Sen. John Fetterman (D-Penn.) is dismissing a recent report detailing extensive concerns from some of his current and former staffers over his mental state.
“It’s a one-source story with a couple of anonymous sources, a hit piece from a very left publication,” Fetterman told NBC News when asked about the story, which was published in New York Magazine last week.
“Many of the staffers I spoke with are angry,” journalist Ben Terris wrote as part of the piece. “They are troubled. And they are sad. These were some of Fetterman’s truest believers, and they now question his fitness to be a senator. They worry he may present a risk to the Democratic Party and maybe even to himself.”
Terris reported former and current staffers painted a picture “of an erratic senator who has become almost impossible to work for and whose mental-health situation is more serious and complicated than previously reported.”
The piece reported that the senator in February for 2023 accidently “walked, obliviously, into the road and was nearly struck by a car.”
New York Magazine did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Fetterman, a moderate Democrat, has spoken openly about his mental health struggles in the past. In 2023 he received in-person treatment for depression at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center for six weeks.
“I don’t care if you’re a liberal or conservative, Republican or Democrat, we all can be depressed and we all can get made healthier,” he said during an interview with People magazine that year. “Go to the doctor or whoever you’re able to. Address your depression. I was skeptical it would make anything better, but it did. It works. And I’m so grateful.”
