Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman , 53, is a towering figure at six-feet-nine-inches, weighed at one time 400 pounds. So when Fetterman had a stroke in May, it threw a monkey wrench into Democrat plans to replace Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Penn.) with a liberal Democrat, hopefully spoiling GOP plans to take back the Senate in the November Midterm elections. Running for Senate against 62-year-old former Cardiothoracic surgeon-turned mega-millionaire celebrity talk show host Mehmet Oz, Fetterman now defends political attacks by Oz’s campaign that Fetterman is not fit to serve the people of Pennsylvania since his stroke. Fetterman had profound hearing loss and expressive aphasia from his stroke, something Democrats say is no big deal. Fetterman tried to blame Oz for a cruel attack on his post-stroke medical condition that should be off-limits for the campaign.
Fetterman’s campaign, while keeping an arm’s length from the press, calls Oz’s attacks unspeakable from someone suffering from a disability due to his stroke. Yet that hasn’t stopped the Fetterman campaign for saying Oz really hails from New Jersey, having no business running in Pennsylvania. Fetterman’s campaign claims he has “no physical limits” from his stroke, saying he has no memory impairments or language comprehension deficit. Neurologists make distinctions in post-stroke cases from Broca’s aphasia [expressive], difficulty speaking, and Wernicke’s aphasia, where post-stroke patients have difficulty with comprehension. Fetterman’s team said he’s currently working with a speech pathologist to improve his speech deficits. Fetterman’s campaign says it’s hitting below the belt to call out any of Fetterman’s deficits related to his stroke because it’s protected by the American with Disabilities Act [ADA].
Fetterman has spent months denigrating Oz as a confederate from New Jersey transplanted into Pennsylvania, a true Carpetbagger. “Anyone who’s seen John speak knows that while he’s still recovering, he’s more capable for fighting for Pennsylvania that Dr. Ox will ever be,” said Fetterman’s spokesman this week. “It’s just not possible to be an effective senator if you cannot communicate,” said Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Penn.). “John Fetterman is simply not capable of doing this job. He’s hiding in his basement, he’s not able to talk, he’s not able to process,” said former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Penn.). No one knows the extent of Fetterman’s post-stroke deficits because his handlers don’t let him talk much to the public. When Fetterman’s campaign said they would not debate Oz, the Pittsburgh Post Gazette blasted the state’s lieutenant general for not meeting his civic duty in a hotly contested campaign.
When Fetterman’s campaign rejected an offer from Pittsburgh’s KDKA to participate in a debate, the knives came out. “John Fetterman is either healthy and he is dodging the debates because he does not want to answer for his radical left positions, or he’s too sick to participate in the debate,” Oz said in a news conference with Toomey. Fetterman finally agreed to debate Oz but only once on his terms, asking for closed captioning so he can see the questions. “I was just simply one ever been about addressing some of the lingering issues of the stroke, the auditory processing, and we’re going to be able to work that out,” Fetterman told Politico. Fetterman admitted to having “auditory processing” problems something very different that from hearing loss. So voters don’t know the extent of Fetterman’s lingering disability from his stroke that impairs his work as a U.S. Senator.
Getting partisan neurologists to clarify the extent of Fetterman’s disability, John Krakauer, director of Johns Hopkins Center for the Study of Motor Learning, said you should not conflate language problems from cognitive deficits.” So experts, supporting Fetterman, now want to rehabilitate his image exploiting Democrat-friendly experts. “That’s just being mean. It’s not scientifically valid. It would be like saying that as stutterer has a cognitive problem,” said Krakauer. Getting technical tries to obfuscate the fact that Fetterman has some expressive aphasia and “auditory processing” problems following his May stroke. Whether the stroke was due to atrial fibrillation or not, Fetterman can’t continue to make excuses for post-stroke deficits. All the partisan experts can’t deny the fact that Fetterman has problems speaking-and-hearing after his stroke but it’s simply not true.
Pennsylvania voters have become so partisan they can’t see the genuine risks of sending a stroke-impaired Senator to Capitol Hill. It’s not mean or politically incorrect to say someone has post-stroke deficits, requiring rehab-and-time to complete recovery, if at all. It’s not out-of-bounds to draw voters attention to real-life deficits that could affect their work, especially in the U.S. Senate. Fetterman’s campaign tried to make Oz out to be a heartless celebrity simply trying to score political points. But what does Fetterman’s campaign think it’s doing saying Oz has no business running in Pennsylvania because he lived in New Jersey. “Everyone who experiences a stroke will have their own unique recovery process, which is why the only people who can judge fitness to work are the individual’s physicians,” said Dr. Leah Croll at Temple University. So, why not let doctors pick who’s qualified for elective office?
About the Author
John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news. He’s editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma.
