Pennsylvania’s two U.S. Sens., John Fetterman and Dave McCormick, met on stage Monday for what Fox News moderator Shannon Bream called an effort “to find some common ground through the constructive disagreements” of politics.
That proved to be difficult — not because it was hard to find common ground during the half-hour discussion, but because the two men barely differed in the first place.
“I know you’re looking for disagreement,” McCormick said 28 minutes into a discussion in which the two overlapped on issues ranging from Israel, immigration, and the future of U.S. Steel.
Bream’s first question was prompted by a flamethrower attack on a weekend march in Colorado for Israeli hostages. McCormick and Fetterman both quickly linked the attack, for which an Egyptian national has been charged, to the discourse on college campuses.
“We started to see these huge rallies and this antisemitist hatred spewed at places like the University of Pennsylvania,” said McCormick.
“As my friend just pointed out, this is just rampant across all the universities,” said Fetterman, whose staunch support of Israel has led to conflict with many supporters of Palestine on the left. He later added: “We’ve lost the argument in parts of my party.”
The joint appearance came hundreds of miles outside the state both men represent, and a couple of months after a book-tour event they were to share was canceled.
Monday’s event was housed in a replica of the U.S. Senate — one which, unlike the real thing, allowed Fetterman to take to the floor in his trademark casual attire — at Boston’s Edward M. Kennedy Institute. It was part of a series of “Senate Project” discussions in which senators from opposing parties discuss issues and how best to work across partisan lines.
As a discussion of the ongoing war in Ukraine illustrated, that task is easier if only one Senator makes a partisan argument.
While Fetterman stressed the importance of supporting Ukraine, he did nothing to criticize President Donald Trump’s handling of the crisis or Trump’s widely criticized treatment of Ukraine leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy during a meeting in the Oval Office. Instead, he praised Trump’s efforts to secure contracts for rare-earth materials from Ukraine’s government.
McCormick, for his part, said Ukrainian military prowess was “the only way, I think, to keep the pressure on” Russian leaders to agree to a peace deal. “Russia is the aggressor,” he said.
The Trump Administration and other Republicans have been critical of the arms shipments that have helped Ukraine fend off Russian aggression. But while Fetterman repeatedly distanced himself from fellow Democrats during the forum, McCormick said nothing critical of his own party. Instead he chose “to be partisan for a minute” on Ukraine by observing, “I don’t think we would have been in this situation had we not had the Biden administration” when the Russians escalated their years-long military activity to a full-fledged invasion in 2022.
The two men sounded a similar note on issues closer to home, such as Trump’s blessing of a somewhat hazily defined merger between U.S. Steel and Nippon Steel.
Fetterman originally opposed the Japanese company’s acquisition of the steelmaker. When the deal was proposed on Biden’s watch, he said, “I made the promise [that] I’m going to work with the White House to jam this up, and we need to demand a fair deal … and actually that happened.”
While crediting Biden for pushing Nippon to sweeten its offer by pledging billions in new investments, Fetterman said, “I happily agree with what Trump has done as well.”
“This is great for the steel industry,” agreed McCormick. But he said, “The deal wouldn’t have happened under Biden. It did happen under President Trump because he kept pushing.”
About the only place where the two men evinced disagreement was on Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” a spending plan that extends an earlier round of Trump tax cuts while slashing government spending that could require large cuts to social safety-net programs.
Fetterman, like most Democrats, opposes those plans.
“I don’t think I’d ever be in a position to support cutting Medicaid” or food-stamp programs, he said.
He noted that his wife, Gisele, “has dedicated her professional life [to] food security. [She] spends multiple days a week just feeding people, and I see people standing in lines for food. … I don’t think that’s an appropriate target.”
Even here, however, the two men played down differences, with McCormick arguing that “we should not take benefits away from vulnerable people,” and Fetterman acknowledging “there is fraud and waste” in social safety-net programs.
In any case, he said, it “doesn’t make [McCormick] terrible if he votes for yes, and it doesn’t make me terrible either if I vote no.”
Bream also asked Fetterman about media reports that he is disengaged from the job of being a senator, racking up a record of missed votes and skipped committee hearings, while ignoring calls for meetings with constituents. (The New York Times last week quoted Fetterman as complaining that he had begun performing his official duties largely due to the criticism.) She cited a recent Philadelphia Inquirer editorial that said he seemingly “enjoys the perks of high office but is less interested in doing the actual job.”
Fetterman linked such attacks to his positions on Israel and immigration, blaming “the left kind of media” for what he called “a smear, and that’s just not accurate.”
He argued that he still makes 90 percent of Senate votes, and that those he missed were largely pro forma. He also asserted that Bernie Sanders — the Vermont senator with whom Fetterman aligned himself earlier in his political career — missed more votes than he has.
“Why aren’t the left media yelling and … claiming they’re not doing their job?” he said.
McCormick backed Fetterman, saying the two “have many disagreements, but the thing we both agree on, I think, is that it’s an honor to serve Pennsylvania, and we want to work together to do great things together whenever we can.”