In a candid exchange with entrepreneur, businessman, and angel investor David Friedberg on the All-In Podcast, Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) offered a blunt assessment of his own party’s leadership or lack thereof.
Fetterman, as we know, hasn’t been shy when it comes to supporting policies against his party and its leaders. Among other things, he supports Israel, voted for the Laken Riley Act, supports Operation Epic Fury, and, if you can believe it, doesn’t believe that President Donald Trump is Hitler.
Fetterman has even dared to speak out against his party. During the interview, Friedberg asked Fetterman a rather simple question, and the answer he gave was just spot on.
“Who do you think leads the Democratic Party today?” Friedman asked.
Fetterman didn’t hesitate.
“Oh, we don’t, we don’t have one,” he said, before adding, “I think the TDS, [Trump Derangement Syndrome] that — I think that’s the leader right now.”
It’s the same answer I would have given. It’s not Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, Kamala Harris, or Gavin Newsom. One thing dictates the party, and its hatred of Trump, plain and simple.
But Fetterman was far from finished.
He painted a picture of a party driven less by principle and more by reflexive opposition. “You know, right now our, our party is, is governed by the TDS,” he continued, arguing that it has “made it virtually impossible without being punished as a Democrat to agree something’s good or I agree with the other side.”
Fetterman described the climate in stark terms, saying, “I would define that by Epic Fury,” and positioning himself as an outlier within his own caucus. “I am literally the only Democrat... in Congress that I’ve come across that’s saying, ‘I think it’s a great thing to break and destroy the Iranian regime. I think it’s entirely appropriate to hold them accountable.’”
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What frustrates him most, he said, is the disconnect between long-standing Democratic rhetoric and current reactions. “What’s strange to me [is] that every single Democrat that’s run for president, uh, and anyone that I know in Congress says we must never allow them to acquire a nuclear bomb,” he noted. “When that happens, why not celebrate that or acknowledge that?”
Instead, he sees a pattern of automatic backlash. “I have only witnessed just criticism and these kinds of these kinds of attack[s],” he said, adding that political tribalism is overriding common sense. “Yeah, you don’t have to agree on every single thing, but when a good thing happens, just because it comes from a, uh, the different party, um, that, that tells me that you’re choosing the demand of the, the base or the party over country or what, what’s really a — I think appropriate in that circumstances.”
🚨NEW: @friedberg: "Who do you think leads the Democratic party today?"
— Jason Cohen 🇺🇸 (@JasonJournoDC) March 18, 2026
JOHN FETTERMAN: "We don't have one ... Right now our party is governed by the TDS."
@DailyCaller pic.twitter.com/Mr2Z4bVRs5
While Fetterman’s assessment of his own party isn’t exactly news to us, when a Democrat is admitting what we’ve been saying for years, it’s a big deal.
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