Fetterman Accommodations Are Fair Questions

Fetterman Accommodations Are Fair Questions

Fetterman Accommodations Are Fair Questions

NBC reporter Dasha Burns apparently did the unthinkable when covering a Democrat – she told the truth about her interactions with John Fetterman, and now all the usual liberal suspects are howling at her honesty.

When Fetterman suffered a stroke right before the Pennsylvania Senate primary this summer, it was clear that his campaign was covering up just how serious the situation really was. While some people are able to rehabilitate quickly from a stroke, it all depends on the severity of the damage done. Team Fetterman, led by his wife Gisele, went to great lengths to talk around the situation and gloss over just how severe the stroke (and the heart condition) had been. And ever since then, the campaign has been either curating clips or using surrogates to run campaign ads, or tweeting out under Fetterman’s name. But Fetterman can’t finish this campaign from behind a screen. So, NBC conceded to multiple accommdations for John Fetterman in order to do an in-person interview with reporter Dasha Burns.

Now, Burns’s reporting is very sympathetic to Fetterman and his health issues. But she didn’t ignore his medical condition in her reporting.

During the interview, Fetterman occasionally stuttered and had trouble finding words. He responded to oral questions after reading captions on a computer screen. “I sometimes will hear things in a way that’s not perfectly clear. So I use captioning so I’m able to see what you’re saying on the captioning,” Fetterman said.”

He said the stroke, after which doctors implanted a pacemaking device with a defibrillator to monitor and regulate his heartbeat, has altered the way he communicates, including with his family.”

“It changes everything,” Fetterman said, responding to a question about how his recovery has changed his day-to-day. “Everything about it is changed.”

Fetterman, acknowledging the challenges he still faces, added: “But it gets much, much better where I take in a lot. But to be precise, I use captioning, so that’s really the maijing — that’s the major challenge. And every now and then I’ll miss a word. Every now and then. Or sometimes I’ll maybe mush two words together. But as long as I have captioning, I’m able to understand exactly what’s being asked.”

At one point, he struggled to articulate the word “empathetic” — toggling between the correct pronunciation and “emphetic” — and then pointed to that as an example of the effect of the stroke. Asked about those moments, Fetterman said searching for language is not a difficult experience.”

“No, I don’t think it was hard. It was just about having to be thinking more, uh, sl, uh — slower — to just understand and that sometimes that’s kind of the processing that happens,” Fetterman said.”

Pressed by NBC News why he declined requests to share his medical records and make his doctors available for interviews, Fetterman said he’s not aware of any undisclosed symptoms and argued that he has been open with the public about his health and recovery, including the auditory processing challenges. He has said that his cognitive function and memory are unaffected.”

“I feel like we have been very transparent in a lot of different ways,” Fetterman said. “When our doctor has already given a letter saying that I’m able to serve and to be running. And then I think there’s — you can’t be any more transparent than standing up on a stage with 3,000 people and having a speech without a teleprompter and just being — and putting everything and yourself out there like that. I think that’s as transparent as everyone in Pennsylvania can see.”

These are legitimate questions for an honest reporter to ask, and then cover. But apparently, Dasha Burns is VERY VERY VERY BAD for DARING to question Fetterman’s health and recovery. And to her credit, Burns pushed back against the hysterical liberal critics who expected her to give Fetterman more of a fig leaf.


Now, who was complaining about Burns’s reporting? The narrative went out on the left: if you dare critique John Fetterman, then you are attacking a disabled person and are an ableist bigot who would deny people wheelchairs.


As some on Twitter pointed out, the reason Tammy Duckworth IS a senator is because her opponent HAD A STROKE. The desperate attempt to link a physical impairment to a cognitive impairment is beyond nuts. And very telling about how the left sees anyone with a disability.

But the prize goes to Kara Swisher, leftist whose resume includes Vox and the New York Times. Swisher had a hot take so great, she deleted it. But the internet is forever.


Yeah, that comparison of a stroke to autism got deleted, but HOLY F**KING CRAP. There are just so many things wrong with that analogy, including that many people on the autism spectrum do not see themselves as something to be “solved” – and that because autism is a spectrum, not everyone on that spectrum is “Rain Man.” I hope Swisher got enough blowback to think long and hard about how offensive this was. Regardless of her crap take, Fetterman is running for the United States Senate. Communication, both spoken and written, is pretty much 95 percent of the job. If he is unable to do that, how does he expect to fulfill his duties as a senator?

Never fear, Edith Wilson Jill Biden Gisele Fetterman is all in on “how dare you question my husband and his newly acquired disabilities that will in no way affect his performance and if you notice them then YOU would stop people from using a wheelchair or glasses!”


With this kind of outsized reaction to honest reporting, all eyes now turn to the planned October 25th debate between Fetterman and Mehmet Oz. Again, we here at Victory Girls are not fans of Dr. Oz, but Fetterman, aside from his extreme leftist positions, is clearly not currently capable of being lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania, much less a senator. (Not that he has apparently done much but draw a paycheck as lieutenant governor, anyway.) That debate is going to tell us an awful lot about John Fetterman, and will be covered nationally as well as locally. Fetterman gets one chance to show that his stroke has not left him with cognitive impairments, and he won’t be able to have his wife next to him. Will the campaign let him show up, even with all the accommodations that have been agreed to? We shall see in less than two weeks.

