Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
Editorials & Other Articles
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
So Fetterman will leave the party if the Democrats take a "anti- Israel Party" stance.
Senator John Fetterman (D-PA) revealed that “the one thing” that would make him leave the Democratic Party would be if it became an “anti-Israel party” and if denying Israel’s “right to defend itself and to exist” became “a formal part of our platform.”
The senator has been unequivocal in his support for Israel and a staunch advocate for the country’s interests in Congress since the Hamas attacks on Oct. 7, 2023.
Since President Donald Trump returned to office, Fetterman has repeatedly criticized fellow Democratic lawmakers’ comments toward the administration and broken with colleagues on some votes – although he votes alongside party lines most of the time.
Despite past reports that Senate Republicans were hoping to flip Fetterman, he has shrugged off the idea of crossing the aisle.
Speaking with Fox News host Sean Hannity on Hannity Wednesday night, however, the senator admitted there was one line that, if crossed, would prompt him to leave the Democratic Party, and that concerns Israel.
https://l.smartnews.com/p-81STBC6c/QvRORn
102 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
Fuck him he is already gone. Israel is a criminal operation and is now working on stealing
southern Lebanon and making it part of the nation of Israel as it works non stop to deny
the Palestinian a homeland.
levels than pre-stroke Fetterman. He also has (perhaps due to the stroke) allowed himself to be 'handled' by a person who appears to be a malign actor.
All By Himself John Fetterman insists he is in good health.
But staffers past and present say they no longer recognize the man they once knew.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/john-fetterman-struggle-mental-health-clinical-depression.html
https://archive.ph/ukGOC
When John Fetterman was released from Walter Reed hospital in March 2023, Adam Jentleson, then his chief of staff, was proud of his boss for seeking help for what the senator’s office and his doctor had said was a case of clinical depression. His six weeks of inpatient care had been the latest medical setback for the Pennsylvania Democrat, who had had a stroke mere months before being elected to the U.S. Senate in 2022, nearly derailing his campaign against Republican Mehmet Oz. But a year after his release from the hospital, Fetterman’s behavior had so alarmed Jentleson that he resigned his position. In May 2024, he wrote an urgent letter to David Williamson, the medical director of the traumatic-brain-injury and neuropsychiatry unit at Walter Reed, who had overseen Fetterman’s care at the hospital. “I think John is on a bad trajectory and I’m really worried about him,” the email began. If things didn’t change, Jentleson continued, he was concerned Fetterman “won’t be with us for much longer.”
His 1,600-word email came with the subject line “concerns,” and it contained a list of them, from the seemingly mundane (“He eats fast food multiple times a day”) to the scary (“We do not know if he is taking his meds and his behavior frequently suggests he is not”). “We often see the kind of warning signs we discussed,” Jentleson wrote. “Conspiratorial thinking; megalomania (for example, he claims to be the most knowledgeable source on Israel and Gaza around but his sources are just what he reads in the news — he declines most briefings and never reads memos); high highs and low lows; long, rambling, repetitive and self centered monologues; lying in ways that are painfully, awkwardly obvious to everyone in the room.”
Fetterman was, according to Jentleson, avoiding the regular checkups advised by his doctors. He was preoccupied with the social-media platform X, which he’d previously admitted had been a major “accelerant” of his depression. He drove his car so “recklessly,” Jentleson said, that staff refused to ride with him. He had also bought a gun. “He says he has a biometric safe and takes all the necessary precautions, and living where he does I understand the desire for personal protection,” Jentleson wrote, referring to Fetterman’s rough-and-tumble town of Braddock, Pennsylvania. “But this is one of the things you said to flag, so I am flagging.” Another red flag, Jentleson added: “Every person who was supposed to help him stay on his recovery plan has been pushed out.” Fetterman was isolated, had “damaged personal relationships,” and was shedding staff. The turmoil in his office continued over the following year. Since winning election in 2022, he has lost his closest advisers, including three of his top spokespeople, his legislative director, and Jentleson. His circle of trust has shrunk, and people I spoke with made it clear that they expect more staffers to depart.
