The Chris Cuomo Project - Chris Cuomo on Why John Fetterman GETS IT

Episode Date: May 8, 2025

Chris Cuomo unpacks the backlash against Senator John Fetterman and argues that Democrats are undermining their own by prioritizing ideological purity over pragmatic progress. Responding to a harsh New York Magazine article, featuring quotes from Fetterman’s former chief of staff and anonymous party sources, Cuomo criticizes the renewed questioning of Fetterman’s mental fitness and says the attacks are less about policy failure than about his willingness to support Israel and work with Republicans on immigration and trade. He defends Fetterman’s “progressive pragmatism” as a path Democrats should embrace and warns that the party risks losing the majority by turning on those trying to deliver real results. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I got a great piece of advice for Democrats. I'm Chris Cuomo. Welcome to the Chris Cuomo Project. I have a great strategic idea for you guys. Okay? Stop eating your own. Stop with the purity tests. I'm talking about Senator John Fetterman, okay?

Let's just take one step backwards, okay? The Democrats defended this guy through all kinds of stuff that Fetterman made relevant that should have never been, like his hoodie, his manner, his illness, not taking a leave, his debate performance, all of these things that politically were very damaging, even though I had mixed feelings about some of them that I'll tell you about in a second. And the Democrats were there. Then, he does two things. He first of all muscles up and knuckles up when it comes to Israel

and opposing a terror organization in Hamas without compromise. And then he starts to talk about working with Republicans whether it's on immigration or on the signature issue of my generation, which is what? or on the signature issue of my generation, which is what? The balancing of benefits and burdens in commerce. And I'll explain more what that means to me and what it means to Federman

and frankly to President Trump. So he goes hard line on Israel. He says you should be working with Trump on immigration. He's right about what happened at the border. He's right about trade. He's right about who we should be thinking about in terms of who benefits in our economy, and all of a sudden the left goes bad on him. Did you see that piece from New York Magazine?

What a shit hit piece that was. Fetterman is right to be befuddled by what's motivating it, but I don't know why. I mean, he's right to feel that way, to feel betrayed, but I see it with clear eyes. His own people are coming after him, small and large, micro and macro. Micro is his former chief of staff. The level of perfidy, he says he's doing it

to help Fetterman because he cares, but he didn't go to him directly. Come on. And the party, all those other anonymous sources in there. You got to give it to New York Magazine that they had a source, but they also just gave this guy a platform to trash Federman. Why?

Because the media loves negativity as a proxy for insight. They love takedowns. But I'm telling you, Democrats, if you want to win, if you want to build momentum and trust with the majority, you've got to stop with the purity tests and the killing of your own for bad reason. Look, you want to seize on principle, okay? And let's pick a principle.

You need to raise taxes in order to raise money for a specific problem, okay? And if people don't want to raise taxes and they don't have another way to do it, then fine. Criticize them, go after them. But what are you going after Federman for? I'll tell you what you could have gone after him for. Being a clown on purpose, right?

Wearing the hoodie and kind of disrespecting the decorum and station of a U.S. Senator. That was fair game. I mean, I don't value it that way, but I get it. I get it. And how about when he had his stroke or whatever the medical and mental health issues were. No, no, he's fine. He could barely speak in the debate. Oh no, no, he's fine.

Don't judge him that way. That's being biased against people who have health problems. All of that you defended as politically unsaleable as it was. But then the guy knuckles up on Israel and decides that, hey, some of the things that the administration Wants to do are good for America and he wants to help with them and now all of a sudden there's a hit piece on them This is where Democrats and Republicans are different. Okay now I know Republicans love to say that the Democrats are this big cabal, this gang,

and that's why they're so tough, because they stick together. That's bullshit, okay? That's just painting themselves as victims. That's just giving themselves an enemy to focus on. The Democrats are cats, and the Republicans are dogs. The Republicans are a pack animal. The Democrats are a bunch of cats.