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Featured image: Lieutenant Governor of Pennsylvania John Fetterman, official portrait, cropped, Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)

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14 Comments
  • Scott says:

    No matter how bad his showing in the debate, the leftist media will declare him the winner, and attack all other positions / comments, as usual

  • GWB says:

    He actually doesn’t seem that bad off, compared to some I’ve met. (Hey, at least he’s not sniffing girls’ hair.) The accommodation of closed captioning isn’t really that difficult to handle. He’s trying to be a senator, not Oliver Cromwell or Henry the 5th (that was the Shakespeare one with the speech, right?). Frankly, not being able to get up and deliver a speech for hours on end would seem like a feature, not a bug. Strom Thurmond served when he was pretty far gone, IIRC, and still managed to deliver the goods for his state.

    So, meh. I think a lot of idiots voters will be sympathetic and feel like they’re helping him overcome the stroke if they vote for him. And the entire country will suffer as he helps enact progressive policies. But I could be wrong and they could vote for Dr. Oz – who will probably be a “maverick” and help enact many of those same progressive policies, but with an R behind his name.

    • Kim Hirsch says:

      Sorry, GWB, but as someone who has studied the communication impairments that accompany stroke for my professional training, I don’t see Fetterman’s disabilities as “meh.” He may be able to function with a closed captioning device in a one-on-one interview, but that’s a sterile environment. What happens when he’s on the Senate floor dealing with ambient noises all around him? Or handling journalists or constituents in a hallway? Plus, he’s definitely impaired expressively, too. Moreover, no one can predict how much he will recover, either. Maybe Fetterman “doesn’t seem that bad off” to you, but will he be able to handle the stresses of a Senate office for six years? And will he have another stroke in the meantime? Please also remember that when you’ve seen a person who’s had a stroke … you’ve seen a person who had a stroke. No two events are alike.

      Fetterman had a major cerebral vascular accident, and those things generally happen to people over 65. He’s only 53. Plus, Fetterman also suffers from atrial fibrillation. He may very well be a walking time bomb, health-wise.

      Fetterman’s health is a big deal.

      • Ampleforth says:

        Not to mention that he might deal with national security issues that he cannot understand.

        The other thing is that he was a thuggish sort of politician before his cerebral crisis.

  • NTSOG says:

    ‘Yeah, that comparison of a stroke to autism got deleted, but HOLY F**KING CRAP. There are just so many things wrong with that analogy, including that many people on the autism spectrum do not see themselves as something to be “solved”’

    Sometimes I wish the film ‘Rainman’ had never been made as it has led to all sorts of false expectations and beliefs amongst the general populace. As for this nasty Swisher creature: “Many have versions of autism. It’s not nearly as easy to solve as a stroke.” Well for generations we who are autistic were considered mentally ill [schizophrenic] and were subject to ‘treatment’ or institutionalisation. [Hitler, of course, ‘solved’ the issue of people who are different mentally and/or developmentally: he ordered them killed.] Most certainly we don’t need to be ‘solved’, however the attitude of this ‘progressive’ woman is typical [in my experience working in the welfare sector] of the intolerance of her left-leaning ‘class’ when they encounter people who operate on the basis of logic, are not emotionally ‘needy’ and not easily coerced. Thus we don’t fit into the easily manipulated mobs the left uses to enforce its control.

  • Cameron says:

    “I literally cannot believe how ableist the commentary is about candidates for office.”

    Go bake me something, sweetheart. And while you are doing that, ask yourself in all seriousness if you’d be white knighting for Fetterman if he was a Republican.

  • deadrody says:

    Good lord, the man IS NOT hard of hearing. If his doctors are claiming he is, lets see the auditory testing results that show the attenuation of his hearing and at what frequencies his hearing is attenuated.

    Problem though is NOT his “hearing”, its his BRAIN. Where auditory signals, AKA words go to be translated from sound via “hearing” into meaning. THAT is the part that doesn’t work, not the hearing.

    • Stoutcat says:

      Exactly this! He’s not hard of hearing, his brain isn’t processing things properly (yet).

      “Close to 15% of the US population identify as hard of hearing and may need accommodations.” [Mrs. Fetterman]

      If his wife thinks he’s slightly deaf, she really needs to speak with her husband’s doctors again to get a clearer picture of what is going on with him. Or, she knows exactly what his condition in and is just lying.

  • Ampleforth says:

    Take a look at the addled leadership of the Democrat party. Pelosi slurs her speech. Kamala Harris can’t string together coherent thoughts. President Biden loses his train of thoughts and possibly suffers from hallucinations.

    Fetterman fits right in with them.

    He checks a box for the Democrat party. He has a pulse and will either vote the party line or a proxy can easily tell him how to vote.

    He’s the perfect Democrat and has all the earmarks (a nice little CIA word) of a leader in that party.

  • Eric Wilner says:

    Well, they’ve got a point there. I mean, what’s the difference between needing glasses and needing a thinking-brain dog? Next you’ll be telling us that Kermit the Frog shouldn’t be a Senator, just because he needs a little help with moving, speaking, and so on.

  • […] me just stop Connie right there. We should make accommodations and elect someone who has had a major stroke? There are many who’ve LEFT office because of […]

  • […] is over, and Fetterman proved to be as incoherent as any honest person suspected and Dasha Burns pointed out, the campaign is looking for someone to blame. Initially, Team Fetterman tried praising their […]

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