We have seen the footage and read the messy transcript from the U.S. Senate Debate between Mehmet Oz and John Fetterman in Pennsylvania on Tuesday night. Most people will also have heard the Fetterman campaign’s ridiculous spin, in which they claim the Democrat scored better than expected despite “delayed captions” (which, once again, Fetterman requested due to auditory processing challenges coming from his stroke) that were “full with mistakes.”
But now the Oz team is calling Fetterman on his bluff, proposing a second debate in the last week of the midterm election with a captioner chosen by Fetterman and his campaign.
The communications director for the Oz campaign, Brittany Yanick, released a statement on Thursday morning saying, “We’re sad to hear that the Fetterman campaign was upset with how the closed captioning technology they requested was operating on Tuesday.” Yanick has volunteered to host a second debate whenever the Fetterman campaign sees fit and to allow them to bring in a closed captioner of their choosing if they feel they can do a better job.
Surely Fetterman will cave in under this pressure. If, as his team maintains, he had a performance that “thrilled” despite what they believe were captioning flaws, then the Democrat would undoubtedly benefit from another debate. Of course, Fetterman won’t be repeating Tuesday night’s jumbled answers, practically implausible denials of past statements shown in the discussion, and ill-timed tantrums since his team rebuffed debate invitations kept him off the campaign trail for months. Especially after being dishonest to Pennsylvania voters about Fetterman’s health and refusing to provide his medical documents. Instead, he has relied solely on a letter from a doctor who is also a campaign supporter to attest to Fetterman’s fitness to serve in the United States Senate for six years.