And we all know the expression about hurting cats, right? Not hurting, H-R-U-T, hurting, H-E-R-D. Why? Well, I would argue that Democrats historically, traditionally have prized independence. And often they have been fighting a little bit of a kind of impossible dream man and La Mancha type deal tilting at windmills. And there was a romanticism to it. And they used to prize diversity of opinion, and minority causes and controversial causes,

culturally, fiscally, politically. So no, I didn't see them as a monolith, but now this purity test canceled culture, a negative outgrowth of Me Too, which I believe was a valid and needed initiative still is, because we never really went back and saw who changed and who didn't and how, because it was all about just taking down boldface names.

But now these purity tests are a thing of the left, not the right. The right's all about Trump, and that's anything but purity, right? And if you're with them, you're with them. If you're not, you got problems. On the left, it's ideological, it's not personal. It's not because you have a towering figure that is dominating the attention. So for you, it's ideological, it's not personal. It's not because you have a towering figure

that is dominating the attention. So for you, it's become about purity tests, become about ideas, or really the absence of ideas, negating ideas, disallowing ideas, condemning ideas, judging ideas, censoring ideas. And as a result, you are losing. You are losing touch with the majority. Why? America is forced into a place of culture war. That is not where we are naturally. We are naturally live and let live. None of your business. Okay? We are naturally, you do you. Don't bring

it my way. Okay? You do you. I'll do me. That's who we are. Most of us were raised the way I was. Hey, did you hear about so and so down the street, Mr. Favouza? No, I didn't. And I don't want to. I don't want to hear about it. That's why one of the Ten Commandments is about don't gossip. Don't bear false witness against your neighbor. Why? Gossip is toxic. And in America, that was a big thing. Yeah, of course people gossip.

That's not my point. My point is that at our core, what our virtue is, what our value is, what our philosophy was is that live in the live. And now it's been like, yeah, except you got to allow everybody to live the way I want, otherwise there's something wrong with you. And it's not enough for me to live the way I want. You have to endorse it and embrace it and say it's okay. It's not who we are. And what we see with Senator John Fetterman is the toxicity of this.

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No, I'm actually pointing out something that if you care about your party winning, you've got to curb this. You've got to nip this. It's not in the bud because you've gone to full flower and you're a whole fucking bush now. You've gone to full flower and you're a whole fucking bush now, but you've got to pare this back because the purity tests are distancing you from the majority. Forcing people to believe as you believe is not the American way and it's not the democratic way.

Not with a big D or a small D or it shouldn't be. It shouldn't be. It shouldn't be. And John Fetterman, getting this hit piece is a really bad sign because John Fetterman, look, for all the drama, you know, for all the nonsense of the hoodie and the affect and some of the things that he said early on, especially. That was a distraction.

Okay. You take off the hoodie and what you have is a guy who's in the business of progressive pragmatism. And that is the sweet spot for Democrats. That's a sweet spot for anyone in American politics, and it's up for grabs. Because what we see with Trump is that he has not only taken something that used to be a democratic talking point, but he has taken a philosophy. He is this close to capturing the populist issue

of my generation. This is what I was referring to at the top. Who benefits and who bears burden in our commercial structure? Now, you have to have this conversation without coming off like a commie. But when you have the management class making $345 for every $1 that the people who make the money for them make? You have something that is not just a natural outgrowth of capitalism. What is capitalism without responsibility? What is it? It's greed. Capitalism, devoid of any sense of responsibility to the whole, is just greed.

That's all it is. And guess what greed is? A deadly sin, one of the original seven, okay? For a reason. What Trump is talking about in rebalancing trade is this signature issue. Now look, I don't even know that he knows that he's hovering over it. I don't even know that he realizes how close he is. But the way he's going about it is kind of frustrating the clarity of purpose.

Too much too soon. Too many at once, fighting with everybody about everything. But when he said early on, the way it's working right now doesn't work for enough people. Now that usually gets dismissed as socialism or communism. Okay? But it isn't.

Who says capitalism is all profit over all people all the time? And if that's the way you want to go, laissez faire, the French way of saying that, they just let it go the way it goes. Well, then why do we have to bail you out? Oh, because they hire so many people. Oh, they just don't have to pay them. Well, they don't have to pay them a penny more than absolutely necessary in the labor market. Otherwise they would lose their workers to somebody else. Oh, so that's the standard.

