General Discussion

levels than pre-stroke Fetterman. He also has (perhaps due to the stroke) allowed himself to be 'handled' by a person who appears to be a malign actor.

All By Himself John Fetterman insists he is in good health.

But staffers past and present say they no longer recognize the man they once knew.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/john-fetterman-struggle-mental-health-clinical-depression.html

https://archive.ph/ukGOC



When John Fetterman was released from Walter Reed hospital in March 2023, Adam Jentleson, then his chief of staff, was proud of his boss for seeking help for what the senator’s office and his doctor had said was a case of clinical depression. His six weeks of inpatient care had been the latest medical setback for the Pennsylvania Democrat, who had had a stroke mere months before being elected to the U.S. Senate in 2022, nearly derailing his campaign against Republican Mehmet Oz. But a year after his release from the hospital, Fetterman’s behavior had so alarmed Jentleson that he resigned his position. In May 2024, he wrote an urgent letter to David Williamson, the medical director of the traumatic-brain-injury and neuropsychiatry unit at Walter Reed, who had overseen Fetterman’s care at the hospital. “I think John is on a bad trajectory and I’m really worried about him,” the email began. If things didn’t change, Jentleson continued, he was concerned Fetterman “won’t be with us for much longer.”

His 1,600-word email came with the subject line “concerns,” and it contained a list of them, from the seemingly mundane (“He eats fast food multiple times a day”) to the scary (“We do not know if he is taking his meds and his behavior frequently suggests he is not”). “We often see the kind of warning signs we discussed,” Jentleson wrote. “Conspiratorial thinking; megalomania (for example, he 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); high highs and low lows; long, rambling, repetitive and self centered monologues; lying in ways that are painfully, awkwardly obvious to everyone in the room.”

Fetterman was, according to Jentleson, avoiding the regular checkups advised by his doctors. He was preoccupied with the social-media platform X, which he’d previously admitted had been a major “accelerant” of his depression. He drove his car so “recklessly,” Jentleson said, that staff refused to ride with him. He had also bought a gun. “He says he has a biometric safe and takes all the necessary precautions, and living where he does I understand the desire for personal protection,” Jentleson wrote, referring to Fetterman’s rough-and-tumble town of Braddock, Pennsylvania. “But this is one of the things you said to flag, so I am flagging.” Another red flag, Jentleson added: “Every person who was supposed to help him stay on his recovery plan has been pushed out.” Fetterman was isolated, had “damaged personal relationships,” and was shedding staff. The turmoil in his office continued over the following year. Since winning election in 2022, he has lost his closest advisers, including three of his top spokespeople, his legislative director, and Jentleson. His circle of trust has shrunk, and people I spoke with made it clear that they expect more staffers to depart.

When Fetterman first caught the attention of the national press, journalists wrote about him like he was a benevolent ogre crossed with a folk hero. More specifically, that’s how I wrote about him. “This is the tale of Big John Fetterman, the giant who lives in an abandoned car dealership beside a steel mill,” my 2018 profile in the Washington Post began. “He’s six-eight, arms covered in ink, head as bald as a wrecking ball.” At the time, Fetterman was mayor of Braddock, which looked a lot like the left-behind corners of the country that had flocked to Donald Trump. He was running for lieutenant governor of the state, and it was easy to see his appeal: He was a bit introverted and curmudgeonly, but funny, smart, and passionate about the fate of communities like Braddock, tattooing the date of each murder that occurred in the town during his tenure on his arm. Endorsed by Bernie Sanders, but also sympathetic to fracking and other positions that cut against the progressive grain, he cruised to victory that year.

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Fetterman Secret Israel Handler Exposed - How a little-known writer became one of the senator's closest confidants.




https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/john-fetterman-israel-palestine-david-safier-aipac.html

https://archive.ph/cXJwN


David “Dovi” Safier shared this selfie with John Fetterman on social media, expressing his gratitude for the senator. Photo: X/Safier

Over the last three years, Democratic Party support for Israel has undergone a dramatic reversal. In 2024, 18 Democratic senators backed a measure to block arms sales to the country. In April of this year, it was 40. Polls show about two-thirds of Democratic voters sympathize with Palestinians more than Israelis. And even former White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel — who grew up spending his summers in the country and whose middle name is Israel — has recently begun calling for an end to carte blanche U.S. military aid. “More and more Democrats,” Senator Bernie Sanders told NOTUS last month, are “seeing the light.”

And then there’s Senator John Fetterman. While the rest of his party reluctantly retreats from an ironclad allyship, the Pennsylvania senator has promised to be the “last” Democrat standing with Israel. His political identity is increasingly defined by a blanket defense of the country. Online, Fetterman frequently mocks critics of Israel. In interviews, he has pushed back on claims that Israel’s actions in Gaza constitute genocide. When pro-Palestine protesters came to his home, Fetterman waved an Israeli flag from his roof; asked on Meet the Press about Israel’s pagers attack in Lebanon, which wounded more than 3,000 people and killed 12, the senator said, “I love it.” On May 19, Fetterman was the only Democratic senator to vote against a War Powers Resolution intended to stymie the U.S.-Israel war against Iran. “President Trump has been willing to do what’s right and necessary to produce real peace in the region,” he said when the war began. “God bless the United States, our great military, and Israel,” Fetterman added, as if these elements constitute some kind of geopolitical holy trinity.



By Democratic Party standards, Fetterman’s position on Israel is extreme. There are a multitude of theories as to why: The senator is a contrarian; he enjoys the attention; he has convinced himself that he is indisputably in the right. But people close to Fetterman cite a previously unreported factor too: Behind the scenes, Fetterman is being encouraged and counseled by a little-known man in his late 30s named David “Dovi” Safier. Safier, a writer of Jewish history and fundraiser for Orthodox causes, has no public background in government or counseling politicians on Capitol Hill. He is not an official staffer or paid outside adviser. A few years ago, he “just kind of appeared” in the senator’s orbit, one former Fetterman staffer remembers. And then, suddenly, he seemed to be everywhere. Staffers would walk into Fetterman’s office, only to find Safier sitting in the room. When the senator went to Israel in 2025, Safier joined him on the trip; when Fetterman filmed Real Time With Bill Maher, Safier met up with him in Los Angeles. The two are constantly texting and talking, according to multiple former Fetterman staffers, and Safier has unofficially operated as a top campaign fundraiser and senior adviser. He has even set up and attended sensitive meetings with foreign officials; in some cases, he is the only person staffing those meetings, I’ve been told.

In September 2025, Fetterman and some of his senior staffers gathered at the senator’s office for a meeting with Yechiel Leiter, the Israeli ambassador to the United States. According to one of the staffers in attendance, Safier was inexplicably in the room, too. It was far from a public event. During the meeting, Fetterman tested out a proposal to force every senator to vote on whether they think Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. (Leiter and Safier did not consider this a good idea; Fetterman eventually backed off.) Throughout, the two politicians gossiped freely. According to the same staffer, Leiter told Fetterman that he had prodded Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer — despite his fervent support for the state — to be even more helpful to Israel, asking the Jewish politician if he puts blood in his matzo. Fetterman chuckled, the person in attendance said, not “picking up on the gravity of the insult.” (The Israeli Embassy denies the comment. “Ambassador Leiter said to Senator Schumer — as he’s said to other senators and congressmen — that the accusation of starvation in Gaza is no different than medieval blood libels,” the embassy said in a comment.)

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