Remember the days when President Joe Biden had little debate, and the Democratic Dead insisted that there was nothing? That was embarrassing. But it is obviously not embarrassing that everyone has learned the right lesson, as something similar is happening between Senator John Fetterman and the admirer on the right. Conservatives are now doing the exact same thing as the Biden Defenders do: denying the obvious discomfort of politicians because he is politically useful.
Fetterman is the subject of a devastating new profile New York Magazine (my former employer). Ben Teris reported that Fetterman staff and even his wife repeatedly expressed concerns about his mental health, following the Senator's strange statements and actions, including near-fatal car accidents.
After Terris' story emerged, conservatives leaped to Fetterman's defense, portraying it as a hit piece inspired by recent right-wing anger at the Senators, which was manifested in Israel's passionate defense of the Israeli president, passionate claims of President Donald Trump and confirming Pam Bondi as attorney general. "Fettman is essential in 2022. He is a reliable liberal and therefore will never be considered a rogue. But now that's actually happening, and suddenly the party thinks he's very consumed and therefore vulnerable New York Magazine works that just came out of nowhere. "conservative Washington Examiner allegations. This attack line has been repeated in the column Daily wire (“As Fetterman defended Israel, Dems suddenly questioned his mental health”),) National Comment (“Progressors warn John Fetterman to suffer acute pro-Irish inflammation”) and several other outlets.
None of these articles acknowledge, let alone attempt to refute, which is Terris' extensive description of Fetterman's unstable behavior, at least as clear as Biden's evidence of weakness. Many conservative attacks have posed the impact of Fetterman's stroke with the impact that occurred before the 2022 election with the following year's hospitalization for depression, questioning Democrats' assurances to Fetterman in 2022, while doubting his health today.
A stroke is a discrete event from which it can be fully recovered. Of course, this can also be recovered from depression. But as Terris points out, Fetterman's staff had good reason to believe he failed to comply with his recovery plan. "During this period, the people I did not talk to this article can determine if Fetterman stayed on his medication, but five people said they heard the senator's comments suggesting he was not." Additionally, he reported: "In group texts including senior staff for March 2024, employees used such Mania Describe his behavior. They noted that despite blood tests being the “backbone of recovery plans,” he is still canceling medical appointments.
To be sure, evaluating certain behaviors that plague Fetterman employees (incoherent rants, compulsive social media posts) suggests that unstable mental health is at least somewhat subjective. Especially in the Trump era, one man’s madman was another’s bold populist truth lecturer. But Fetterman's horrible driving record is an objective fact, a crash that he insisted on driving home after a red-eye flight.
More importantly, the argument that “wake up” staff are disturbing bosses with false attention is hard to explain why the strongest evidence comes through a letter to Jenterson’s doctor who scolds Democratic employees who criticize their bosses in Israel, who criticize their bosses in Israel (“The thing with you being an employee is that no one was elected for your party and announced the party in October 2020, he announced the party in public), and was sent to the party in 2023.” The right-wing criticism also did not explain why Fetterman’s employees refused to ride in any car he drove. If their disagreement is ideological in nature, it would be a very strange form of protest among his employees to continue to boycott the Fetterman-driven vehicles.
Conservative complaints start more or less on the premise that Fetterman's ideological apostasy is the only possible explanation for his story of weakness. The possibility of journalists reporting public figures’ health for non-conscious reasons seems to have completely escaped. Some of the doubtful ideas of the right seem to be unaware of the foundations of journalism. Consider from Examiner:
So, who are these current employees? We will never know because like every political hot article, these allegations are based on anonymous sources. But this is the evil and obvious place: a letter written by former Fetterman Chief of Staff Adam Jentleson to Walter Reed Medical Center New York Magazine.
The author immediately claimed the root of the allegations “we will never know”, insisting that we know the fact that the main source is evil. The “miracle” leak in Jentleson’s letter is not evidence of conspiracy, but a direct description of the way it reports.
Many conservative publications are based on hyperbolic criticism of mainstream media, which argues that all “objective” journalism is merely a cover of the progress of left-wing activism and the Democratic agenda. Then they start creating the same thing for the right right. But this inability to believe journalists may have reported a story for reasons that ideology but rather public interest suggests a broader form of sophistry—a place not only on the right but also on the left, partisan thinking fully establishes its worldview, completely responding to the other’s adverse beliefs.
Suppose you accurately observe that many liberals downplay the evidence of Biden's spiritual decline. Now you can use it as evidence to refute any politician spirit decline you like. As long as the other party’s hypocrisy is your only point of contact with the facts of the case, you do not have the internal consistency standards to follow. Your position on Biden's fitness might be that libs are the liars who reject it, and your position on Fetterman's health might be that Libs are hypocritical because they are used to defend Biden. Of course, when they defended Biden, many libs did the same thing, turning every problem of his work ability into a game Why don’t we question Trump’s fitness?
The misleading assumption under this hyperpartisan fallacy is that one of the parties that refuses to hold oneself is one Advantages. The conservative movement is primarily a distrust of any mainstream institution that specializes in maintaining standards (news, science, academia). The left is growing and seeing Trump take office in a wave of cult-like obedience, it is now a fool’s game to decide to keep any standard for leaders.
But watching Biden’s thought slipping in another way is not a shortcut to defeating Trump. This is an act of self-destruction. While conservatives may take longer to pay because they do not limit their crazy kings, they refute all the doubts about the convenient mental health of leaders and allies, a habit that makes them gather behind the Fetterman – the shaky foundation for building the movement.