Tucker Carlson: The moment you knew Fetterman-Oz debate was unlike what you've seen before
Fox News host Tucker Carlson reveals what was learned from Fetterman-Oz Pennsylvania Senate debate on 'Tucker Carlson Tonight.'
Two days before the Democratic Senate primary in Pennsylvania back in May, staffers for the John Fetterman campaign announced that their candidate had tragically suffered a stroke, but no problem. In a written statement purportedly written by John Fetterman himself from the hospital, Fetterman announced that he was absolutely fine.
"I'm feeling much better," the statement read. "Doctors tell me I didn't suffer any cognitive damage." The primary continued as planned with Fetterman's name on the ballot and Fetterman won. He became the Democratic nominee and that was the last that most voters heard about John Fetterman's stroke.
For months, Fetterman remained in semi-seclusion. Then as the campaign progressed and the polls tightened, he began to venture out. He had no choice. And video clips surfaced of Fetterman speaking at rallies in what seemed to be a bizarre and highly disjointed way. Some began to wonder if he'd really suffered "no cognitive damage" from his stroke.
It was at this point that Fetterman’s personal physician, a man called Clifford Chen, who also happened to be a campaign donor to him and other Democrats, rushed forward to bring science to bear on this question. In Clifford Chen's considered opinion as a respected medical professional who works at a major research university, John Fetterman was absolutely fine. Fetterman was "recovering well" from his stroke. He had "no work restrictions and can work full duty in public office."
In other words, John Fetterman was as sharp and as healthy as you or me, as anyone in America. In fact, more so, ready for the Senate. Fetterman's wife, who presumably would know, seconded this assessment and attacked anyone who disagreed—so did a group of Democratic officeholders who wrote a piece in the Huffington Post about how their own strokes had only enhanced their public service. A stroke? No big deal. It's a good thing, actually, ought to be a prerequisite for service in the Senate. For their part, most of the reporters who covered John Fetterman day-to-day worked hard to calm concerns about his health.
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FILE - Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, a Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate, speaks during a campaign event at the Steamfitters Technology Center in Harmony, Pa., Oct. 18, 2022. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar, File)
Is John Fetterman a silver-tongued wordsmith? No, they conceded, he never has been, but brain damaged? Come on. Don't be a bigot. That's ablest.
Until last night, that's pretty much where things stood. Some people, mostly Republicans, thought John Fetterman might not be mentally fit to work in the Senate. Others, mostly Democrats, agreed with Clifford Chen, his doctor, that Fetterman was absolutely fine.
It was a neat partisan split. Then, Fetterman appeared on stage for his first and only debate and settled this question for all time. John Fetterman, it turns out, is not capable of driving a car. He should not be allowed to operate a microwave oven. There is no chance that under any imaginable circumstances, John Fetterman could "serve in the U.S. Senate." It's not a close call. Watch.
MODERATOR: You're running for a seat that could decide the balance of power in Washington. What qualifies you to be a U.S. senator? You have 60 seconds.
JOHN FETTERMAN: Hi. Goodnight, everybody.
What? That was the moment right at the top that you know, this was not a debate like the debates you'd seen before. Most of it is feel pretty scripted and in fact, this debate actually was scripted. John Fetterman had a script. He was reading it, but he was still incapable of following that script. Here, for example, is how Fetterman responded to maybe the most obvious question of the night, one he knew was coming and of course, would have prepared for it. Here's his answer.
MODERATOR: You're saying tonight that you support fracking, that you've always supported fracking, but there is that 2018 interview that you said "I don't support fracking at all." So, how do you square the two?
FETTERMAN: Oh, I do support fracking and I don't, I don't, I support fracking and I stand and I do support fracking.
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OK, so a lot of conclusions here. The most obvious, why is Clifford Chen still practicing medicine? If you're a physician, are you allowed to lie for partisan reasons? Don't we have enough of that in this country? Should doctors be allowed to do that? He clearly was lying.
That's not a man who can work with no restrictions in the U.S. Senate. Far from it. And everyone watching, every honest person, would come to that conclusion. We could play you a lot of clips like that, probably seen them already today, but not everyone is an honest person and to prove it, we're going to show you how MSNBC covered this debate the moment it ended. Here is New York Magazine's Rebecca Traister.
