting, not simply to voters in Pennsylvania, but to the rest of us who, if this guy is elected, will have to live under his rule, but the Democratic Party prefers it that way. They did it with Biden. They're trying it again with Fetterman. Run a wax dummy for office. People who can't form complete sentences apparently seem less threatening to voters. "How much damage can he really do? He can't even talk." Apparently, that's what they think and of course, people like Fetterman and Biden are much easier to control. So, on the one occasion Fetterman has actually been asked directly about this, "Wait a second. You're cognitively impaired," how did he respond? As a victim, of course. If you've got a problem with a brain-damaged senator, you're a bigot. Watch this.
FETTERMAN: Can you even imagine that if you had a doctor that was mocking your illness and ridiculing that? Well, here we are. Here we are right now. I would like to think that Dr. Oz has really lost his way if you're going to make fun of somebody that had a stroke.
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Pennsylvania U.S. Senate candidate Dr. Mehmet Oz speaks during a Republican leadership forum at Newtown Athletic Club on May 11, 2022 in Newtown, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
"Oh, making fun of people. How dare you do that! He's disabled. Shut up. Accept it. How dare you acknowledge the obvious? You have no right." This is all about John Fetterman's personal journey, so you're not allowed to ask, "How will this affect me if that guy, who can't think clearly, is elected to the United States Senate?" That's impolite. They do this on so many issues and they're doing it with him and it works.
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Most people just shut up. It's considered completely out-of-bounds to mention the fact that John Fetterman is completely incapable of representing Pennsylvania in the United States Senate and as we said, that fact (and it is a fact) is fine with the people who run the Democratic Party.
They just want the power, but the rest of us should be very worried by this. If they can get this guy elected statewide in this nation's fifth-largest state, this guy, an incompetent husk with incredibly stupid and totally provably destructive ideas, a man with no record of achievement at all, a man with a long list of documented failures, a man who, by the way, cannot even think clearly — if they can do that, they can do literally anything.