Fetterman

I don’t really have anything to say about the Fetterman article beyond… “huh.”

“I don’t have any comment on that,” he said. “I’m going to go off record. Go off record. Go off record.”

I cannot report what Fetterman said over the course of the next four minutes, but I can say that after he was done talking, I found myself in the hallway outside his office making awkward small talk with one of his press aides. Five minutes later, the door opened and I was ushered back in. The office felt different now. Quiet and tense. Fetterman was still in the same chair but slumped into himself, like a deflated parade float. His shoes were now on, and he avoided looking at me. Finally, I broke the silence. “Anything to say about that?” I asked, hoping to pick up our conversation where we had left off.

“There’s not anyone that you’re referencing who would be privy to my medical history,” he said.

“Do you care to comment whether they are right or wrong?” I asked.

“I’m just going to say that it’s disgruntled employees saying things that are either untrue or, so, that’s kind of the business that we are in,” he said.

I asked him why these staffers might be disgruntled.

“For whatever reason,” he said. “There’s a lot of people who just hide behind unnamed sources in articles.”

I tried to move the conversation to Trump’s tariffs and other issues before leaving, but it was plainly clear that his mind was elsewhere. His voice was low. He barely bothered to look up. His sentences were clipped. “I feel like there’s been kind of a tone shift here,” I said, trying to catch his eye. “Can you tell me what you’re feeling? What you’re thinking?”

For the first time since I had returned to his office, he looked right at me. “No, everything’s great,” he said, deadpan. “Everything’s great. I don’t know what you’re referencing.”

I don’t know that this is a guy who can make it through the 2028 Senate campaign. But views may differ.