REBECCA TRAISTER, NEW YORK MAGAZINE: Clearly this was a candidate who was feeling stress and there was such intense scrutiny, often ablest scrutiny on how he was going to communicate, and he just did a debate in front of, you know, the nation, you know, an audience of anyone who could listen and it was so transparent. He did fumble. He did make verbal mistakes, you know, and it was all on view, but, you know, I think it's also really interesting. You played a lot of clips. There were moments where he was really strong, including that Bernie Sanders quip, including his very fluent and direct response on raising the minimum wage, I thought was a really strong moment.
We just keep clips like that around just for future historians to assess what went wrong in America and we wanted the hackiest possible response, the most dishonest assessment ever offered of any public event, and we just played it for you. He was facing ableist scrutiny.
Because we're literally can't control ourselves, ou just heard her say that Fetterman had a strong answer to a question. Talk about patronizing, by the way. Well, we thought we'd go and check what was his answer. You can assess for yourself whether this was "strong.' Here it is.
MODERATOR: What do you say to small business owners who have told us that if the minimum wage were increased to $15 an hour, it would put them out of business? You have 30 seconds.
FETTERMAN: We all have to make sure that everyone that works is able to, that's, that's the most American bargain that if you work full time, you should be able to live in dignity is well true and I believe they haven't, have any businesses being, being, we can't have businesses being subsidized by not paying individuals that just simply can't afford to pay their own way.
Again, we could fill the hour recapping John Fetterman's sad responses, but it's not really that surprising. Anyone who's been following John Fetterman for the past five months, you knew that he was profoundly cognitively impaired and it turns out he is. So, you learn really not that much new about him. What you learn is that everyone around him, from his doctor to his wife to the media, to the Democratic Party, they're all liars and they all just got caught lying. Then they went on and on and on like this. During Dr. Oz's closing statement, Fetterman began shouting uncontrollably about social security until the moderator hushed him. Really? Look it up.
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The effect over an hour is to make you feel very sad for John Fetterman. This is humiliating. The guy looked exactly like Billy Bob Thornton in the movie "Slingblade." He really did. He couldn't even read the canned lines his staff was writing for him. It was pathetic. You do wonder about his wife, as you do about Joe Biden's wife. It seems cruel to do this to a man, even for political power.
But again, it's the media who cover John Fetterman, who should be the most ashamed. They've known the truth for months. With only one exception, that would be NBC reporter Dasha Burns, the media lied to voters about it. We don't know anything about Dasha Burns, but she at least tried to be sort of honest. Here's what she said after meeting John Fetterman.
Pennsylvania's Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman speaks to supporters gathered in Dickinson Square Park in Philadelphia on October 23, 2022, as he campaigns for the US Senate. - The US midterm election is scheduled for November 8, 2022. (Photo by Kriston Jae Bethel / AFP) (Photo by KRISTON JAE BETHEL/AFP via Getty Images) (KRISTON JAE BETHEL/AFP via Getty Images)
REPORTER DASHA BURNS: You'll hear he also still has some problems, some challenges with speech and I'll say, Katy, that just in some of the small talk prior to the interview, before the closed captioning was up and running, it did seem that he had a hard time understanding our conversations.
Oh, that's not allowed. Here you have a young reporter who clearly doesn't know the rules. No matter what you actually see or experience or report, you can't reveal anything that might hurt the fortunes of the Democratic Party. That might slow down the team. So, clearly Dasha Burns hadn't gotten that memo and for daring to say that, for honestly reporting what she saw, liberals tried to destroy her.
Rebecca Traister again, of New York Magazine, said Fetterman "is not at all impaired. He understands everything." Molly Jong-Fast said she spoke to Fetterman and, "He understood everything I was saying and he was funny." Podcast host Kara Swisher—this is like the worst people on social media—wrote this on Twitter, "Sorry to say, but I talked to @JohnFetterman for over an hour without stop or any aides and this is just nonsense. Maybe this reporter is just bad at small talk."
Blame the girl, will you, Kara Swisher? Of course. And then Charlotte Alter of Time Magazine, whatever that is, also interviewed Fetterman recently. She knew perfectly well he is incapacitated. They all did, but Charlotte Alter decided to cover for John Fetterman because supporting a Democratic Party is, of course, her job. In the hours before the debate Charlotte Alter did the bidding, the direct bidding of the Fetterman campaign, by trying to lower expectations. That was their goal, and she worked on their behalf.
"Fetterman has never been a good debater." Alter added, "Everyone will be watching for Fetterman stroke symptoms. I can tell you already what they are. He sometimes says the slightly wrong word or conjugates something the wrong way."
