Peter Savodnik: I was wrong about John Fetterman

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Go to lifelock.com slash foxpod to save up to 25% your first year. Welcome back, everybody. We've been talking a lot about President Biden saying to Benjamin Netanyahu, you got to pull back.

It's getting too much. We see the Vice President separating for the President when it comes to the Palestinians. Now he says, we got to show more of a hard choice of Palestinians than the strife that they're experiencing. We see basically in a crouch, our military forced to be in a crouch because this President does not want to stand up for our people who are being rocketed by a bunch of gangsters over in Yemen, these Houthi rebels. We see indecisiveness when it comes to China, one step forward, one step back constantly. We don't hear a word from the Democrats when it comes to Senator Menendez.

But you know who's been very blunt? Senator Fetterman. And, you know, we suffered a stroke. I didn't know if he was going to be able to come back.

Not many people thought he would. But now if you hear him speak, he seems to have made great strides. And when it comes to speaking out against Menendez and against Hamas, it is Senator John Fetterman, the Democrat from Pennsylvania. Peter Savatnik is a writer and editor of the Free Press. He had one opinion of Senator Fetterman and he's changed it and wrote a story about it and wants to discuss it. Peter, welcome.

Thank you. I just give Senator Fetterman credit. I mean, he was just mocking Menendez.

And just because, of course, Gold Bar's guy's the second major club. Why are we pretending that this is not as bad, if not worse, than George Santos? Nobody was protecting him. But when it came to Hamas and the condemnation and the support for Israel, what did you think he would do?

And what did he do? So I thought he was going to be a rank and file Democrat. I thought he was going to kind of fall into line with the kind of progressive blob and and equivocate or or try to both sides it. And that's not what happened. Instead, he he provided a real moral clarity that has mostly, not entirely, but mostly been, you know, something beyond sort of the grasp of the sort of the sort of most progressive and kind of people, certainly sort of like the new Democratic class.

She's not Jewish. And you point out before Barack Obama made his ridiculous, embarrassing statement where both sides have a point of view in this. Before the president weighed in strongly, Senator Fetterman was weighing in strongly. Where did that come from? Yes, it's a great question.

And I don't know. I don't know exactly where his thinking on Israel comes from. One of the things you point out in the piece that I guess I was not as sensitive to or aware of when I was reporting initially was that, look, he's a guy who's made actually some pretty big abrupt changes in his life in the past. And if you choose to view them to the prism of elections, you see this opportunistically or cynically and you say, well, you know, he did this.

He became mayor of this little town outside of Pittsburgh because he was building towards some career and some national career in politics. Another way of looking at that is to say, or he was just doing something that he really believed in and he cared deeply about. And I think the same thinking applies to the Israel question. And I don't know where that comes from, but I do know that he has fully embraced this.

And again, there's this, it's not simplicity, it's clarity. It's seen clearly that there are certain things that are simply evil and the inability to call them out and to see them as such is a grotesque failing on the part of many Democrats. I'm Dana Perino. Join me for my brand new podcast, Perino on Politics. As we analyze the 2024 election cycle, make sure you subscribe to this series on foxnewspodcast.com or wherever you download podcasts and leave me a rating and review. Right.

I want you to hear Fenneman come out. This is what he said about fellow Democrat Menendez. If you expel somebody like, you know, George Santos, how can you allow somebody like, you know, Senator Menendez remain in the Senate as well, too? Because I promise you that one of the major differences between representative, former Representative Santos and Senator Menendez is 300 million dollars of munitions, you know, with Egypt as well, too. And Santos is never accused of being a foreign agent. So, so, I mean, you didn't have to do that.

Santos on his way out. The Democrats didn't need that. You know, they didn't need to have that pointed out.

I appreciate it. As an analyst, you want to appreciate it. But it caught you by surprise, too.

It did. And I just I think it's so surprising these days that somebody in a position of authority does something that doesn't feel scripted or utterly predictable. We saw that with the college presidents, university presidents, you know, when they were testifying before Congress last week.

Right. What was so dispiriting about that was that it was exactly what we expected from from, you know, the head of Harvard, MIT, you know, a pen with Federman. It's just utterly refreshing. It's just not I wouldn't have expected. I didn't see that coming.

And I thought that was a deserved notice. Have you talked about it to him? We've not. You know, when I first tried to get an interview with him way back when they shut me down and I'm in L.A. So, you know, I haven't had a chance to, you know, head over to his office.

But but look, you know, if I get the chance, I will. Selina Zito, who was a critic of his, too. He gave an interview, too, and she was so impressed with the person she talked to who knew that he was she was very critical of him. You also write about that embarrassing display by these elite university presidents and the ousting of Liz McGill. But of course, the Harvard president stays there. And according to the 1619 Project founder, that fictional account of our history, she says the only hurt that she's being attacked because she's black doesn't make sense.

Liz McGill was white and left, got fired or moved out. You point out that this is not going to fix the problem in the University of Pennsylvania. Yeah, I think I think there are two different things that are going on between like Penn and Harvard. I think in the case of of, you know, Penn, I don't think she should have been forced to resign. I think she was an abomination. And I think in a sense, it's a good thing that she's gone. I just I don't think that they should have, you know, kind of caved to sort of like, you know, outside forces with regard to Harvard. I think it's just gotten embarrassing because she's, you know, she doesn't have the intellectual heft to be president of the university. And so to say nothing of sort of like the kind of moral rectitude, right, the, you know, not plagiarizing other people. So, you know, I think my question for Claudine Gay would be, you know, that the president of Harvard would be, you know, like, how much, you know, chutzpah does it take to sort of stay on as president and to tarnish the brand of the university further and not to put the institution ahead of yourself. But that's, that's, you know, my problem.

Right. I mean, you don't become president if you're not representing the beliefs of the of the administration. I mean, it's not like, wow, she's going to go do her own thing. And she went off the reservation and she's she's doing things that we can't support. Now, the whole board was in line with her until she exposed her beliefs and the fact that she was over-lawyered.

What are you lawyering up for? Just express that you're outraged by anti-Semitism, caught flat-footed by it. But here's my plan to fix it. But they couldn't do it because I don't think they're prepared. I don't think they really think it's a problem. Yeah, I don't, I don't, I don't think they, they, I don't think they have that kind of moral clarity. I think they are really deeply confused. I don't, I don't, I don't think it's actually something that's easily fixable. If it were just a matter of lying or, or, or choosing the right words, that could be, um, you know, improved or made better. I think here there's a, there's a deep, almost impenetrable confusion about sort of, you know, why, why is it that there is a problem with anti-Semitism on campus? I don't think that they see it that way.

I think, I think they are part of this, this, this, you know, kind of broader, um, kind of intersectional kind of crisis in, in, um, the American Academy. Uh, Peter Savonic, thanks so much. Appreciate, uh, look forward to your next story. Uh, you're all over the stories that matter most. Appreciate it, Peter. Take care. Listen to the show ad free on Fox news podcast, plus on apple podcast, Amazon music with your prime membership or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.