HARRISBURG, Pa. — 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.
That story included a 2024 letter, also obtained by the AP, in which Fetterman’s one-time chief of staff Adam Jentleson told a neuropsychiatrist who had treated Fetterman for depression that the senator appeared to be off his recovery plan and was exhibiting alarming behavior, including a tendency toward “long, rambling, repetitive and self-centered monologues.”
Asked about the meeting with teachers union representatives, Fetterman said in a statement through his office that they “had a spirited conversation about our collective frustration with the Trump administration’s cuts to our education system.” He also said he “will always support our teachers, and I will always reject anyone’s attempt to turn Pennsylvania’s public schools into a voucher program.”
Fetterman earlier this week brushed off the New York Magazine story as a “one-source hit piece and some anonymous sources, so there’s nothing new.” Asked by a reporter in a Senate corridor what he would say to people who are concerned about him, Fetterman said: “They’re not. They’re actually not concerned. It’s a hit piece. There’s no news.”
Reached by telephone, Aaron Chapin, the president of the Pennsylvania State Education Association who was in the meeting with Fetterman, said he didn’t want to discuss what was a private conversation.
The teachers union encounter adds to the questions being raised about Fetterman’s mental health and behavior barely three years after a he survived a stroke on the 2022 campaign trail that he said almost killed him. That was followed by a bout with depression that landed him in Walter Reed National Military Medical Center for six weeks, barely a month after he was sworn into the Senate.
The scrutiny also comes a time when Fetterman, now serving third year of his term, is being criticized by many rank-and-file Democrats in his home state for being willing to cooperate with President Donald Trump, amid Democrats’ growing alarm over Trump’s actions and agenda.
Fetterman — who has been diagnosed with cardiomyopathy, in which the heart muscle becomes weakened and enlarged, and auditory processing disorder, a complication from the stroke — has talked openly about his struggle with depression and urged people to get help.
In November, he told podcast host Joe Rogan that he had recovered and fended off thoughts of harming himself.
“I was at the point where I was really, you know, in a very dark place. And I stayed in that game and I am staying in front of you right now and having this conversation,” Fetterman said.
But some who have worked closely with Fetterman question whether his recovery is complete.
In the 2024 letter to Dr. David Williamson, Jentleson warned that Fetterman was not seeing his doctors, had pushed out the people who were supposed to help him stay on his recovery plan and might not be taking his prescribed medications. Jentleson also said Fetterman had been driving recklessly and exhibiting paranoia, isolating him from colleagues.
“Overall, over the last nine months or so, John has dismantled the early-warning system we all agreed upon when he was released,” Jentleson wrote. “He has picked fights with each person involved in that system and used those fights as excuses to push them out and cut them off from any knowledge about his health situation.”
Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, where Williamson works, declined to make him available for an interview, citing privacy and confidentiality laws protecting patient medical information.
Fetterman has long been a wild card in the political realm, forging a career largely on his own, independently from the Democratic Party.
As a small-town mayor in Braddock, the plainspoken Fetterman became a minor celebrity for his bare-knuckled progressive politics, his looks — he’s 6-foot-8 and tattooed with a shaved head — and his unconventional efforts to put the depressed former steel town back on the map.
He endorsed the insurgent Democrat Bernie Sanders in 2016’s presidential primary and ran from the left against the party-backed Democrat in 2016’s Senate primary. In 2020, when he was lieutenant governor, he became a top surrogate on cable TV news shows for Joe Biden’s presidential bid and gathered a national political following that made him a strong small-dollar fundraiser.
Elected to the Senate in 2022, he has made waves with his casual dress — hoodies and gym shorts — at work and at formal events and his willingness to chastise other Democrats.
Fetterman returned to the Senate after his hospitalization in 2023 a much more outgoing lawmaker, frequently joking with his fellow senators and engaging with reporters in the hallways with the assistance of an iPad or iPhone that transcribes conversations in real time.
Yet two years later, Fetterman is still something of a loner in the Senate.
He has separated himself from many of his fellow Democrats on Israel policy and argued at times that his party needs to work with, not against, Trump. He met with Trump and Trump’s nominees — and voted for some — when other Democrats wouldn’t.
He has stood firmly with Democrats in other cases and criticized Trump on some issues, such as trade and food aid.
One particularly head-scratching video of Fetterman emerged earlier this year in which he was on a flight to Pittsburgh apparently arguing with a pilot over his seatbelt.
Despite fallout with progressives over his staunch support of Israel in its war in Gaza, Fetterman was still an in-demand personality last year to campaign in the battleground state of Pennsylvania for Biden and, after Biden dropped his reelection bid, Vice President Kamala Harris.
Since Trump won November’s election — and Pennsylvania — things have changed. Many one-time supporters have turned on Fetterman over his softer approach to Trump and his willingness to criticize fellow Democrats for raising alarm bells.
It nevertheless brought Fetterman plaudits.
Bill Maher, host of the political talk show “Real Time with Bill Maher,” suggested that Fetterman should run for president in 2028. Conservatives — who had long made Fetterman a target for his progressive politics — have sprung to Fetterman’s defense.
Still, Democrats in Pennsylvania say they are hearing from people worried about him.
“People are concerned about his health,” said Sharif Street, the state’s Democratic Party chairman. “They want to make sure he’s OK. People care about him. There’s a lot of love for him out there.”
___
Associated Press reporter Mary Clare Jalonick in Washington contributed to this report. Follow Marc Levy on X at https://x.com/timelywriter.
