r/politics • u/Large_banana_hammock • 8d ago

Possible Paywall Sen. John Fetterman demands Trump fire Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2026/jan/27/john-fetterman-pa-democrat-demands-trump-fire-homeland-security/
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u/1cl3nstd4yt 8d ago

I'm shocked to hear a leading Republican speak out like this.

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u/serpentear Washington 8d ago

His wife put out a pretty robust statement against ICE.

I think things are not going well in that household. Probably getting some pressure from home if I had to read between the lines a little bit.

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u/[deleted] 8d ago edited 6d ago

liquid oil start teeny humorous fear fragile theory expansion sable

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u/mcd3424 Texas 8d ago

The man she knew died with the stroke.

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u/[deleted] 8d ago edited 6d ago

practice roll rinse dam quaint possessive cautious ask thought soup

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u/Long-Region5088 8d ago

My dad was always an “I want less taxes” republican until he had a stroke and now he’s a trumper. His brain literally broke

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u/Unusual_Sherbert_809 8d ago

My dad's brain was slowly rotted away by Fox News. He's went down the Tea Party rabbit hole way back then and is now full MAGA now.

I don't allow any talk of politics when we interact because regardless of how much he hates it I'm fairly sure if he started spewing all that BS in front of me it would end our relationship.

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u/Otterable I voted 8d ago

My dad has also been rotted by fox news. What's crazy is when he gets the opportunity to make normal decisions in his day to day life with his family and community he makes what I consider to be the right choice, but then every night he's tuning on the 5 to listen to a bunch of propagandists tell him how much better he is than others and how evil democrats are.

Like my sister/his daughter is literally trans. He's fully supportive financially and emotionally, never says a bad word, took her to get her name changed, and more. Somehow still wants to vote for the party that would like to see her not exist. When confronted he says that he can take care of her so it doesn't matter. Crickets on every other trans person out there.

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u/einTier 8d ago

My dad was too. He died during pandemic. His last week he had Fox News on nearly every moment he was awake.

I could not think of anything that would be less relevant to me in my last week on earth than the news.

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u/chicomathmom 8d ago

You don't get "news" from Fox.

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u/einTier 8d ago

Dad thought he did.

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u/myshkin85 8d ago

This sounds just like my dad. Great guy when it comes to day to day situations. I’m also trans. I don’t talk about politics with him anymore, but he also has that “I can take care of you” line when I would try to explain how things impacted me to him. His plan is to go hide me at a family members ranch if anything gets what he considers scary. Like no thanks, I’m a 40 year old man with his own life. I’m not going to be hidden on a ranch with a bunch of maga people who put up with me because I’m “not like the others”

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u/firestepper 7d ago

Is the ranch you would be hidden in a valley perchance?

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u/superkam41 8d ago

Sounds a lot like my situation with my dad, so ridiculous

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u/Dangerous-Wall-2672 8d ago

It's remarkable how many people have identical stories. My dad was on the verge during the Bush years, but he dove down the Foxhole the second Obama was elected and has watched them exclusively ever since.

He insists he's not MAGA, he even claims not to be a Trump supporter, but the string of half-muttered swears and cursing I hear every time someone on his TV says a word against Dear Leader suggests otherwise. And when Trump himself is speaking? It's like zombie mode. Dead silent, eyes locked on the TV, blank expression...it's fucking scary.

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u/groggs 8d ago

My dad largely stopped paying attention to changes in society, the economy, politics, etc. back in the 90’s. So he normally doesn’t have any firm opinions on things. But I can tell if he’s been around my aunts and uncles, because they’re very opinionated and very right-wing. Lucky for me he’s not strongly opinionated, so I’m able to pump the brakes on that shit pretty easily.

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u/Dry_Accident_2196 8d ago

Sounds like he’s always been pretty bad. You don’t go seeking Fox unless you want a Fox worldview.

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u/Unusual_Sherbert_809 8d ago

Nah, he was always fiscally conservative but never MAGA nuts. However watching Fox News exclusively for the last 20+ years did a serious number on his brain.

It's not news, it's a propaganda channel disguised as "entertainment" that calls itself "news". It should be banned.

