A CNN interview turned into 12 seconds of complete silence Wednesday as Democratic Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman pondered a question asked by host Dana Bash.
Fetterman stood for twelve seconds without uttering a single word after Bash asked whether President Joe Biden’s executive order prohibiting new asylum requests after crossings exceeded a daily average of 2,500 migrants was “the right approach.” The CNN host repeated her question to break the silence.
“Thank you so much for being here, sir. The first question is about the president’s border executive action. Was that the right approach?” Bash asked, followed by the silence.
“Senator, the president’s border executive action. Was that the right approach?” she repeated.
“Well, it’s been very clear that the Republicans are playing politics on the border and I voted twice now for the bipartisan border deal,” Fetterman replied. “I was disappointed, but I was also very open to having an ongoing dialogue to enact more and more, perhaps even more strict kinds of border kinds of issues as well too, closer to H.R. 2. But now that the Republicans don’t want to have that conversation, now the president was forced to do that and anything that makes our border more safe is a good thing that’s happened.”
CNN’s Fetterman interview turns into 12 seconds of awkward silence pic.twitter.com/i9TJKnSHHv
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) June 5, 2024
Fetterman suffered a near fatal stroke while campaigning in 2022, causing auditory processing issues and slurred speech. Fetterman has admitted he has “lost [his] ability to fully process language” during a Senate hearing in September 2023, adding he cannot fully communicate with his family and staff without special transcription technology. (RELATED: John Fetterman Bumbles His Way Through Opening Statement At First Hearing Since Senate Return)
He was hospitalized in February 2023 after feeling lightheaded at a Senate retreat, where doctors did not find any evidence of a new stroke. A top aide of Fetterman’s said his campaign could have caused permanent damage to his brain, contradicting a doctor’s note from October 2022 stating he “spoke intelligently without cognitive deficits.”
“What you’re supposed to do to recover from this is do as little as possible,” Chief of Staff Adam Jentleson said, contradicting what Fetterman’s doctor wrote in the letter. Fetterman “was forced to do as much as possible — he had to get back to the campaign trail. It’s hard to claw that back,” he added.
“Before the stroke, he was the kind of person who loved the give-and-take with reporters,” Jentleson added. “The challenge is to be able to get back to that place, given the current limitations.”
The senator soon checked himself into Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland to receive treatment for his clinical depression on Feb. 16, 2023.
He blamed his inability to answer questions coherently during his Senate debate with his Republican opponent, Dr. Mehmet Oz, on the transcription service provided to him by NewsNation and Nexstar, which went to “extraordinary lengths” to accommodate Fetterman ahead of the debate.
