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Fetterman 2022: The Steampunk Version of Biden in His Basement [1]

['Blake Hounshell']

Date: 2022-06-28  

They held two video calls together, with Luján offering tidbits of wisdom and Fetterman peppering him with questions about Senate business that could affect Pennsylvania. Luján’s main advice: Don’t rush your recovery, a recommendation in tension with the hothouse pressures of a crucial Senate campaign.

“He looked and sounded great,” Luján said. Longtime friends of Fetterman say he is not fully healthy but is still very much his old self — gruff and iconoclastic, flaunting his stinging sense of humor, razor-sharp memory and an encyclopedic knowledge of political and cultural arcana.

Fetterman’s campaign has thought carefully about how to convey that he is on the road to recovery, while acknowledging that he is not 100 percent ready to return to the campaign trail. His aides are mindful that a major slip in his first outing could raise questions, perhaps even unfair ones, about his true condition.

Luján was uniquely sympathetic to the dilemmas of how much information to disclose to the news media, and when. His own doctors pushed back on calls to issue a detailed initial statement, urging his staff to await their full medical assessment of his health before divulging information that could be weaponized or misrepresented in the press.

How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause. Learn more about our process.

Before he conducted any interviews, Luján said, “I was a nervous wreck.”

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[1] Url: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/28/us/politics/john-fetterman-memes-campaign.html

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