The eye-opening article, published March 1, came from writer Barton Swaim after he sat down with Fetterman in his Senate office for an honest, free-wheeling, interview. During the interview, Fetterman says what changed his views on many things is a stroke that almost took his life in May of 2022.
“After my near-death thing,” he tells Swaim, “I’ve kind of lost my appetite for all that.”
By “all that” Fetterman was referring to a lot, from a 2017 Twitter post that accused Donald Trump of “fascism” to his now-discarded belief in a “two-state solution” for Israel and the Palestinians.
In a huge shift from radicals in his party, Fetterman has famously defended Israel’s war against Hamas after its Oct. 7 surprise attack. He confided to the Wall Street Journal that stance has hurt his small-donor donations from Democrats but he maintains a clear view of good and evil after Oct. 7.
The article makes it clear Fetterman hasn’t abandoned his liberal views on issue such as abortion and student loan forgiveness, but the junior senator appeared to be a humbled, honest-sounding politician. In the interview, Fetterman didn’t make excuses after Donald Trump’s stunning election victory last November. His own political party, he said, wrongly and arrogantly concluded voters are “dumb” because they voted for Trump instead of Kamala Harris. And it is still paying the price for that arrogance, he said.
“I feel lonely and I am struggling to find what the true North Star is as a committed Democrat,” he said. “I’m not changing my party, but what’s the way forward?”
So what changed Sen. John Fetterman?
Christian apologist Alex McFarland, of Truth for a New Generation, says he isn’t surprised the stroke changed the senator.
“Very often the power and the drive, and the untampered posture of youth, gets reined in a little bit if we face our immortality,” McFarland says.
A similar awakening happened to Trump, too, McFarland says, after his head missed an assassin’s bullet by mere inches during his Butler, Pennsylvania rally.
Trump, who is not known for being humble, was credited with a more grateful demeanor last summer at the Republican National Convention after surviving the assassination attempt.
“The real estate salesman, I think, is a different person,” Shawn Steel, a convention delegate, told The New York Post. “It’s a good thing. Humility goes a long way in politics and it attracts far more people.”
"Donald Trump appears to be a man that had decades of maturity come about in a matter of days," McFarland says. "And I see that in Fetterman."
