Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) on Sunday doubled down on his support for Joe Bidento stay in the 2024 presidential race amid growing calls for the president to quit following last week’s disastrous debate performance.
“That whole abandon Biden thing, that’s the dumbest shit I’ve ever heard,” Fetterman told Fox News’ Shannon Bream. “I mean, if you are more inclined to vote for a Democrat or be a Democrat, if you’re willing to walk away from Joe Biden, you’re, by defecting, helping [presumptive GOP presidential nominee] Trump.”
Democrats who are thinking of ditching Biden are playing with fire, he warned.
“I had a difficult debate, and yet we still managed to go on to win,” Fetterman told Bream, referencing his tricky 2022 Senate run debate with Republican rival Mehmet Oz during which the now-senator stumbled on words, a result of the stroke he suffered during the race.
“Now, everybody was calling that the end of my career, that was the end of this race and everyone was predicting that I was going to lose actually by 2 points or more,” he recalled. “And I smoked Oz by 5 points. And that’s what I’m saying. It’s like one debate is not a career.”
Fetterman on Friday responded to the immediate aftermath of Biden’s debate with a call for Democrats to “chill the fuck out.”
“I refuse to join the Democratic vultures on Biden’s shoulder after the debate. No one knows more than me that a rough debate is not the sum total of the person and their record,” he wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
“Morning-after thermonuclear beat downs from my race from the debate and polling geniuses like 538 predicted l’d lose by 2. And what happened? The only seat to flip and won by a historic margin (+5),” Fetterman said in a second post.
