In a Democrat caucus that has made performance art out of contempt and hatred, Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) keeps doing something his colleagues apparently can't manage: acting like a human being. Of course, Democrats have sunk so low that the bar representing basic human decency in their caucus isn’t particularly high, but still, you gotta give credit where credit is due.
And to be fair, Fetterman isn't some closet conservative.
He's a Democrat who votes with his party virtually all the time, but he’s also aware that his state is trending red. He’s made a political calculation that acting like an adult will do more for his political career than acting like an unhinged leftist. I can appreciate this because there have been Democrats who have represented red states and never been anything but tools for the radical left. So, yeah, props to him. At a time when his party has become so completely unglued, Fetterman's basic decency looks revolutionary by comparison.
At Tuesday night's State of the Union, that contrast was on full display when he not only was the only Democrat to shake Trump’s hand before he delivered the State of the Union, but he also allowed himself to stand and applaud at what should have been unifying, bipartisan moments, when no one else in his party did.
He applauded the parents of Iryna Zarutska, the 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee who was murdered by a career criminal on a subway train last year. She should be alive today if it hadn’t been for the Democrats’ soft-on-crime policies. Her killer had been in and out of the criminal justice system since 2011 and was walking free when he took her life.
Fetterman stood and applauded, and couldn't understand why his colleagues wouldn't do the same. "The rest of the people in my party wouldn't stand up and clap for her," he said afterward on Fox News.
He even stood for Erika Kirk, the widow of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, who was assassinated last September while speaking at Utah Valley University.
"Can't we just be more kind to a widow?" he said. Her husband was murdered in front of a crowd of college kids. She has two babies at home. And Fetterman wanted to know how anyone in that chamber could sit on their hands and stare at the floor. For him, it wasn't a political question. It was a human one.
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He also stood for a political prisoner from Venezuela who was there, and joined Republicans in honoring the veterans in attendance. When Trump announced strikes on Iranian targets, Fetterman was on his feet again. His standard is simple and consistent: "I'm always going to stand up and clap for things that I agree with." If he doesn't agree, he keeps quiet. "If I don't agree with it or whatever, I'm certainly not going to yell and scream and disrupt the whole thing."
Senator Fetterman says he stood up and clapped for many moments during the State of the Union — Erika Kirk, Iryna Zarutska, all the military awards.
— Overton (@overton_news) February 25, 2026
But he still can’t understand why the rest of his party didn’t.
FETTERMAN: “Well, for me, you know, I never check to see what the… pic.twitter.com/Exlex3Ryr2
That's it. That's the whole philosophy. Show up. Behave like an adult. Applaud the things worth applauding. Don't throw a tantrum on national television.
The fact that this makes Fetterman the reasonable one tells you everything you need to know about where his party is right now. Democrats spent Tuesday night stone-faced while Trump honored a grieving mother, a murdered widow, and American veterans. Fetterman looked around the room and recognized what he was seeing. They didn't. Or they did — and just didn't care.
