Fetterman, unfettered and unfiltered

When it comes to politics, John Fetterman has always carved his own path.

But during his time in Washington, D.C., Fetterman has further bolstered his credentials as a maverick willing to lay waste to political norms and buck his own party.

He’s already made a pilgrimage to President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort to meet with the second-term president. He has welcomed Trump’s plan to acquire Greenland and takes the idea seriously. And he’s voted for several of the president’s cabinet nominees despite opposition from members of his own party.

Fetterman, who spoke with City & State in early February about his time in Washington and his 2025 priorities, says his approach is hardly controversial. It’s rooted in finding solutions in an increasingly heated political environment.

“I'm going to try to find a way to deliver wins for Pennsylvania, and that comes from a place of, ‘Look, here's where we are, here's what I want to protect, here's what I want to do, and here are some things that are realistic,’” he told City & State in an interview. “Then there's other things that I absolutely have to be very vocal (about) and want to push back (on), even if I can't even perhaps stop that.”

Pennsylvania Priorities

Fetterman acknowledged that, with Trump in the White House and Democrats in the minority in both chambers of Congress, the Democratic Party will have difficulty making progress on key legislative priorities. 

“After the Trump election, I think, it’s going to be defensive in some senses,” he told City & State.

Among his priorities, he listed protecting nutrition assistance programs, improving railroad safety and creating a national version of Pennsylvania’s Whole Home Repairs program, which provided grants and forgivable loans to homeowners and small landlords who want to repair their homes, as three major policy goals. He also said he wants to protect children who were brought to the United States without documentation – also known as Dreamers – something he said is “fully compatible” with strengthening security along the U.S.-Mexico border. 

“I very much want to protect Dreamers. I very much want to protect and strengthen SNAP. I very much want to deliver Whole Home at the federal level, just like it’s done here in Pennsylvania. So I’m always going to be looking for wins,” he said. “I want to create as many wins as possible and push back on things when it’s entirely appropriate – but for me, that’s where we’re at.”

Fetterman has championed other issues from a more personal place. He has sponsored legislation seeking to strengthen railroad safety measures in the wake of the February 2023 East Palestine train derailment, which took place just a few miles from Pennsylvania’s border with Ohio. And since his 2023 hospitalization for clinical depression, he’s sponsored several pieces of legislation related to mental health, including a bill that would create a U.S. Senate commission focused on mental health. 

Additionally, he’s taken a strong stance on Nippon Steel’s attempted acquisition of Pittsburgh-based U.S. Steel. He opposed the original acquisition proposal, which was blocked by then-President Joe Biden. He said he and Republican U.S. Sen. David McCormick share a bipartisan commitment to keeping steel jobs in Western Pennsylvania. 

“My colleague on the Republican side was actually here at my home and we talked about it. We both agree that we want to protect and defend the way of life making steel here in the Mon Valley, and it’s been that way since 1875,” he said. “That’s what’s really important.”

Fetterman continues to advocate for LGBTQ rights, access to abortion and other progressive causes, but he has also rankled progressives at times for his willingness to align with conservatives on issues like protecting the U.S. border and defending Israel, the latter of which has put him at odds with many in his own party. Since the Oct. 7, 2023 attack, in which Hamas militants murdered 1,200 civilians and took more than 250 people hostage, he has become one of Israel’s biggest defenders in Congress and has ardently backed Israel’s ensuing military response against Gaza. 

“When I was a candidate, I gave an interview and I said, I absolutely want peace, I want stability in the region, but if shit hits the fan, I’m always going to go all in for Israel – and that’s exactly what happened,” he said. “It was easy to maintain a commitment to Israel through all of it. Now, some people disagreed with that, but for me, you can’t have any possible chance of peace if you allow an organization like Hamas to survive and to remain.”

