PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Lt. Gov. John Fetterman says Pennsylvania voters can trust that he will be able to do the job of U.S. senator on Day 1 — even as he recovers from a stroke that has impacted his hearing and speech.
In his first in-person, sit-down interview since he suffered a stroke just before the May primary, the Democrat used speech-to-text software so he could read the questions from NBC News correspondent Dasha Burns as she asked them.
Fetterman explained he’s using captioning to improve how he processes what he hears.
“I always thought I was pretty empathetic … emphetic … I think I was very, excuse me, empathetic. That’s an example of the stroke, empathetic,” he said. “I always thought I was very empathetic before having a stroke. But now after having that stroke, I really understand much more kind of the challenges that Americans have day in and day out.”
Republican challenger Mehmet Oz has pressed Fetterman to release his medical records.
The latest RealClearPolitics poll average shows the race is a toss-up.
President Joe Biden will be in Philadelphia on Oct. 20 to hold a fundraiser for Fetterman.