Bill Maher and Pennsylvania Democratic Senator John Fetterman think the left is damaging itself by defending protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Los Angeles.
“When [people] see it in a campaign ad, when they see the guy with the Mexican flag and the Waymo burning behind him, it’s gonna be good for Trump,” Maher said on Real Time with Bill Maher.
“That’s what I’m saying,” Fetterman shot back. “This is an amazing city that we’re in here now. In America, we don’t want to see it on fire twice in just six months,” he went on, referring to the wildfires that ravaged much of Southern California earlier this year.
Earlier this week, Fetterman had taken to X to slam protesters who have participated in demonstrations that have broken out across Los Angeles following a series of Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids in the city since last week.
“I unapologetically stand for free speech, peaceful demonstrations, and immigration–but this is not that,” he wrote Monday night. “This is anarchy and true chaos. My party loses the moral high ground when we refuse to condemn setting cars on fire, destroying buildings, and assaulting law enforcement.”
Reflecting further on those sentiments during his appearance on Maher’s show Friday, Fetterman said that he sees “those optics” and wonders “what the people in Scranton” might think about “those kinds of images and those kinds of videos.”
Maher suggested the backlash to Fetterman’s apparent rightward shift along the political spectrum to what the comedian perceives as an identity crisis within the Democratic Party.
“They got mad at you because you said, ‘I’m not a progressive,’” Maher said, describing both himself and Fetterman as “old school Democrats” who no longer identify with the party’s “woke” ideology.
“That’s the thing,” Fetterman replied. “It’s like your values, I don’t think [they’ve] changed. I know mine haven’t really changed. But I think our party has changed, and now if you actually kind of point out and call out a lot of these things, you know, you do take a political price for a lot of those things.”
Since President Donald Trump assumed office once again, Fetterman has become increasingly critical of his own party while adopting a more apologist view of the GOP’s policy decisions.
He has drawn particular ire from Democratic ranks for his hesitation in condemning White House pardons for Jan. 6 rioters, as well as describing the New York hush money case against President Trump as “bulls**t” and supporting the Republican administration’s crackdown on student protesters.
Fetterman also controversially flew to Mar-a-Lago for a one-on-one meet with Trump himself in February, after which the president emerged calling their sit-down “totally fascinating” and the senator a “commonsense person” who’s “not liberal or conservative.”
After a video went viral of Fetterman getting into an altercation with a flight attendant about his belt buckle, former members of his staff have begun voicing concerns over his mental health, with some claiming he has become increasingly erratic and confrontational after coming off medication for depression last year.
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