Pennsylvania Democrat Sen. John Fetterman is driving his own party insane as he has not had the kneejerk response of being against President-elect Donald Trump that many Democrats have had.
To that end he confirmed to reporters on Friday that he will be heading to Florida to meet with the president-elect at his Mar-a-Lago home, CBS News reported.
“That is the plan. Yes, we are going to have a conversation,” the senator said of their planned meeting.
Fetterman will be the first elected Democrat senator to have a formal meeting with Trump since his election in November.
“I think that one, he’s the president, or he will be officially,” the maverick senator said. “And I think it’s pretty reasonable that if the president would like to have a conversation — or invite someone to have a conversation — to have it. And no one is my gatekeeper.”
“I’ve been very clear that I have ongoing conversations with people that are going to have an impact on Pennsylvania and for the nation,” he said. “And I am a senator for Pennsylvania, not just for Democrats. I am a senator for everyone in Pennsylvania.”
As most Democrats scoffed at Trump’s plans to gain control of Greenland, Fetterman did not dismiss the idea.
“I have no idea what’s going to exactly come up. So, I mean, regardless of whatever comes up, that’s going to be part of the conversation,” he said to CBS News.
He later joked with reporters who asked him why he was going to meet with the president-elect, saying, “I’m angling to be named the pope of Greenland.”
In December Fetterman placed blame for the Democrat defeat on former House Speaker and Democrat California Rep. Nancy Pelosi.
During an interview with Politico, Fetterman went after Pelosi when asked if he thought President Joe Biden should have dropped out of the race after the terrible debate with Donald Trump.
“People like [Nancy] Pelosi, she really tried to — what’s the word I’m looking for? — she embraced this ‘she’s the godmother, she’s the enforcer.’ And now she’s blaming Biden,” Fetterman said, holding nothing back while blaming Pelosi for trying to pull power moves.
“Well, you can’t have it both ways. You got what you wanted,” he added, referring to Biden’s ouster and the installment of Kamala Harris, “and now you’re still blaming Biden.”
Democrats have split into various feuding factions and are blaming one another for their failure to retake the House of Representatives, their loss of the Senate, and their defeat by Trump in the presidential race. Pelosi has claimed that Biden should not immediately have endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris and suggested that the decision led to her embarrassing defeat.
“I think it’s really ironic that you have a woman at age 84, and she is still hanging on. Why not give a younger generation an opportunity to occupy that seat?” he added.
He then spoke out against Harris and other Democrats who say Trump followers are “fascists” because of their political views.
“I love people that are absolutely going to vote for Trump. They’re not fascists. They’re not those things. I think if you go to the tickle switch, use those kinds of terms, then it’s kind of hard to walk back on those things,” he continued.
“That’s kind of a word that really isn’t part of the vernacular for voters. Scolding harder or clutching the pearls harder, that’s never going to work for Democrats,” Fetterman concluded.
He has also supported the Laken Riley Act in Congress.
“I’d like to remind everybody that we have hundreds and hundreds of thousands of migrants here illegally that have [been] convicted of crimes. Who wants to allow them to remain in our nation? And now if you’re here illegally and you’re committing crimes and those things, I don’t know why anybody thinks that it’s controversial that they all need to go,” he said to Fox News host Bret Baier.
“There’s 47 of us in the Senate and if we can’t pull up with seven votes, if we can’t get at least seven out of 47, if we can’t then that’s a reason why we lost,” he said.