Newly minted Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) was reportedly hospitalized Wednesday night after feeling “lightheaded.”
Joe Cavello, Fetterman’s communication director, said the senator “began feeling lightheaded” during a Senate Democratic Retreat and was subsequently hospitalized.
“Towards the end of the Senate Democratic Retreat today, Senator John Fetterman began feeling lightheaded. He left and called his staff, who picked him up and drove him to the George Washington University Hospital,” a statement addressing the matter outlined.
“Initial tests did not show evidence of a new stroke, the doctors are running more tests and John is remaining overnight for observation. He’s in good spirits and talking with his staff and family. We will provide more information when we have it,” it added.
The reported hospitalization comes less than a year after Fetterman suffered a stroke and went on to clinch the Democrat nomination for the U.S. Senate seat in Pennsylvania.
Fetterman routinely appeared disoriented in public appearances throughout the campaign, regularly mispronouncing words and confusing sentences. After a disastrous interview with NBC Nightly News, reporter Dasha Burns drew criticism for noting how Fetterman’s stroke impaired him in a variety of ways, from his comprehension to his basic speech, to the point of him needing a closed captioning system during their in-person interview.
“Fetterman’s campaign required closed captioning technology for this interview to essentially read our questions as we asked them,” she told fellow reporter Lester Holt. “In small talk before the interview, without captioning, it wasn’t clear he was understanding our conversation.”
Clips of the interview immediately began circulating all over social media:
Fetterman went on to face his Republican opponent, Dr. Mehmet Oz, in a debate after dodging him for weeks. Despite his poor debate performance, Fetterman went on to handily beat Oz for the U.S. Senate seat in the midterms last November.
“I’m just so proud of the race that we ran,” Fetterman said at the time. “This campaign has always been about fighting for everyone’s who’s every been got knocked down that ever got back up.”
“This race is for the future of every community all across Pennsylvania, for every small town or person that ever felt left behind, for every job that was ever been lost, for every [factory] that was ever closed, for every person that works hard but never got ahead – I’m proud of what we ran on,” he added.