But that is not the standard that we apply to corporations everywhere else, right? It's all about regulations and the lack thereof to allow them to maximize profits. Why? Oh, cause that's capitalism. Oh, but when it goes bad for you, we bail you out cause you're too big to fail.

And when you have financial problems, we give you reorganizational bankruptcy laws that we don't give to individuals. Why? Why? Because decisions were made by the power structure, the powerful in this country, that the people never really weighed in

or were never really made aware of it, that gave the lion's share of benefit to the few and the burden to the many. John Fetterman gets this. He gets that it's too lopsided, it's too top heavy, that when your fastest growing socioeconomic group is billionaires, you've got a problem in a country that was made by what's called its middle class.

See, I just don't like that term. There's something that bothers me about the word middle. It seems like it's almost devoid of place, which I know is counterintuitive because the middle is a place, right? The middle would be here and here are your two poles, right? There's a pole here and there's a pole there and this would be the middle.

This would be the midpoint. There's such a thing, right? There's a median, which is the number between a top and a bottom. So I get that it's a place, but there's a median, which is the number between a top and a bottom. So I get that it's a place, but there's also something nebulous about it. There's something amorphous about it. There's something absent about it as an idea. I like the word the majority. The majority in this country is neither broke nor rich.

Okay? The majority. But the majority has not benefited the way the top has. And that is what matters. See, what we do is say, yeah, but the majority isn't stuck where the bottom is either. Okay, but I don't think we apply that scrutiny to anything else that matters. Well, you're doing better than the worst, so you should be happy. Well, if that were true, why is the fastest growing group the absolute top? Billionaires. absolute top billionaires.

So John Fetterman gets this, and Democrats used to get this. This was why you were pro-union. This is why you were pro-family. This is why there was such a push for home mortgages and for people to have their own home. Why was there so much funding of that? Why so much subsidizing of that instead of education? And so, I mean, we do subsidies for education also

and loan programs, but not the way we do with mortgages. Why? Because there was a collective understanding that owning a home, having your own place, was a signature of American life and the dream. And we wanted to make that easier for people. So we came together and created a shared sacrifice through taxation to supplement Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac

and different mechanisms to allow people to get mortgages more readily and pay them off. Mortgage, mort gauge, death weight, something you carried with yourself for a long time, but it was worth it to people to have something to pass on, to have a place for their family, to put a roof over their heads. It mattered. And we've lost sight of that.

And what we have now is a system that's about the top, and John Federman gets it. And guess what? So does Donald Trump. Support comes from Iris store. Okay, it looks like a bike helmet. It's got a lot of lights in it. You may feel a little unnatural when you first put it on, but I got to tell you, I've been using it and I'm also using the shampoo and the conditioner and I'm also using the serum and I'm also taking the vitamins. But I will tell you this, I let my hair grow a little bit longer and it feels thicker and the balding spot that I have on the top the thinning spot has not gotten any worse since I started wearing the helmet

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iris store comm and use the code Chris and you'll get this show's exclusive discounts please show support for our show. Tell them that I sent you. Hair loss is frustrating. You don't have to fight it alone, thanks to iRestore. The Democrats need to be more like Federman. Now, I didn't think I would say that when he first became Senator, okay? Why?

The distractions, the hoodie, the health battles, although I do respect him talking about his mental health. I do. And now I think that in this New York Magazine piece, the part I liked least about it was obviously the motivation, which is the Democrats coming after one of their own. But also this new suspicion that he's now right in the head. I do not like the demonizing of mental illness.

We do not do that with physical illness, okay? Or for instance, let's say he was diabetic, okay? It wouldn't be like, oh, you know, he's got that bad diabetes, he's probably not right in the head. We wouldn't say that. But for some reason with mental illness, which we all think is about your brain,

it's about your body chemistry as much as it's about anything which we all think is about your brain, it's about your body chemistry as much as it's about anything else. It can be about your gut as much as it's about your brain, by the way. But it doesn't matter where it's coming from. It's that we judge it in a way. And now the Democrats are in the judgment game even with their own and it's at their own peril. This New York magazine piece to me is a clarion call for Democrats and people of goodwill to stand up and to tell this party to stand

fucking down. Stop going after people who make you better. Again, I get it with the hoodie. I get it with the mannerism. I get it with his persona, I get it, I get it. However, you already owned all that and accepted all that and defended all that. He is right to wanna work with the president on immigration. He is right to wanna work with anyone to make more economic viability, optionality, opportunity for the majority. He is right to want to do that.

