In the discussion aired by NBC News on Nightly News with Lester Holt, Fetterman, who’s battling Republican Dr. Mehmet Oz for a key Senate seat in next month’s midterm elections, tells reporter Dasha Burns that while the stroke “changes everything,” it would not affect his ability to serve as senator.
Burns said in the report that the interview was paired with “closed-captioning technology” that allowed Fetterman to read the questions as they were being asked to him out loud. The captioning, which Fetterman read off of a computer monitor during the interview, was required by the candidate’s campaign due to Fetterman’s auditory processing challenges that have lingered since his stroke.
“In small talk before the interview without captioning, it wasn’t clear he was understanding our conversation,” Burns told Holt during the program.
In the interview, Fetterman tells Holt that while he can “hear someone speaking,” he sometimes struggles to be “precise” on what the person is saying.
After suffering a stroke, Fetterman was off the campaign trail until holding his first public rally in August. In September, Reuters reported that five officials of the Pennsylvania Democratic Party said they were concerned about the state lieutenant governor’s health and how it could impact his chances of beating Oz.
Concern grew across Twitter following the NBC interview Tuesday. Radio talk show host Mark Davis said Fetterman’s reliance on closed-captioning for the interview is “completely disqualifying” him to run for Senate.
“We should all pray for his complete recovery, but the notion of electing a US Senator who cannot process words is simply unsustainable,” Davis wrote.
Professor of Medicine at George Washington University Jonathan Reiner also expressed concern for Fetterman, saying it was hard to judge his recovery strides since May because “the candidate released very little information about his initial illness and injury.”
“If we knew how sick he was last spring we might now be celebrating a remarkable recovery,” Reiner added.
In the interview with NBC, Burns noted that Fetterman’s team has still declined requests to release the candidate’s medical records, and asked Fetterman if he agreed that voters deserved to know his health status.
Fetterman said his campaign has been “very transparent” about his health so far, and mentioned that one of his doctors has already written a letter saying that he is able to serve.
WESA Editor Chris Potter, from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, said “Fetterman with the closed-captioning is very different from Fetterman without it,” in a tweet Tuesday.
“But as accommodations go,” Potter wrote, “is real-time closed captioning that big a deal?”
Author Adam Jentleson also came to Fetterman’s defense, arguing that the Democrat “has been transparent about the lingering issues from his stroke, including the need for closed captioning.”
“Not bad for a recovery!” Jentleson added. “Yet NBC is penalizing him for using exactly what he has publicly said he needs, and treating it like some kind of exposé.”
Some users on Twitter argued to write Fetterman off as a candidate, however, including Texas U.S. House candidate Troy Nehls.
“If John Fetterman can’t complete a sentence, how can he complete a term in Senate?” Nehls wrote in reference to a clip of the NBC interview where Fetterman stutters when trying to answer a question.
Stephen Miller, ex-senior adviser to former President Donald Trump, pounced on Fetterman in a tweet.
“If one was going to elect a new Senator with grave cognitive impediments to performing his duties one would likely want an individual who was in every other way exemplary,” Miller wrote.
Fetterman is leading Oz by six points, according to FiveThirtyEight. The candidates are set to debate live on October 25, according to NBC News.
Newsweek has reached out to Fetterman’s campaign for comment.
