Friday, Fox News host Tucker Carlson opened his program by riffing on the peculiar circumstances surrounding freshman Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) and his mental health.
According to Carlson, media and Fetterman’s staffers are treating the situation like it was “not a big deal.”
“[F]etterman got to Washington in January and within a month suffered a mental breakdown so severe that he wound up in the psych ward where he remains tonight,” he said. “And we’re not mocking John Fetterman, of course. We feel for him sincerely. But the mercenaries in his orbit, very much, including his wife, Giselle, should be ashamed of what they have done. Apparently, Fetterman cracked under the strain of a Senate campaign in which he was forced to pretend that the brain damage he had suffered from a stroke wasn’t actually a big deal. ‘No problem. I’m fine.’ But he was not fine. He was so close to the edge that within weeks of getting to Washington, he wound up in a mental hospital as an inpatient. He has not appeared in public since.”
Carlson continued, “And we’re supposed to think that’s not a big deal. We’re not even supposed to think about it and just show how completely normal it is for newly elected U.S. senators to have mental breakdowns and disappear from public view. That’s such not a big deal, that Fetterman somehow just co-sponsored legislation in the U.S. Senate, quote, ‘U.S. Senators Bob Casey and John Fetterman of Pennsylvania,’ reads a straight face news report, ‘joined a bipartisan group of senators on Wednesday, introducing new legislation aimed at preventing future freight train derailments, like the one last month in East Palestine, Ohio.’ So here you have a guy who’s getting round-the-clock psychiatric care deciding how to prevent train derailments. There are so many questions here. But the most obvious one is a logistical question: How is John Fetterman doing this if he’s in the psych ward? And we don’t know because no one will say.”
“Fetterman’s chief of staff, a man called Adam Jentleson, is blocking anyone who dares to ask that question on social media,” he explained. “On Twitter, for example, Stephen Miller … asked Jentleson this: ‘Adam, who is cosigning and introducing legislation from Senator Fetterman’s office while he himself is currently hospitalized and under current medical observation?’ Oh, no answer. No answer. No answer. Jentleson just blocked Stephen Miller in response. So the problem with this is not John Fetterman himself. Once again, it’s impossible not to feel sad for John Fetterman or anyone else who suffers from mental illness. A lot of us are eccentric. Some of us are very eccentric. And a tolerant and compassionate society should do its best to help people suffering from problems like depression or schizophrenia or whatever. The problem is that a society that elevates people who are mentally ill is doomed.”
“Wouldn’t a functional society elevate people to positions of leadership who are the wisest, the smartest, the sanest, who have the greatest degree of foresight and emotional self-control?” Carlson added. “Yes, it would. They would not intentionally put people in positions of authority who were incompetent. They would not allow John Fetterman to write railroad safety legislation from his bed in the psych ward. That is, pardon the description, insane.”
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor
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