It’s certainly possible that the psychiatric symptoms may have been caused by the stroke. At the very least, nobody seems to have noticed them previously.
When you say “previously”, do you mean “before 2022”?
If these are stroke induced issues, why did no one notice them from 2022 to 2025?
It seems a bit farfetched to me that he was totally fine, had a stroke that debilitated him physically and made it difficult for him to understand speech, did just fine despite the stroke induced handicap for three years, and then suddenly developed psychiatric problems as the result of the stroke that just so happened to manifest at exactly the time that a rift developed between his own politics and the policies favored by his staffers. And that these psychiatric issues apparently got worse as his physical debilitation and aphasia improved.
As I said above, he was hospitalized for depression in 2023, so he certainly wasn’t “totally fine for three years”. And there’s nothing particularly remarkable about some of his symptoms improving at the same time that others don’t; besides which, there’s at least some evidence to suggest that his worsening condition may be due to him not taking his meds, rather than to a worsening of the underlying condition.
It doesn’t seem very mysterious why someone who suffered a stroke that (especially in 2023) greatly debilitated them would be depressed. It seems to me that he’s been improving, and again, no one noticed any of these issues just a few months ago when he was running for office.
I’m not being quick to dismiss anonymous reports. I’m being quick to dismiss the one specific news article @Fear_Itself linked to, because that specific reporting is complete garbage. It’s from an anonymous source reporting on what they were allegedly told by another anonymous source. That’s one anonymous source too far. @Measure_for_Measure 's clicking through the article doesn’t make it any better, if one actually reads the article rather than clicking through it. Full relevant bit, bolded part being the single sentence pulled out by @Measure_for_Measure:
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Democratic Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania was meeting last week with representatives from a teachers union in his home state when things quickly devolved.
Before long, Fetterman began repeating himself, shouting and questioning why “everybody is mad at me,” “why does everyone hate me, what did I ever do” and slamming his hands on a desk, according to one person who was briefed on what occurred.
As the meeting deteriorated, a staff member moved to end it and ushered the visitors into the hallway, where she broke down crying. The staffer was comforted by the teachers who were themselves rattled by Fetterman’s behavior, according to a second person who was briefed separately on the meeting.The interaction at Fetterman’s Washington office, described to The Associated Press by the two people who spoke about it on the condition of anonymity, came the day before New York Magazine published a story in which former staff and political advisers to Fetterman aired concerns about the senator’s mental health.
Note the sentence right before the one quoted by @Measure_for_Measure: “The staffer was comforted by the teachers who were themselves rattled by Fetterman’s behavior, according to a second person who was briefed separately on the meeting.” Actually reading the article reveals that there were two anonymous sources who were both relating what they had been told by other anonymous sources. That’s not evidence. That’s anonymous sources relaying what anonymous sources told them.
Depression after stroke is common. Although different opinions exist about the definition, diagnosis, and measurement of outcomes related to depression after stroke, there is little debate about the prevalence of depression symptoms and their impact on stroke survivors and their families. Depression after stroke has long been recognized as a common condition with many negative effects in the poststroke period, but more recently depression has also been identified as an independent stroke risk factor. Given that there are at least 500,000 new ischemic strokes yearly in the United States, a conservative estimate is that 150,000 U.S. stroke survivors develop poststroke depression each year.
It’s very common for a stroke to lead to depression. Multiple sources I’ve read say that when depression occurs after a stroke, it usually develops between 3-6 months afterward. But if he was managing the depression with medication, and then recently stopped taking the medication, that would explain why he might be struggling so much years after it occurred.
He ran in 2022, and won’t run again until 2028.
So a person who was at the meeting talked to another person about it, and that person talked to a reporter. I’m not familiar with this newspaper, but if were a trusted source I would feel comfortable in assuming that the reporter had good reason to find the source credible. I see no reason to dismiss it out of hand simply because the sources are anonymous, given that both the firsthand and secondhand reporters have obvious reasons to want to remain anonymous.
The only people named are talking about his recovery relative to his medical condition. That has nothing to do with his ability to actually do his job, which isn’t much as a minority member of the Senate. The rest are ad hominem attacks meant to question his ability to do that job but do not point out anything he’s done as a senator which is open to question. This is all pure bullshit.
Screaming and pounding on desks during a routine meeting with constituents doesn’t call his ability to be an effective Senator into question? I guess you can take the Diane Feinstein “As long as her staffers can show her which button to push when voting, she’s doing her job just fine and it doesn’t matter that her brains have turned to oatmeal” line.
But at some point he’s going to have to run for re-election. If everyone agrees that shouldn’t happen, then it would make sense to appoint a replacement soon enough that the new Senator has a chance to make a positive impression. It’s easier to get re-elected as an incumbent than to win a race for an open seat.
Can we get a description of events from someone who was there, as opposed to relying on the testimony of
No, an unnamed source told a reporter what they claimed another unnamed source told them. There is no evidence that it actually happened. I don’t care what the reporter thinks about their first unnamed source and how credible they may find them; they are relaying third hand gossip. There’s a very simple way for the reporting to make it much more credible: the reporter talking to the anonymous sources anonymous source directly. There is no direct evidence that what is reported actually occurred. It is worthy of a gossip piece, not serious reporting. That you are taking such gossip at face value demonstrates your own pre-conceived biases, and nothing more.
