(Headline USA) Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., said activists on the far left were hoping that he would die after he distanced himself from the “progressive” label last week.
Fetterman, who suffered a near-fatal stroke in May 2022 while campaigning for the Senate, revealed that he no longer considers himself aligned with the left-wing of the Democratic Party because of several key issues, including support for Israel and the border crisis.
“It’s just a place where I’m not,” he told the New York Times on Wednesday. “I don’t feel like I’ve left the label; it’s just more that it’s left me.”
Now, he said he feels like “the Right, and now the Left, are hoping that I die. There are ones that are rooting for another blood clot,” he said in reference to his stroke. “They have both now been wishing that I die.”
Fetterman has come out strongly against his Democratic colleagues ever since Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel, which he said shouldn’t “surprise” anyone.
“I’m not really sure what part of any of this would be a surprise if anyone’s been paying attention,” Fetterman said of his long-standing support for Israel.
He also added that he doesn’t understand the leftist, pro-Palestinian protesters who hate Israel, which is “really the only progressive nation in the region that embraces the same kind of values I would expect we would want as a society.”
The Democrat also distanced himself from his party on immigration, reiterating that he does not think it’s “unreasonable to have a secured border.”
“I would never put Dreamers in harm’s way, or support any kind of cruelty or mass expulsion of hundreds of thousands of people. But it’s a reasonable conversation to talk about the border,” he said.
Fetterman noted he still supports many goals that would be considered progressive, such as a $15 minimum wage, universal healthcare and abolishing the Senate filibuster. He also admitted that he plans to always be a Democratic vote in the Senate.
