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John Fetterman Is Assuring Everyone That He’ll Be In Better Shape Soon, But He (Definitely) Can’t Say The Same For Oz

After an NBC News report made the choice to focus on John Fetterman’s stroke recovery, the Pennsylvania lieutenant governor still came out swinging at his opponent, Dr. Oz, on Wednesday morning. In a candid tweet, Fetterman continued to be upfront about his health issues, which he’s been transparent about since suffering a stroke ahead of the PA primaries in May. Fetterman has routinely called out Oz’s campaign for taking cheap shots at the near-death experience, and that’s not about to change.

“Recovering from a stroke in public isn’t easy,” Fetterman tweeted. “But in January, I’m going to be much better – and Dr. Oz will still be a fraud.”

Fetterman’s resolve arrives after NBC News aired the first in-person interview with the Senate candidate, and he required the use of closed captioning. However, that isn’t new information. Fetterman has been open that he still has lingering auditory issues from the stroke, and that it sometimes affects his speech. NBC News highlighted this difficulty by noting that “Fetterman occasionally stuttered and had trouble finding words.”

A subsequent published report took things even further by actually writing out Fetterman’s stuttering:

Fetterman, acknowledging the challenges he still faces, added: “But it gets much, much better where I take in a lot. But to be precise, I use captioning, so that’s really the maijing — that’s the major challenge. And every now and then I’ll miss a word. Every now and then. Or sometimes I’ll maybe mush two words together. But as long as I have captioning, I’m able to understand exactly what’s being asked.”

At one point, he struggled to articulate the word “empathetic” — toggling between the correct pronunciation and “emphetic” — and then pointed to that as an example of the effect of the stroke. Asked about those moments, Fetterman said searching for language is not a difficult experience.

“No, I don’t think it was hard. It was just about having to be thinking more, uh, sl, uh — slower — to just understand and that sometimes that’s kind of the processing that happens,” Fetterman said.

NBC News reporting was widely criticized by journalists who have recently interviewed Fetterman. The news organization was also taken to task for leaning into ableism.

You can see some of the reactions below:

(Via John Fetterman on Twitter)