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PA-Sen: Tucker Carlson Insists He's Not Being Mean While Mocking John Fetterman's (D) Health [1]

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Date: 2022-09-08

Asshole

This fucking pile of shit:

Tucker Carlson on Tuesday disparaged U.S. Senate candidate John Fetterman for having difficulties with speech as he recovers from a near-fatal stroke. The Fox News host delivered a lengthy tirade about the Pennsylvania candidate, who had a stroke in May, days before winning the Democratic primary. Carlson argued that Fetterman would be unable to perform his duties as a senator because he’s “brain damaged” and “the guy can’t talk.” (See the video below.) x YouTube Video After taking time off to recover, Fetterman returned to the campaign trail in August. His campaign has stated that he has lingering issues with auditory processing, a common condition in stroke survivors that can improve over time. “To be absolutely clear, the occasional issues he is having with auditory processing have no bearing on his ability to do the job as senator. John is healthy and fully capable of showing up and doing the work,” his campaign said last month. Carlson insisted “we’re not being mean,” but said of Fetterman’s speaking skills: “It’s not even worth making fun of. It’s sad. But when cognition goes, when the ability to think clearly disappears, and in his case it obviously has, what’s left? The talking points. That’s all the remains.”

Here’s the full transcript:

TUCKER CARLSON (HOST): So, you're not allowed to ask, "Well, how will this affect me if that guy, who can't think clearly, is selected to the United States Senate?" That's impolite. They do this on so many issues and they're doing it with him and it works. Most people just shut up. It's considered completely out of bounds to mention the fact that John Fetterman is completely incapable of representing Pennsylvania in the United States Senate. And as we said, that fact and it is a fact, is fine with the people who run the Democratic Party. They just want the power. But the rest of us should be very worried by this. If they can get this guy elected statewide in this nation's fifth largest state -- this guy, an incompetent husk with incredibly stupid and totally, provably destructive ideas, a man with no record of achievement at all, a man with a long list of documented failures, a man who, by the way, cannot even think clearly -- if they can do that, they can do literally anything. Anything.

Carlson is resorting to this horse shit because it’s the only tick Oz and the GOP have left in attacking Fetterman:

x https://t.co/jCmYVTqQAJ pic.twitter.com/QedTZNDytr — John Fetterman (@JohnFetterman) September 8, 2022 Now, it’s been a rough summer for the Oz campaign. The celebrity doctor rode a Trump endorsement to a very narrow, 31-percent plurality win in the Republican primary, but has remained unpopular among the general electorate and struggled to coalesce Republicans behind his candidacy. The Oz campaign has also, as Democratic strategist Mark Nevins put it on a recent phone call, “gotten their ass handed to them on social media.” (Perhaps you’ve seen the memes about Oz’s longtime New Jersey residence or infamous “crudite” gaffe?) It’s left Republicans in poor position to retain a critical seat that could determine control of the Senate. So, as the saying goes: When the going gets tough… go after your opponent’s health. It’s a risky strategy. Will it work? “If John Fetterman had ever eaten a vegetable in his life,” Oz’s communications advisor, Rachel Tripp, said in late August, “then maybe he wouldn’t have had a major stroke and wouldn’t be in the position of having to lie about it constantly.” This was a baffling statement, even putting aside the nastiness of mocking a stroke survivor: In what way is it a winning strategy to trash someone for not eating vegetables? Then, a week later, the Oz campaign issued a sarcastic statement of debate “concessions” to Fetterman, which included the line: “We will pay for any additional medical personnel he might need to have on standby.” In a rejoinder, Fetterman claimed it was this statement that “made it abundantly clear” that Dr. Oz and his campaign thinks it is “funny to mock a stroke survivor.” Fetterman cited the statement as a reason for why he wouldn’t participate in the early September debate. I called a 2016 campaign adviser to Mark Kirk, the Illinois senator who suffered a major stroke in 2012 that kept him out of the Senate for about a year, to talk about the precedent for this kind of thing. “I was pretty stunned at some of the language coming out in this campaign,” the Kirk adviser told me. “I think blaming someone’s stroke on a diet—that’s a new tactic I haven’t seen before.” Kirk lost to Sen. Tammy Duckworth in his 2016 reelection, but both the Kirk adviser and a former adviser to Duckworth’s campaigns agreed: Kirk’s health or “fitness to serve” weren’t an issue at all in that campaign. Both candidates, after all, had a disability and a mutual respect for each other’s situation. Besides that, it was just seen as something that you don’t do. “Sen. Duckworth was pretty respectful and, I think, empathetic of the rigors that Mark went through,” the Kirk adviser said, “and Mark had a great deal of respect for the rigors Sen. Duckworth went through.” “We made a strategic decision, and [based] on Tammy’s sense of integrity, that we would not litigate” Kirk’s fitness for office, the Duckworth adviser said, “and we focused on the issues, and his voting record, and that he ultimately did not best represent the constituents of Illinois.” It also wasn’t a particularly close race—Duckworth won by 15 points. Pennsylvania isn’t Illinois, though, and observers on both sides agree that the Pennsylvania Senate race will tighten. But Oz, after a lousy summer, needed to change the conversation.

Speaking of respecting the Democratic process:

x Dr. Oz on the 2020 election results: "I would not have objected to it"



A few hours later on Fox News: "There's lots more information we have to gather."



