Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman, a formerly progressive Democrat who has decidedly shifted right in recent years, delivered a hard-line—and honestly bloodthirsty—stance in opposition to a ceasefire in Gaza during a meeting with pro-Israel group J Street’s president Jeremy Ben-Ami in February.
“Let’s get back to killing,” Fetterman said, referring to Israel’s mass slaughter of Palestinians. A person who heard the conversation told New York magazine that Fetterman, a staunch supporter of Israel’s military campaign, advocated to “kill them all.”
Fetterman denied this account and insisted that if he’d advocated for slaughter, he was speaking solely about members of Hamas. “I do support the destruction of that organization, down to its last member,” he said.
These statements and others are part of what current and former staffers believe is a trend of troubling, erratic behavior from Fetterman, detailed in the sweeping report that was published Friday.
The senator’s unsettling behavior and “I’m not progressive” flip has driven out multiple staffers, including three of his top spokespeople and his legislative director. Adam Jentleson, his former chief of staff, was so concerned by Fetterman’s erratic behavior that he stepped down from his position in April 2024.
Shortly afterward, Jentleson wrote a lengthy email to David Williamson, the medical director of the traumatic brain injury and neuropsychiatry unit at Walter Reed Medical Center, detailing the radical changes he’d seen in his boss, believing that he may be severely struggling with his mental health following a stroke in 2022.
Among other serious concerns, like doubts that his boss was taking his medications, obvious lying, and the purchase of a firearm, Jentleson said that Fetterman was demonstrating “conspiratorial thinking” and “megalomania.”
Fetterman “claims to be the most knowledgeable source on Israel and Gaza around but his sources are just what he reads in the news—he declines most briefings and never reads memos,” Jentleson wrote. During his meeting with Ben-Ami, Fetterman had claimed that he had never met an Arab person who would condemn Hamas, but the notes from the meeting stated that only a “single Arab he has met with that staff was present for wouldn’t outright condemn Hamas.”
Speaking about Palestinians, Fetterman said, “You can’t reform a carton of sour milk.”
After Israel set off on its genocidal campaign in Gaza, which has killed at least 52,000 people, following Hamas’s attack on October 7, Fetterman’s controversial social media posts alarmed staff members and constituents alike. Fetterman’s increasingly callous rhetoric about Palestine has manifested a sharp rift between him and the progressive staffers who saw him elected to the Senate in 2022.
Fetterman’s behavior is so concerning, it’s not clear if he’ll be able to continue in the Senate–let alone run for reelection in 2028, when his term ends.
Fetterman was also the first Democratic senator to meet with Trump at Mar-a-Lago in January, earning him praise from the far-right president. “I couldn’t be more impressed,” Trump said at the time.
It’s not clear how much of Fetterman’s turn to the right is related to his health issues, and Jentleson was more concerned for his former boss’s well-being than his political transformation.
“I believed in John’s ability to work through struggles that lots of Americans share,” he said. “He’s not locked into a downward trajectory; he could get back in treatment at any time, and for a long time I held out hope that he would. But it’s just been too long now, and things keep getting worse.
“Part of the tragedy here is that this is a man who could be leading Democrats out of the wilderness,” Jentleson said. “But I also think he’s struggling in a way that shouldn’t be hidden from the public.”
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