Or, you know, any of the people who attended the meeting.
That would be in 2028. Of course he could choose not to run for re-election. But I say the Dems’ chances are better in 2026 than in 2028.
…thereby outing his anonymous source, in opposition to the reporter’s agreement. Also, there’s no guarentee that direct witnesses will want to talk. This isn’t as simple as you make out.
Evidence isn’t binary. There’s strong and weak evidence. I would call this middling: it isn’t simple gossip because it speaks to Fetterman’s ability to do his job. I don’t consider AP to be an especially reliable source in this instance, because they have a history of hasty reporting. Fast, cheap, accurate: choose 2. Let’s go to the dictionary:
Evidence. that which tends to prove or disprove something; ground for belief; proof.
I say that the report provides weak ground for belief taken on its own and that it should be evaluated in conjunction with other evidence.
I very much doubt that this is a ratfuck, given reporting by the NYT and Intelligencer. Allegations may not be sufficient to support Fetterman’s resignation, but I think it’s bad form to blithely dismiss evidence out of hand.
Just rejecting an article out of hand because “anonymous sources hurr hurr” is literally what Trump does. Do better.
Here are two excellent primers by Perry Bacon explaining how consumers of news should evaluate anonymously sourced stories. Part I Part II
Some relevant excerpts:
But major investigative stories, both in Washington and outside of it, are often impossible to write without unnamed sources. The alternative to stories with unnamed sources is often not having the story published at all, rather than the same story with names.
(S)ources have the power to set the terms with the journalists, and one of those terms is often, “don’t use my name.”
“> The whole system of anonymous sources has a flaw,” said Jay Rosen, a journalism professor at New York University. “Sometimes the name that is withheld is bigger news than the news the withheld name is offering. But there is no way for the readers to know because the name is … withheld.”
Rosen is right. But as a reader, you don’t have any other options. Washington stories have always been full of unnamed sources.
Briefly looking at this story in light of Bacon’s advice: It has multiple sources, which is good, albeit the lowest possible value of “multiple”. It’s making easily disprovable claims; someone else could come forward and say they were at the meeting and nothing of the kind occurred. Generally, people are less likely to lie when they know they’re likely to be called out on it. It’s written by an anonymous AP staffer, and the AP is a real news organization, so that reporter would be jeopardizing their career if they published something incorrect without making a diligent effort to fact-check. I feel confident in saying, for instance, that the reporter almost certainly made an effort to speak with people who were actually in the room, but was rebuffed with a “no comment”.
On the other hand, the sources are described VERY vaguely. They are described as “having been briefed on” the meeting, which makes it sound like they hold some sort of official position in Fetterman’s office. But that could theoretically be some guy on the barstool next to a teacher who told him about the meeting. If these people are actually Fetterman’s staffers, the reporter should have said so.
Another important thing to look at in evaluating anonymous sources is the subject’s response to the article. In this case, Fetterman’s office was asked for comment and didn’t deny any of the allegations. If he wasn’t really screaming and banging on the table, seems like they would have said so. Also, the chief of PA’s teachers union, who was in the room, was offered an opportunity to rebut the claims and declined to do so.
For me, the extremely vague description of the sources raises some red flags, but the fact that Fetterman is changing the subject rather than actually denying that he was acting like a lunatic leads me to think the story is substantially true.
The only kale I was familiar with, until recent years, was the decorative kale we put on platters at the restaurant where I worked when I was in college. It tasted terrible.
When people get their INR stabilized, many of them can have greens in small amounts. It’s not, for instance, like a food allergy; they just need to be cautious.
That’s like saying you distrust the judgment of a smoker or someone’s who’s vastly overweight. How people are with their own health often doesn’t have a lot to do with anything else.
In a recent article in the NYTimes about a doctor at the FDA who resigned in protest partly over the FDA approving a device which was shown to be worse than what was already on the market and possibly even dangerous, one of the reader comments was something like “He’s really overweight in the photo so I don’t trust his judgment”.
When a headline contains the words “after”, “following”, etc., you should always assume you’re being lied to. It’s an attempt to imply causality without ever justifying it. Financial news is the absolute worst at this but political news is a close second.
The other way that headlines like this lie to you are by implying that the antecedent event was recent. Some people will read that headline and think “what, he had another stroke?” But no, it’s the same one as 3 years ago.
Yeah, exactly. I can’t imagine that someone competent enough to write or edit for papers of this caliber accidentally wrote a headline this misleading.
And this isn’t the Pit. You should take your own advice.
I’m not rejecting it out of hand because “anonymous sources hurr hurr”, I’m rejecting taking it at face value because the reporter doesn’t have any first-hand accounts on which to base his reporting. Again, that you repeat it as if it were solid fact:
Only demonstrates your own personal pre-conceived biases, and nothing else. It’s a garbage news article that is nothing more than gossip.
Which, again, I am not doing. To reiterate myself:
That one specific news article is the entirety of what I am being dismissive of, and not out of hand, but with good reason.