Doctor Oz wants to be all things to all people, but we can all see what he really is: a fraud. pic.twitter.com/rj48tuypL0 — John Fetterman (@JohnFetterman) September 8, 2022

Here’s the latest polling on the state of the race:

x Pennsylvania Senate:

Fetterman (D) 49% (+9)

Oz (R) 40%



Pennsylvania Governor:

Shapiro (D) 47% (+6)

Mastriano (R) 41%



@RABAresearch, 679 LV, 8/31-9/3https://t.co/MpkphXgZ8I — Political Polls (@Politics_Polls) September 8, 2022

Let’s take a look at how things are going in the Governor’s race:

Republican candidate for governor Doug Mastriano held three meet-and-greet appearances in Allegheny County on Wednesday, but local news media were not among those with whom he met or greeted at the events. The first was a noon luncheon sponsored by Republican U.S. Rep. Guy Reschenthaler at the Omni William Penn Hotel, Downtown. As a Pittsburgh's Action News 4 news crew entered the venue, it was told "No media allowed" and directed to leave. The staff then closed the doors to the room. The next venue was Grace Life Church North on McKnight Road. The church permitted news media to enter before Mastriano arrived but there was no audio feed made available to clearly record in the ambient conditions of the spacious sanctuary. Many of Mastriano's remarks before the church gathering of about 150 people focused on urging church members to be politically active and vote. He also laced his remarks with historical references and observations. At one point, he complained to the crowd about ads by his Democratic opponent Josh Shapiro and about news media coverage. "They think by intimidating and name-calling, they're going to shut us up. Are you kidding me? I had my gluteus maximus shot at by heavily armed angry men on the other side of the world. I'm not going to be intimidated by the left-wing media," Mastriano said as the audience in Grace Life Church cheered. Mastriano referred to controversy following news accounts of a previously unreported photo taken nearly a decade ago, showing Mastriano posing in a Confederate uniform for a faculty photograph at the Army War College.

Mastriano is too scared to talk to the press because his policies are atrocious:

An open letter to Pennsylvania families and voters being circulated around the state by public school board members issues a warning about the threat that they believe Republican gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano poses to the public education system. The letter drew 59 signatures from school directors from 24 school districts in a week’s time, including that of Central Dauphin School Board member Beth Sviben. Scott Overland, vice president of the Phoenixville Area School Board in Chester County, launched the effort a week ago after learning as much as he could about the fairly limited details of GOP gubernatorial nominee’s education funding plan. “It just became really concerning to me personally and to some of my fellow school board directors and it got to the point where the polls are somewhat tight and we’ve been pretty worried about what would happen if this plan actually was implemented,” Overland said. “It just seemed like it would be irresponsible for us as stewards of our local public education systems to not speak up.” Mastriano’s education plan, which also has been strongly criticized by the state’s largest teachers union, advocates funding students instead of school systems. It calls for expanding school choice.

Also, we now know the answer about this:

x https://t.co/290jVV5xNw — Josh Shapiro (@JoshShapiroPA) September 8, 2022 In June 2020, stuck at home with her kids and growing increasingly infuriated by the government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, Toni Shuppe binge-watched a QAnon conspiracy theory video series that changed her life—and altered the trajectory of her state’s politics. “I knew there was more going on with this whole COVID crap than what we were being told, but I couldn’t figure out what it was, and in some weird way, the rabbit holes helped make sense of the craziness, ”she wrote in an April substack post recounting the moment. “I started sharing my newfound information with my family and friends who were willing to listen. Some of them woke up with me.” Shuppe became a pro-Trump activist and embraced his false claims that the election had been stolen after he lost. In February 2021, Shuppe co-founded Audit the Vote PA to pressure lawmakers to audit Pennsylvania’s 2020 election. The group’s petition got 100,000 signatures in less than four months, transforming her into a fast-rising star of the hard right that soon landed on Trump’s radar—and perhaps most fatefully, introduced her to Pennsylvania state Sen. Doug Mastriano, who was just making a MAGA name for himself with his own fight to overturn the 2020 election. Now, Mastriano is the GOP’s nominee for governor, and there’s been widespread chatter—and some concrete signs—that he might appoint Shuppe to run the state’s election system if he wins this November. But Shuppe’s conspiracy theorizing goes way beyond the 2020 election and COVID-19. She’s promoted a number of even wilder claims popular with the QAnon community—including the idea that a cabal of elites are running a global child sex slave ring. This isn’t that different from Mastriano, who regularly used the hashtags #QAnon and #thegreatawakening, and teamed up with a coalition of QAnon-aligned candidates running for office. He and Shuppe both spoke at a conference hosted by prominent QAnon activists. This all means that if Mastriano wins this fall, the administration of the 2024 presidential election in the nation’s largest swing state could be in the hands of two QAnon-linked, election-denying conspiracy theorists who are hell-bent on upending the current election system.

Health and Democracy are on the ballot this year and we need to get ready to keep Pennsylvania Blue. Click below to donate and get involved with Fetterman, Shapiro and these Pennsylvania Democrats campaigns:

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/9/8/2121672/-PA-Sen-Tucker-Carlson-Insists-He-s-Not-Being-Mean-While-Mocking-John-Fetterman-s-D-Health

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