Berwood Yost, the director of the Center for Opinion Research and the Floyd Institute for Public Policy at Franklin & Marshall College, told City & State that while some critics have accused Fetterman of moving to the right on the political spectrum, he has shown a pragmatic streak that has surfaced in other Pennsylvania politicians who have found success statewide, like former Gov. Robert Casey Sr., former U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter and even Gov. Josh Shapiro, with whom Fetterman has feuded over the last few years. 

“He’s always been sort of his own person – sort of iconoclastic,” Yost told City & State. “Now, many people characterized him as a progressive, but in some ways, I think he would argue that his positions were traditional Democratic positions, particularly about workers and that sort of thing. I think he’s hard to categorize, but I think his behaviors, in some ways, reflect what voters in a competitive state want.”

Other political onlookers agree that Fetterman hasn’t moved to the right as much as some of his critics might think. Sam Chen, a political strategist and principal director of The Liddell Group, and a former aide to then-U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey, said Fetterman primarily focused on domestic issues as lieutenant governor – raising the minimum wage, protecting access to abortion, LGBTQ rights, and legalizing cannabis – all of which he still supports today. 

“He’s always been a maverick,” Chen said, noting that Fetterman’s two biggest policy stances that have surprised people are his views on Israel and securing the border. “I don’t know that we have any evidence that he is drifting right, as opposed to he just never had to talk about international issues when he was lieutenant governor.”

‘Shock And Awe’

According to Axios, to kick off his second term in office, Trump has signed more than 75 executive orders, many of which are designed to reshape the federal government. Others aim to eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion offices, scale back immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border, and implement tariffs. 

Fetterman said Trump’s approach was to be expected, given how he campaigned. “He ran on that. He described that it’s going to be ‘shock and awe’ – he was going to do things that he’s been doing, exactly what he ran on. Some of them, I just absolutely don’t agree with. Others, I’m not sure what the upside is,” Fetterman told City & State when asked about Trump’s executive orders. 

“They all fit in different kinds of buckets, but I am not the guy that’s going to have an opinion on every last thing. I can’t track hundreds of executive orders, because that’s part of the plan – you just can’t possibly yell or have to have a reaction on every last kind of thing – and that’s part of flooding the zone.”

At times, there has been some overlap between Trump and Fetterman on economic policy. Both men want to reenergize U.S. manufacturing, with Fetterman joining Democratic U.S. Rep. Chris Deluzio last year to introduce a “Make Stuff Here” legislative package that, among other things, calls for tariffs on countries that lack free-market economies like China and Russia and seeks to incentivize the use of union-made domestic steel. However, Fetterman said of Trump’s first month in office, “I’m not sure if starting a trade war is helpful.”

But tariffs aren’t the only area where Trump and Fetterman may find common ground. Fetterman joined Trump’s Truth Social platform in December, calling a criminal hush money case against Trump “bullshit.” He’s also met with a number of Trump’s cabinet nominees. The two men later met at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort following the president’s November election win, where they discussed the future of U.S. Steel, Israel, border security and the possibility of the U.S. acquiring Greenland, according to the Washington Examiner. 

Fetterman voted for Pam Bondi, Trump’s pick for attorney general, as well as Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. He even entertained Trump’s pitch to buy Greenland, joking to reporters that he was going to talk to Trump about becoming “Pope of Greenland.”

Trump told the Washington Examiner that his meeting with Fetterman was a positive one. “It was a totally fascinating meeting. He’s a fascinating man, and his wife is lovely. They were both up, and I couldn’t be more impressed,” he said. “He’s a commonsense person. He’s not liberal or conservative. He’s just a commonsense person, which is beautiful.” 

The apparently amicable relationship between Trump and Fetterman has left Democrats and Republicans alike in a state of shock and awe as Fetterman displays a willingness to engage with Trump and his allies at a time when many Democrats view Trump as an existential threat to democracy.

Fetterman described his relationship with Trump as “developing or emerging.” He added that he thinks he can work with Trump on several issues, including protecting Dreamers, supporting Israel, destroying Iranian nuclear facilities and securing the U.S. southern border.

