‘His Brain Is Working Fine’: MSNBC Attempts Damage Control After Fetterman’s Debate Failure

MSNBC
Jordan Dixon-Hamilton

Hosts and analysts on far-left MSNBC ran damage control after Pennsylvania Democrat Senate nominee John Fetterman’s poor performance in his first and only debate against Republican nominee Mehmet Oz.

During Tuesday’s debate, Fetterman, who suffered a stroke in May, struggled with his speech, resulting in several gaffes, mispronunciations, and long pauses.

For example, Fetterman opened the debate by telling the audience, “Hi, goodnight everybody.”

Fetterman’s physician said the Democrat candidate exhibits “Auditory Processing Disorder symptoms,” which makes individuals “have a hard time hearing small sound differences in words,” according to WebMD.

As a result of Fetterman’s symptoms, he needed assistance from closed captioning to “help him process the questions” and Oz’s responses.

Despite Fetterman’s poor performance, MSNBC pundits praised Fetterman for debating Oz, with some saying it took “guts” for him to do so. MSNBC’s Joy Reid said:

I felt it actually made me like him better and more because I’m like, he had the guts to get out there, and that could not have been easy. And he’s, he’s improving, but he knows that he was going to be a little at a deficit. And I think people would rather have that and somebody who’s going to protect their rights and let them have their freedom and their liberty than the the other side, who wants women to be state property.

“I think for a lot of people they’d rather have somebody brave enough to go out there and risk embarrassment and risk the the sort of pain of embarrassment to show ‘this is me, a little frail,’ you know?” Reid added.

One pundit on the network excused Fetterman’s gaffes by saying, “I don’t think voters were looking for poetry.”

“Mentally, you know, his brain was working fine,” another pundit claimed.

Other MSNBC guests claimed the focus on Fetterman’s health was “ablest.”

New York Magazine’s Rebecca Traister claimed Fetterman’s performance at the debate was “certainly an example of such remarkable transparency,” before adding, “There was such intense scrutiny, often ablest scrutiny, on how he was going to communicate.”

Another network guest said Fetterman’s blatant speech issues are “not going to be a basis for not voting for John.”

MSNBC political analyst Eddie Glaude Jr. told viewers, “We have to make a distinction between his cognitive ability and his ability to express what he’s he’s thinking.”

“There’s some folk out here who want to use this as an excuse to vote for a celebrity carpetbagger,” Glaude added.

MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell even compared Fetterman to former President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

“While he was brilliantly winning World War II, Franklin Roosevelt once fell asleep in the Oval Office in the middle of signing his name to a letter. That was not painful to watch, because no one got to see that,” O’Donnell said in defense of Fetterman.

“Having mentioned President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, I just want to refer back to him as also possibly the most brilliant legislative strategist. Certainly the most accomplished legislative strategist in the history of the presidency,” O’Donnell added.

Although MSNBC tried to downplay Fetterman’s speech issues, an overwhelming majority of viewers believe Oz won the debate.

Local Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, station WPXI’s post-debate poll found that 82 percent of viewers thought Oz won, compared to just 18 percent for Fetterman.

Jordan Dixon-Hamilton is a reporter for Breitbart News. Write to him at jdixonhamilton@breitbart.com or follow him on Twitter. 

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