Swap scenario: Will Mrs. Fetterman go to Washington?

OPINION:

The election is long over, and John Fetterman has taken his seat as the junior senator from Pennsylvania. So naturally the rouse is over as well. The New York Times felt comfortable enough last week to finally expose in detail what anyone paying attention knew months ago: Sen. John Fetterman is seriously debilitated.

How long can a senator serve hearing muffled sounds, requiring closed captioning and dealing with the aftereffects of a stroke far more serious than Democrats were willing to tell the voting public? The fraud perpetrated on the voters of Pennsylvania would be a crime if it weren’t excused as mere politics.

Mr. Fetterman was an unlikely candidate in a swing state, but he checked many boxes for the far left. He supported open borders, dramatically reducing incarcerations during a crime wave, and legalizing all drugs, among other things. The town he led as mayor was a mess at virtually every level. He wears a hoodie, has visible tattoos, and made his name in politics pushing legal weed. It was always a risky proposition.

Mr. Fetterman’s stroke last May made a dicey situation much worse. It appears, though, that Democrats made a choice to lie about Mr. Fetterman’s condition to keep him on the ticket. An eventual resignation due to health reasons wouldn’t necessarily matter much.

Why? Because he checked another box. He’s married to a woman who was, at one time, an illegal immigrant.

Then-candidate Joe Biden spent months in his basement during the 2020 campaign, away from the public eye and protected by his wife and staff to hide his physical and mental deterioration. It’s a practice that has continued during his presidency, already spending more than 200 days out of sight at his Delaware home.

It now appears that in 2022, Democrats took a page out of the Biden playbook with Mr. Fetterman. 

It wouldn’t stretch your imagination much to think of a conversation at the White House where the president was told about Mr. Fetterman’s true condition but was presented with a swap scenario.

Mr. Biden, exhibiting his own decline on daily basis, told a crowd last October at an event in Pittsburgh that Mrs. Fetterman would “make a great lady in the Senate.” Cue the nervously grinning staffers off camera shifting into “that’s just Biden being Biden” gear.

Today’s leftists running the Democratic Party wouldn’t think twice about lying to voters to eventually be able to manufacture America’s first former illegal immigrant U.S. senator. The lords of labels and ludicrous milestones could then use Mrs. Fetterman to further their open borders and amnesty agenda.

Another leftist, Mrs. Fetterman, endorsed Sen. Elizabeth Warren during the presidential primaries in 2020.

You can already hear the Democrat message machine churning out “Dreamers are leaders, too” talking points and bumper stickers. You can see the slick, Hollywood-produced video at the Democratic National Convention next year. Sen. Gisele Barreto Fetterman, a historic figure, thrust center stage, perhaps alongside some other champion of intersectionality like the first biracial, non-binary, bisexual botanist from Boulder to be a hit on Broadway.

While this may sound cynical, to the far left, the agenda is always more important than good governance, the integrity of our institutions, the rights of voters or the truth. The message and the appearance of progress always trumps the honest assessment of reality.  They even put their agenda ahead of Mr. Fetterman’s health and well-being.

A stunt like this cheapens the office, and it insults the voters of the Keystone State, who, in the end, still bear some of the blame for falling for a scheme that installed a clearly physically and mentally compromised person in the Senate.

The media was also complicit, failing to ask questions or expose Mr. Fetterman’s true condition. Let’s not forget the howls from the left-wing press when NBC reporter Dasha Burns dared to comment on air about Mr. Fetterman’s confusion during conversation or need to use closed captioning.

People get the government they deserve, and in the case of Pennsylvanians, they chose Mr. Fetterman over his highly successful, patently brilliant, articulate opponent largely because he had lived most of his life in New Jersey. Mehmet Oz lost an election. The people of Pennsylvania lost their representation and perhaps even their ability to choose who stands for them in the Senate.

Don’t be surprised when Mrs. Fetterman goes to Washington.

• Tom Basile is the host of “America Right Now” on Newsmax TV, an author and a former Bush administration official.