Trump remarks on Gaza not cause for Democrat freakout, Fetterman says

To Fetterman, no one is being honest about the devastation on the ground in Gaza and the need to move citizens out in the short term.

By Menachem Wecker, JNS

As many of his Democratic peers in Congress respond very vocally to everything that U.S. President Donald Trump says, Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) thinks it is essential to choose one’s battles carefully, the pro-Israel senator told Tara Palmeri on her podcast Somebody’s Gotta Win.

“When the pitcher is throwing thousands of balls, you have to decide which ones are the strikes to swing on and to push back and to fight against,” Fetterman told Palmeri, senior political correspondent at Puck.

“Many of my colleagues—we’re a little over two weeks in—and now they’re in full on freakout, and now they’ve got the signs and they’re going out, ‘Ahhhh.’ ‘Hey, let’s grab a bullhorn and go into a Starbucks and start yelling,’” Fetterman said. (Fetterman has been regaining his clarity of speech since suffering a stroke in 2022.)

Palmeri asked the senator about what her sources have told her, that Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner had put forth a plan to develop Gaza. What if that development benefits the Trump family, she asked.

“I don’t personally believe that they are going to turn Gaza into Trump Plaza kind of a situation,” Fetterman said. He added that he thought it was “silly” for Trump to rename the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America, but said that he doesn’t think such name changes really matter.

“You can be concerned,” he said about Democrats responding to the president’s many comments.

“When you have used the extreme language in your portfolio of ‘fascist’ and now they’re throwing around that this is a ‘coup,’” he said.

“I’ve studied what coups really were, and I’ve studied what some of these things were, and right now this is sound and fury, and thus far at least it really hasn’t created any lasting damage or anything serious about it.”

Where colleagues can’t resist reacting to Trump, “I’m not that guy,” Fetterman told Palmeri, in the interview which ran about 45 minutes. “You have to choose which thing you’re going to go back at and then other things that you’re going to ignore.”

Palmeri told JNS that she had a preplanned interview with Fetterman, but knowing he is an “ardent supporter of Israel,” she wanted to get his reaction to Trump’s proposal about Gaza.

“Unlike many members of Trump’s own party, he seemed open to it,” she told JNS.

“I think his views on Israel are probably more in line with the state that he represents, a battleground state, that Donald Trump won,” she added. “Israel was a major wedge for Democrats during the election, and Fetterman has been one of the lone voices in his party that has had unwavering support for Israel.”

‘Gigantic kind of undertaking’

The senator said that Trump’s plan for the United States to take over Gaza is “provocative.”

“But I don’t think that that’s in an actual serious kind of a way, and I think, I mean I can’t speak exactly what he meant, but what I think it was more to kind of shake things up and to start like a very more honest conversation of Gaza,” he said, “and how 90% of the housing has been destroyed or severely damaged, and where are you going to live?”

There are no utilities, water or structures to protect Gazans from the weather, according to Fetterman.

“Where are they going to go? Where are they going to live? How are they going to do that in a hygienic kind of way, and how are you going to rebuild it, especially when Hamas is still allowed to function,” he told Palmeri.

“Where’s the money gonna come from? And who is going to be doing all the building and do all that work?” he added. “I mean that’s a gigantic kind of undertaking, and now no one has been honest about it.”

Fetterman added that his top priority in the region is destroying Iran’s nuclear facilities.

“We have a unique opportunity to do that knowing that now, that Hamas is severely damaged, and so is Hezbollah severely diminished and Iran,” he said. “It has actually been shown that Iran doesn’t have the capabilities to really project those kinds of damage and they are not as fearsome as people thought that they were.”

“All of the experts on the Middle East throughout all of this were wrong,” he added. “For me, my top priority in that region is destroying Iran’s nuclear facilities.”

The senator said he doesn’t think U.S. troops will be on the ground in Gaza. Instead, he thinks Washington must “hold Hamas and Iran and the region—the whole region—accountable.”

The Jewish state reminded that Hamas by design “hides in things like schools and refugee camps and those things, and they forced Israel to fight through civilians.”

“They were forced to fight a war through civilians. I have never described Palestinians as a necessary sacrifice,” he said.

“The Palestinian leaders describe that, and they design that to maximize the most amount of death and hoping that they can bring everyone into the region into the war, when Israel actually demonstrated that Iran really isn’t the kind of powerful force in the region.”

“All those proxies really aren’t much of much,” he said.

To Fetterman, no one is being honest about the devastation on the ground in Gaza and the need to move citizens out in the short term.

“If you’re returning to an absolute pile of rubble, then it’s like that’s not an honest one. Gaza is going to need to be rebuilt, and how do you rebuild that if Hamas is in power?” he told Palmeri.

“Because when they’ve built Gaza, they stole those resources and built those tunnels and bought those kind of weapons that they turned on Israel on Oct. 7. No one is being honest and no one is reacting to the reality on the ground.”

Palmeri asked if Trump’s plan could jeopardize the ceasefire agreement. Hamas is “very eager” for a ceasefire, and Hezbollah and Iran are “begging” for ceasefire, Fetterman said.