Okay? People who left this country to make shit where it's cheap, to sell it back to us while not allowing us as much income to buy that cheap shit because they took the jobs of making it somewhere else should bear more burden than they do right now. If it's okay for the working class to bear it, it's okay for the corporate class to bear it. If one suits the marketplace, the other can suit the marketplace. That does not make me a socialist because I'm not. I'm a capitalist.

But the idea that capitalism has to mean that you make $345 for every dollar I make, I don't believe that that's capitalism. Why? Because it didn't used to be like that. Were we not capitalistic? Were we not a capitalist society in the 60s when it was 20 to 1? What was that?

Not capitalism? So if it was about profits then and you had a stock market then and you had P-E ratios then, which is an exaggeration of your book value and instead betting on your perceived value. Well, why does it have to just keep growing to the advantage of only one part? Why? Someone explain that to me. These are choices. This is picking winners and losers.

And the corporate class gets picked to win every time. And Fetterman gets it. John Fetterman gets it. Do I have problems with some of his politics? Sure, sure I do. But the Democrats are going after their own. We've seen it time again and I'm not talking about my brother. I'm not talking about Al Franken. That is a different kind of purity test. That is a weird, non-justiciable standard of an allegation is enough. That's the Democrats. They did it with Trump. They did it with my brother. They did it with Franken. An allegation is enough to try to throw you out. And there is no small irony to me that now, no wonder they're struggling with seizing on due process as a principle worth fighting

for and confusing it with fighting for the person with this Garcia guy who came from Venezuela or El Salvador or wherever he came from. I don't care. He's clearly got a lot of stink on him that he's part of a bad organization. His own wife accused him of punching her in the face. And they're gonna fight for him and kind of dance with the principle of due process. Doesn't surprise me when you don't

afford it to your own people, politically. John Federman is being attacked from his own and within. One guy put his name to it, the chief of staff who cares so much that I had to talk to New York Magazine instead of just talking to John Fetterman. It's bullshit. But more important than the pettiness on a personal level

is the mistake on the political level. Democrats have to stop going after their own and they have to start seeing what is best for the country that they can provide. And that is being in the business of better. That is being in the business of compromise. That is being in the business of getting things done that matter for the most, instead of fighting about what matters to the least.

Okay? You have been rejected by the American people because you were seen as less in step with normal than Donald John Trump. Remember that. Remember that. Remember that. Remember how pathetic that is. And when you go after a guy like Fetterman for these reasons, you wanna go after him

because of his hoodie, you wanna go after him for whatever else, if it's something that means nothing or it means something, fine. But when it's a bad thing, you wanna go after him for no reason, fine, that's politics. You wanna go after him for good reason? Fine, that's politics. You want to go after him for good reason? Fine, that's politics. You want to go after him for bad reason? Now, you got to think about it. Fetterman is a test case, a case study in why the Democrats fell to the position that they're in. You focus on the wrong things, you focus

on purity tests, and you eat your own. And you may think it makes you better, but when it comes to winning races, it has made you worse. Okay? You should have never lost to Donald Trump. You should have never lost the American flag as a party symbol. You should have never lost the mandate of the majority. You should have never stopped fighting for the working man and woman and the majority of this country. You should have never gotten in the battle of fringe interests and culture wars. Never. But you did. And what's happening with Senator John

Fetterman is the new front in that war. And it is a losing battle for Democrats. I'm Chris Bormo. Thank you for subscribing and following. I appreciate you being here. You may not agree, but I'm here to give you food for thought. If you're an independent critical thinker who wants to see somebody get into the business of better, you got to start calling out what's wrong and encouraging what's right. I'll see you on NewsNation, 8P and 11P every weekday night. If you like the podcast, but not the ads, subscribe on Substack. I'm gonna start doing political interviews there with special guests.

And if you subscribe, we'll interact with you and you'll get to ask questions and we'll answer your questions and they will as well. All right? My brothers and sisters, the problems are real. Let's get after it.