[ad_1]
Arizona Sen. Ruben Gallego defended beleaguered fellow Democrat John Fetterman Saturday, saying “there needs to be space” in the party for the Pennsylvania senator.
Fetterman, who won election to his seat in 2022 despite having a stroke on the campaign trail, has been under fire from Democrats, even former staffers who claim to have witnessed erratic behavior.
But Fetterman has also clashed with his party’s progressive wing on Israel and other issues, and his supporters say it is his independent streak that is prompting the whispers.
“There needs to be space for Fetterman and for other senators in our caucus,” Gallego said in an interview in Pennsylvania Saturday, Politico reported. “He still is a senator that fights for working-class people. We may not be 100% in agreement a lot of times in a lot of areas, but we don’t have to be.”
LEAKS TO MEDIA ABOUT FETTERMAN ARE A COORDINATED SMEAR CAMPAIGN, HILL COLLEAGUES SAYS
Gallego was referring to Fetterman’s stance on Israel, his suggestion that Democrats need to work with President Donald Trump, not against him, and occasionally voting for the president’s nominees when other Democrats won’t.
The senator, who spent more than a month in the neuropsychiatry unit at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in 2023 receiving treatment for depression, has also been the subject of several media stories recently that claim he has exhibited strange behavior that has concerned Democrats.
Arizona Sen. Ruben Gallego said Saturday “there needs to be space” for Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman (Getty Inages)
“This is so blatantly coordinated,” media observer and Fox News contributor Joe Concha wrote on social media this week. He shared a link in his post to a Politico report claiming an internal Democratic poll found Fetterman’s popularity faltering in his part of the Keystone State.
The report claimed Fetterman had fallen below 50% in Democratic voter support in Pittsburgh, just a few miles west of Braddock,…
[ad_2]
