Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) said Wednesday he is “not on social media at all” after New York magazine reported in May that a former aide had said social platform X was often a focus of the senator.
“I’m actually not on — I’m not on social media at all,” Fetterman said at a Wednesday event for Semafor.
“I try to remind people that social media is the funhouse mirror of the distortion of reality,” the Pennsylvania Democrat later added. “And wherever I go in public, people are lovely, and they’re really actually kind and very supportive, and ‘Hey, can we have a picture and shake your hand?’ kind of a thing.”
“So, I would just remind anybody, the world that you see on those social media is just not the reality,” he continued.
In May, New York magazine reported that former Fetterman staffer Adam Jentleson said the lawmaker had a fixation with X. Fetterman stated his depression was intensified by the app.
Fetterman dismissed the magazine’s report, which described concerns from some of his past and then-staffers over his mental state a few days after it came out.
“It’s a one-source story with a couple of anonymous sources, a hit piece from a very left publication,” Fetterman told NBC News when questioned over the story.
Fetterman said later in May that former aides who had voiced concerns over his mental health had a “bizarre grudge” against him.
The Pennsylvania Democrat, who was hospitalized in 2023 for clinical depression nine months after a stroke, said this spring that he was well and planned to stay in office for the rest of his Senate term.
