After having accepted Donald Trump’s invitation to meet with him at Mar-A- Lago in January, Pennsylvania senator John Fetterman, a Democrat, appeared on The View where he was asked to explain his decision. The general thrust of the ladies’ questions was that in visiting Trump he had added legitimacy to this power hungry jerk who was clearly a threat to America’s Democracy. The tenor of Fetterman’s response was a wonderful departure from what we have come to expect from those suffering from Trump derangement syndrome.
Cultivating venom and hatred with one’s political opponents, Fettereman said, is of no value to anyone. When asked if he was shocked by Trump’s various executive actions on his first days in office, he responded that Trump had simply done what he had promised to do throughout his campaign. Hardly agreeing with the new president’s pardoning of 1500 Jan. 6 insurrectionists, he nevertheless also insisted that the effort of N.Y. Democrats to destroy Trump’s chances in the 2024 election by charging him with 34 felonies in his attempt to hide his affair with Stormy Daniels, was also an abuse government authority. Fetterman, much to the annoyance of the ladies of The View, was endorsing rational, civilized discourse as a means of advancing the human project, an approach rarely seen in our crazy contemporary world. While insisting that he disagrees with many of Trump’s policies, he insisted that their interaction had been friendly and productive, a narrative which the Ladies of the View found highly disturbing. When Hate rather than Reason is one’s guiding principle, rational discourse is apparently impossible between those of differing viewpoints!