When Fetterman first caught the attention of the national press, journalists wrote about him like he was a benevolent ogre crossed with a folk hero. More specifically, that’s how I wrote about him. “This is the tale of Big John Fetterman, the giant who lives in an abandoned car dealership beside a steel mill,” my 2018 profile in the Washington Post began. “He’s six-eight, arms covered in ink, head as bald as a wrecking ball.” At the time, Fetterman was mayor of Braddock, which looked a lot like the left-behind corners of the country that had flocked to Donald Trump. He was running for lieutenant governor of the state, and it was easy to see his appeal: He was a bit introverted and curmudgeonly, but funny, smart, and passionate about the fate of communities like Braddock, tattooing the date of each murder that occurred in the town during his tenure on his arm. Endorsed by Bernie Sanders, but also sympathetic to fracking and other positions that cut against the progressive grain, he cruised to victory that year.
snip
Fetterman Secret Israel Handler Exposed - How a little-known writer became one of the senator's closest confidants.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/john-fetterman-israel-palestine-david-safier-aipac.html
https://archive.ph/cXJwN
David “Dovi” Safier shared this selfie with John Fetterman on social media, expressing his gratitude for the senator. Photo: X/Safier
Over the last three years, Democratic Party support for Israel has undergone a dramatic reversal. In 2024, 18 Democratic senators backed a measure to block arms sales to the country. In April of this year, it was 40. Polls show about two-thirds of Democratic voters sympathize with Palestinians more than Israelis. And even former White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel — who grew up spending his summers in the country and whose middle name is Israel — has recently begun calling for an end to carte blanche U.S. military aid. “More and more Democrats,” Senator Bernie Sanders told NOTUS last month, are “seeing the light.”
And then there’s Senator John Fetterman. While the rest of his party reluctantly retreats from an ironclad allyship, the Pennsylvania senator has promised to be the “last” Democrat standing with Israel. His political identity is increasingly defined by a blanket defense of the country. Online, Fetterman frequently mocks critics of Israel. In interviews, he has pushed back on claims that Israel’s actions in Gaza constitute genocide. When pro-Palestine protesters came to his home, Fetterman waved an Israeli flag from his roof; asked on Meet the Press about Israel’s pagers attack in Lebanon, which wounded more than 3,000 people and killed 12, the senator said, “I love it.” On May 19, Fetterman was the only Democratic senator to vote against a War Powers Resolution intended to stymie the U.S.-Israel war against Iran. “President Trump has been willing to do what’s right and necessary to produce real peace in the region,” he said when the war began. “God bless the United States, our great military, and Israel,” Fetterman added, as if these elements constitute some kind of geopolitical holy trinity.
By Democratic Party standards, Fetterman’s position on Israel is extreme. There are a multitude of theories as to why: The senator is a contrarian; he enjoys the attention; he has convinced himself that he is indisputably in the right. But people close to Fetterman cite a previously unreported factor too: Behind the scenes, Fetterman is being encouraged and counseled by a little-known man in his late 30s named David “Dovi” Safier. Safier, a writer of Jewish history and fundraiser for Orthodox causes, has no public background in government or counseling politicians on Capitol Hill. He is not an official staffer or paid outside adviser. A few years ago, he “just kind of appeared” in the senator’s orbit, one former Fetterman staffer remembers. And then, suddenly, he seemed to be everywhere. Staffers would walk into Fetterman’s office, only to find Safier sitting in the room. When the senator went to Israel in 2025, Safier joined him on the trip; when Fetterman filmed Real Time With Bill Maher, Safier met up with him in Los Angeles. The two are constantly texting and talking, according to multiple former Fetterman staffers, and Safier has unofficially operated as a top campaign fundraiser and senior adviser. He has even set up and attended sensitive meetings with foreign officials; in some cases, he is the only person staffing those meetings, I’ve been told.