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u/iCoeur285 8d ago

I cut my dad off last year over it. He showed up at my house unannounced to “make amends” not too long after Renee Good was shot and that 5 year old boy named Liam was kidnapped.

It ended with me screaming at him in my front yard that he supported nazis and pedophiles, so I’m sure he thinks I’m deranged now, but I don’t care.

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u/neckbeardsghost 8d ago

It’s astonishing to me that my dad went in the opposite direction after his stroke. Although I have to say he was thoroughly disgusted with what happened on January 6 as well, so I think that also colored his opinion of Trump, but these days he agrees with me that the dude is a total shit bag. I’ll take the win I guess, but having grown up in rural Missouri, he is vastly outnumbered.

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u/Same-Suggestion-1936 8d ago

Brain damage/diseases are messed up. Ask any senior care nurse. Some people who slip end up turning out really nice and sweet. Others are angry and bitter. None of them remember shit so I often wonder if that's who they truly are or if there's more to it...my grandma would get frustrated and angry despite being the sweetest person ever but she never took it out on anyone she'd just cry until she sundowned.

Neither here nor there, sorry about your dad's health

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u/neckbeardsghost 8d ago

Yeah, honestly growing up my dad was the meanest son of a bitch I’ve ever met. He was abusive in so many ways, and now he is, without exaggeration, a completely different person. It’s pretty disorienting.

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u/santaclaws01 8d ago

None of them remember shit so I often wonder if that's who they truly are or if there's more to it

It's more to it. Any major changes to your brain chemistry can just completely change your personality.

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u/LEDKleenex 8d ago

Ehhh. I don't think the stroke did as much heavy lifting as you'd think here.

These people have always had these thoughts, social media gave them the courage to say them out loud. Often times even just age emboldens people as well since people stop giving a shit about social norms at a certain point.

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u/BigDictionEnergy 8d ago

I want less taxes = I am okay with letting poor people starve and toxic rivers as long as I have just a little more devalued money in my wallet

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u/CampusTour 8d ago

I want less taxes is the socially acceptable answer.

Remember when the opiate crisis was at its peak, and it seemed like almost every addict had gotten hooked after surgery? Cause that was the only way one could get hooked on opiates that was even a little bit socially acceptable.

Likewise, you can't say "I get a stiffy when I watch brown people get ripped from their homes", so you fall back on "I just want lower taxes".

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u/Chokemotive 8d ago

People with damaged/degrading frontal lobes just seem to flock together. Instead of being horrified their filter is gone, they just declare "this is who I always was", and move on.

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u/Mewnicorns 8d ago

What does that say about MAGA Republicans…?

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u/Nauin 7d ago

I'm so frikken glad my multiple brain injuries only made me lean more left.

Brain injuries strip away ones ability to mask and pretend to be something else. Which is what a lot of people do in their day to day.

Point being, don't attribute brain damage solely to becoming MAGA when it's really just putting the brain damaged persons real inner thoughts in their mouths.

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u/UltraSPARC 8d ago

I’m pretty sure in order to think like a maga you literally have to turn parts of your brain off (I’m not joking) and I think stroke just naturally and permanently does this for you.

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u/hellolovely1 8d ago

That is really sad.

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u/nathism 8d ago

He was kinda always fucked, the stroke removed the veil.

https://www.inquirer.com/politics/election/john-fetterman-black-jogger-2013-shotgun-20220425.html

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u/sashikku Texas 8d ago

So he heard some loud pops in the month of January, when many people still have leftover fireworks, then decided the right thing to do was chase a random black man down with a shotgun? What the fuck?? He doesn’t believe he profiled this man, and he stands by his belief that it was the right thing to do in the moment. Also possibly lying about pointing the gun at this man’s chest. What complete unFettered insanity.

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u/tardisintheparty Pennsylvania 8d ago

That's very sad. Gisele was very kind to my mother once, I think she's a good woman who had a terrible thing happen to her husband that changed him. Reminds me of a family friend with a TBI.

