Jamie Kirchick takes a look at “The smearing of John Fetterman” in a column that appears to be behind the Wall Street paywall. He writes:
Adam Jentleson sent an email to the medical director of the traumatic-brain-injury and neuropsychiatry unit at Walter Reed hospital in May 2024. Sen. John Fetterman, for whom Mr. Jentleson was chief of staff, had been released from the facility in May 2023 following six weeks of inpatient care for what his doctors diagnosed as clinical depression. A year earlier, in May 2022, Mr. Fetterman had suffered a stroke while running for the Senate seat he eventually won. Healthwise, it had been a difficult two years for the Pennsylvania Democrat, who had become known for flouting the Senate dress code as much as for his policy positions.
Mr. Jentleson, according to a report in New York magazine, was once “proud” of his boss for seeking professional help. He later became so “alarmed” by Mr. Fetterman’s behavior that he quit his job. According to the 1,600-word email Mr. Jentleson sent to Mr. Fetterman’s doctor, the senator was suffering from “conspiratorial thinking” and “megalomania” while experiencing “high highs and low lows.” In “long, rambling, repetitive and self-centered monologues,” Mr. Fetterman was “lying in ways that are painfully, awkwardly obvious to everyone in the room.” Mr. Jentleson also said the senator was “preoccupied” with Twitter and driving “recklessly.”
Some of these symptoms sound like the job description of a U.S. senator. Revealingly, in a story that cites a bevy of ex-staffers (all anonymously) expressing their alarm about the mental state of their former boss, writer Ben Terris reserves his own judgment until the end. “I didn’t find any indication that the stroke had left him cognitively impaired,” he writes. So what is this 7,000-word work of breathless journalism really about?
Mr. Fetterman does indeed suffer from a debilitating illness: sudden onset political moderation….
Whole thing here.