“Some people were upset that I agreed to sit down and meet him. I mean, they’re entitled to their opinion, but I disagree, and I think you have an opportunity to engage,” Fetterman said. “It’s not controversial for me to meet with a sitting president and be able to have conversations on things that we agree on. I found it to be productive and certainly a meaningful pursuit.”

Chen said Fetterman’s willingness to reach across the aisle and work with Trump indicates that he wants to govern, not grandstand. “I think he’s showing this deliberativeness and this willingness to govern,” he said, noting that the most effective way to score legislative victories over the next four years is to work with Trump. “If he wants to get wins under his belt that he can talk about when he runs again, it’s going to be with President Trump.”

Fetterman also weighed in on Elon Musk, including his foray into politics, his close relationship with Trump and his push to cut government spending through the newly created Department of Government Efficiency: “There’s going to be some that I don’t agree with – maybe they’ll find new kinds of efficiencies. He’s not just like a hack. I mean, he’s a guy that’s the leader of several important companies,” he said. 

Musk has also praised Fetterman, writing in a December post on X that it’s “hard not to like” Fetterman. “He puts country over party,” Musk wrote on the app. 

But Fetterman pointed to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision that found political spending to be a form of protected speech under the First Amendment as something that has allowed wealthy individuals to influence U.S. politics. 

“When you allow unlimited money in the American political conversation like they have – the Supreme Court decree that money is free speech – that’s why you have more and more expensive elections, and more and more people that are hyper-wealthy getting involved in this conversation,” he said.

“We need the Supreme Court to judge that money is not unlimited speech, but until that happens, our American political system is going to continue to march into (more of a) distortion of the original idea of democracy,” he added. “That’s where we are, and now, with a strong conservative balance, it seems incredibly unlikely that’s going to change for the next 10, 15, 20 or more years.”

A Blue Blueprint

With Democrats failing to win key races in 2024 at the federal level, including congressional seats and the White House, Yost said Fetterman could provide a blueprint for the party to find success once again. 

Despite suffering a stroke in the middle of a U.S. Senate campaign in 2022, Fetterman ultimately defeated celebrity physician Dr. Mehmet Oz, the state’s GOP nominee for Senate, which Yost said could be attributed in part to Fetterman’s ability to communicate in a straightforward way. He referenced a viral video where Oz said he was making “crudité” – which Fetterman proceeded to troll him for: “In PA, we call this a veggie tray.”

“Some might call him a troll, but essentially, he’s able to put things in a light that captures people’s attention and even simplifies or clarifies,” Yost said, recalling Fetterman’s response to the crudité gaffe. “That, to me, fully encapsulates his style – and I think that, broadly, is the source of his appeal.”

He noted that Fetterman offers a model to Democrats for how to connect with voters who feel left behind. “If they’re serious about appealing to a broader base of voters, he’s the kind of candidate that might be able to do that. If you look at the last election results, the Democrats in this state – they underperformed. Part of that was contextual, but part of that was perceptions of what the party stands for,” he said. “I think if you listen to him, and again, if you listen to Josh Shapiro, their approach is very much about working to get things accomplished for everybody and being pragmatic and practical, not ideological,” Yost added. “I think that’s what the party needs to do.”

Chen said Democrats could learn from Fetterman’s desire to reach across the aisle while in the minority. “They can learn from the willingness to govern and willingness to reach across the aisle and then face the reality of, ‘We don’t have the Congress and the White House. We want to get things done. That means we have to work with them.’”

When asked about his approach to policymaking and bipartisanship in today’s political climate, Fetterman reinforced that he’s less focused on social media wins than on tangible results. “This is what I would like to remind people – that yelling on social media is not legislation, yelling on social media is not governance, and that’s never passed a bill,” he said. 

“For me, when you are living (in) and you are representing the state on the literal cutting edge of where we are as a divided nation, I think it’s a responsibility to remind people that we can push back on things that we just absolutely think are unacceptable, but we also want to find a way to work together,” he said. “Because I believe Pennsylvania – they elected me to do that.”