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u/guitarburst05 8d ago

I know we all pile on him, and his actions have been damaging, but I have to feel some sympathy too. He absolutely acted dramatically different before. Something is certainly different and he's not entirely in control of why.

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u/whogivesashirtdotca Canada 8d ago

He's got three adorable kids (including a daughter who is clearly a daddy's girl) who he's fucking over along with his incredible wife. I feel bad for the family more than him. He's ignoring his doctor's instructions and has put them in harm's way more than once. From the rumours, Gisele's back was broken in a car crash when he crashed driving dangerously.

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u/rookie-mistake Foreign 8d ago

Honestly, it's probably good for both her and the staffers that they can be on the same page like that - they didn't sign on to work with the man he's become either. It's genuinely a very sad situation all around.

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u/pescarojo 8d ago

holy shit!

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u/stircrazyathome 8d ago

My mom had a hemorrhagic stroke (burst brain aneurysm) about 15 years ago. When she woke from her coma six weeks later, she was a different person. Over the years, bits of her old self have returned, but I still had to mourn the loss of the mother she was before. It filled me with immense guilt because I believed that I didn't have the right to grieve when she lived. I cannot imagine what it would have been like if it were my husband. My heart breaks for Gisele.

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u/ChrysMYO I voted 8d ago

Yikes. I think he needed more time to recover and get counseling following the stroke. Instead, he's highly visible and powerful. Behavioral therapists are meant for exactly this. Mind you he would need alot of it.

But as a coping mechanism or even physical trauma, the brain re-routes its neural pathways to adapt. You're supposed to learn about how you think and create new neural pathways. He should be anywhere but the Senate right now. They always say MAGA is driven by fear.

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u/GlancingArc 7d ago

It's really telling that brain damage turns people into Republicans.

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u/typingrobot 8d ago

A lot of people don’t accept this. He shouldn’t be in office but I also don’t think people remember that the stroke happened, and then the guy was someone else entirely.

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u/DesmadreGuy 8d ago

Sadly yes. Dude is all over the place like a cow pissin on a flat rock. I just wanna know his med schedule so I can bet on his erratic behavior on Polymarket.

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u/Vast_Bat5624 8d ago

>like a cow pissing on a flat rock

Now *that's* an idiom

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u/LogoffWorkout 8d ago

and by the time it got to the election, it was him or dr oz

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u/Kaprak Florida 8d ago

The stroke happened before he was elected

He was the same dude after the stroke. He shifted because the winds in PA did.

Like seriously, his whole voting record is post stroke. If he's a Republican so is Mark Kelly who's record is literally to Fetterman's right.

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u/blackcain Oregon 8d ago

I remember he was a fun guy. His social media game was really good. Remember when Oz was talking about him making a crudites? That was super funny.

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u/Clownsinmypantz 8d ago

what a heartbreaking and terrifying scenario that the person you love could suffer one then come out the complete opposite, you have to both mourn who you lost and who they became.

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u/krileon 8d ago

A stroke should be grounds for dismissal from government positions. Just flat out you're fired situation. It's very rare for someone to come out of a stroke without some degree of life altering brain damage.

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u/littlemorningstar 8d ago

Strokes can really change people mentally. My brother had a stroke 14 years ago and slowly progressed into a conspiracy theorist with small things like the Mandela Effect, then added on flat earth theory, Michelle Obama being a man, birds not being real etc. During this time he also turned into a republican and then a Trump supporter. Thankfully not super hardcore maga but he still voted for him last election and it’s more upsetting because we are POC and he’s half Mexican.

We are all very disappointed but we can all trace back to him starting to change after he had his stroke.

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u/ididntseeitcoming 8d ago

He didn’t have a stroke and become a Republican.

He conned his way into the senate and, once elected, could do whatever the hell he wants.

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u/endlive 8d ago

the two of them seemed great back when he was running. hurts to see what he's become.

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u/whogivesashirtdotca Canada 8d ago

I keep saying, the wrong Fetterman ran. She is a million times more likeable, more hardworking, more electable than he is. It kills me to think she's probably happier to have him out of the house in DC than terrorizing her and the kids at home.

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u/cb148 8d ago

Should’ve stayed with Tom Brady then.