Okay. They're not embarrassed. They're caught working for a Democratic Senate campaign and they just shrug it off and keep going. They never slow down.
Once Fetterman got on stage, it was really kind of no lying about it. He humiliated himself. The usual chorus piped up, not to admit that they were wrong, but to say, yeah, he's demented, but it doesn't matter. Doesn't matter that he's totally incapable of thinking or speaking. Why? Because abortion. Abortion is more important than anything because it's not a child sacrifice cult at all. No, it's not. Don't worry.
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In response to a post stating the obvious, that Fetterman is totally impaired, a lawyer at the Democratic Party's main firm, Perkins Coie, sent this Stalinist tweet, "His ability to protect a woman's right to choose is not in doubt. This is a harmful tweet. Delete it."
"Delete it." Of course, it's important to note the obvious, Senate Democrats tweeted effectively the same message after the debate. "Mehmet Oz is a grave threat to woman's right to choose. John Fetterman will fight to protect abortion access nationwide." That's their response to a guy who is literally incapable of talking.
What do we learn from this? We learn a couple of things. Obviously, it tells us that abortion is more important than anything else. Abortion is what really matters to the left. And if you doubt that, consider the case of 89-year-old Dianne Feinstein who supposedly represents the country's biggest state in the U.S. Senate. At this point, everyone in Washington knows, Dianne Feinstein isn't representing anyone. She's no longer capable of recognizing old friends and in April, the San Francisco Chronicle, to its credit, ran a story in which former staffers, not political enemies, but registered Democrats who voluntarily worked for Dianne Feinstein, in which these people, her friends, describe Dianne Feinstein's mental decline and said that she was too senile to serve in the Senate.
In response to that, Nancy Pelosi dismissed their firsthand accounts as "unconscionable" and "ridiculous," not just wrong, but immoral. In other words, shut up. Dianne Feinstein is on our team and that's all that matters.
To emphasize that point, yesterday, Kamala Harris went on a tirade not about inflation or housing prices or fentanyl deaths or the border or the looming nuclear war with Russia, but about the thing that matters most to her and all of them, which is abortion. Watch this.
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US Vice President Kamala Harris speaks during the Democratic National Committee Women's Leadership Forum in Washington, DC, US, on Friday, Sept. 30, 2022. (Leigh Vogel/Abaca/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: Laws that are being proposed that would punish women who dare to exercise self-determination and make decisions about what they know to be in their best self-interest because apparently there are some, I call them extremist so-called leaders who have decided they're in a better position than she is to make decisions about what's in her best interest. How dare they! I think that we need to take back the flag on this issue. This is about freedom and liberty.
Oh, it's about freedom and liberty, says the childless middle-aged lady who forced women across the country out of their jobs because they wouldn't take the vaccine that she was pushing on them. Suddenly it's their body, their choice again. Right. Barack Obama cut an ad for John Fetterman just a few days ago. He's not ashamed to do that. His argument? Of course, abortion again. Watch.
FORMER PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: In Pennsylvania, you've got some important choices to make this year, including who represents you in the U.S. Senate. That's why I'm asking you to vote for John Fetterman this election day, November 8. So, when the fate of our democracy and a woman's right to choose are on the line, I know John will fight for Pennsylvanians. You can count on John Fetterman. Make sure he can count on you.
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It all goes back to that one issue. It always does. Why is that? We're not exactly sure, but it's hard not to notice that it does. But there's something bigger going on here. Fetterman's candidacy, like Joe Biden's candidacy two years ago, tells us something pretty dark about the Democratic Party. What it tells us is the Democratic Party has such contempt for voters and for democracy itself and so much confidence in its ownership of the media and of Big Tech that it no longer has to try to win your votes.
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Democrats can run Raphael Warnock, an aggressively anti-Christian fake Christian pastor whose wife detailed abuse allegations against him on camera and that's okay. Still good enough for a Senate seat in Georgia because the machine keeps working. It's not about the person. It's about the party. It's not about the individual. It's about the group. And to prove it, they can even run mentally defective candidates who can barely speak, and then only expect them to win, but expect you to accept the outcome no matter how transparently absurd it is.
On November 9, they'll be telling you that John Fetterman got 81 million votes in Pennsylvania, and they'll threaten to put you in jail if you don't believe it. Why wouldn't they do that? It worked with Joe Biden.
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