In September 2025, Fetterman and some of his senior staffers gathered at the senator’s office for a meeting with Yechiel Leiter, the Israeli ambassador to the United States. According to one of the staffers in attendance, Safier was inexplicably in the room, too. It was far from a public event. During the meeting, Fetterman tested out a proposal to force every senator to vote on whether they think Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. (Leiter and Safier did not consider this a good idea; Fetterman eventually backed off.) Throughout, the two politicians gossiped freely. According to the same staffer, Leiter told Fetterman that he had prodded Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer — despite his fervent support for the state — to be even more helpful to Israel, asking the Jewish politician if he puts blood in his matzo. Fetterman chuckled, the person in attendance said, not “picking up on the gravity of the insult.” (The Israeli Embassy denies the comment. “Ambassador Leiter said to Senator Schumer — as he’s said to other senators and congressmen — that the accusation of starvation in Gaza is no different than medieval blood libels,” the embassy said in a comment.)
snip
The Pennsylvania Democrat has voted repeatedly to support the war. With a few Republicans deflecting, it was now the first time his vote was decisive.
https://www.inquirer.com/politics/pennsylvania/john-fetterman-iran-war-powers-resolution-deciding-vote-20260513.html
https://archive.ph/Eshs0
U.S. Sen. John Fetterman (D., Pa.) on Wednesday cast the deciding vote against the latest effort to limit President Donald Trump’s ability to attack Iran — the seventh such time he’s broken with his party since the war began but the first time that Republican deflections made his vote decisive. The war powers resolution failed 49 to 50 as the Pennsylvanian was the only Democrat to vote with Republicans who control the Senate. Three Republicans — U.S. Sens. Rand Paul, of Kentucky; Susan Collins, of Maine; and Lisa Murkowski, of Alaska — voted with Democrats.
The vote comes less than a week after Fetterman published a column in The Washington Post pushing back on speculation that he may switch parties after a string of high-profile disagreements with fellow Democrats. Fetterman hasn’t wavered in his support for the war that Trump unliterally launched Feb. 28. He’s said repeatedly that the attacks were warranted in order to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon and for dismantling the country’s theocratic regime, though the regime remains in place under new leadership and reports indicate Iran still has military capabilities.
Other Democrats have argued the war is illegal and that it was not spurred by an imminent threat to Americans. They have successfully initiated multiple votes — which any individual lawmaker can do under the 1973 War Powers Act — on resolutions to withdraw U.S. forces from the region. The Senate vote Wednesday was the first since a deadline earlier this month that the 1973 law also indicates should mark the withdrawal of forces unless Congress specifically authorizes the conflict.
Democrats and some Republicans have said the 60-day marker is legally binding, though the president has continued to manage the conflict unimpeded since it passed. Both Murkowski and Collins have previously emphasized the importance of that deadline and voted with Democrats for the first time on Wednesday. Paul has criticized the intervention since it began. Fetterman, meanwhile, has frequently broken with his party in high-profile moments. Still, his votes with Republicans — to end the historic government shutdown last fall or to approve controversial immigration enforcement funding earlier this year — has rarely been a deciding factor in whether or not the issue passes.
snip
another example:
Homeland Security Nomination (March 2026): In the Senate Homeland Security Committee, Fetterman cast the decisive vote to advance the nomination of Markwayne Mullin as Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. With the Republican committee chairman opposing the nomination, Fetterman's support was vital in sending the pick to the full Senate.
https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/19/politics/john-fetterman-mullin-dhs-vote
Democratic Sen. John Fetterman cast the deciding vote Thursday to advance Markwayne Mullin’s nomination to serve as US Department of Homeland Security secretary, crossing party lines to send President Donald Trump’s nominee to the full Senate for consideration.
He explained in a post on X his decision to join Republicans on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee in backing the Oklahoma Republican senator to replace outgoing DHS Secretary Kristi Noem.
“In January, I called on the president to fire Noem—and he did. I truly approached the confirmation of my colleague and friend, Senator Mullin, with an open-mind,” Fetterman wrote.
“We need a leader at DHS. We must reopen DHS. My AYE is rooted in a strong committed, constructive working relationship with Senator Mullin for our nation’s security,” he continued.
snip
PEDO supporter. 
It's not like you're doing us any good here...
Isreals right to exist or defend themselves. The retaliation for 10/7 has long ceced to be about self defense and has morphed into revenge and genocide. Not to mention the attacks on Lebanon to land grab. But you knew that already Fetterman. If you want to leave the party, ffs leave just stop the whining and threats. Either shit or get off the pot.
I guess voters in Pennsylvania, weren’t made aware of his fickleness towards their needs, when he ran to be Senator.
It’s too bad he can’t be recalled! 
Turncoat. 
Now he is going to cost us control of the Senate no matter how well we do in Nov.
Take that bullshit and get out. And also quit going on Fox, fuck Fox News.
