During an interview with NPR aired on Thursday’s edition of “All Things Considered,” Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) stated that while he was battling depression, he wasn’t the kind of Senator Pennsylvanians deserved and responded to people who said he couldn’t do his job due to his health problems by stating that “some of those people that are criticizing me know somebody, or they might be someone that faces depression in their lives as well.”
Fetterman said, “When I was in the throes of depression, to be 100% honest, I was not the kind of Senator that was deserved by a Pennsylvanian.”
Later, host Scott Detrow asked, “I want to use the rest of the interview to talk about what comes next and talk about how you’re going to approach your job now that you’re back in the Senate. And I wanted to start by just taking a moment to ask you about some of the criticism and also some of the concerns. You said yourself a moment ago that, when you were depressed, you didn’t feel like you were the Senator that Pennsylvania needed — I’m paraphrasing. But, the central attack against you during the campaign was you couldn’t do the job due to your health problems. Then you got here, and you had to spend six weeks in the hospital. And I’m wondering, do you feel, yourself, any extra pressure at this moment to say, hey, Pennsylvania, I’m here to represent you?”
Fetterman answered, “Yeah, certainly. And, — but I bet you some of those people that are criticizing me know somebody, or they might be someone that faces depression in their lives as well. And I just always try to tell people by saying it’s not a Democratic or a Republican area. It’s humanity. And, there [are] people from — no matter where you live, no matter what your political views are — is that you suffer from depression, or you know somebody there.”
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