John Fetterman Admits Trump Has ‘Special’ Bond With Key Swing-State Voters

Democratic Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania said during an interview at The Atlantic Festival that former President Donald Trump has a “special” bond with voters in his state that deepened after the July 13 assassination attempt.

Trump survived the attempted assassination during a July 13 campaign rally in Butler County, Pennsylvania that left him slightly wounded, seriously injured two attendees and took the life of former volunteer fire chief Corey Comperatore. Fetterman said that he wasn’t going to “mansplain” the situation to Vice President Kamala Harris, but noted that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was a “fantastic” presidential candidate in 2016 though she ultimately lost the presidency to Trump.

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“Trump has created a special kind of a hold … he’s remade the party and he has a special kind of place in Pennsylvania,” Fetterman told interviewer Jeffrey Goldberg. “And I think that only deepened after that first assassination attempt.”

Harris currently leads Trump by 1.0% in a head-to-head matchup in Pennsylvania, according to the RealClearPolling average of polls, with the lead expanding to 2.17% when other candidates, such as Green Party candidate Dr. Jill Stein, independent candidate Cornel West and Libertarian candidate Chase Oliver, are included.

Fetterman warned elsewhere in his interview with Goldberg that Clinton was leading Trump in Pennsylvania polling during the 2016 race, but lost the crucial swing state to Trump.

“Everybody thought that it was in the bag, but that’s not the energy and the other kinds of things that were really consistent with what I’m witnessing all across,” Fetterman told Goldberg, according to Fox News. “And then, sadly, we saw what happened.”

In national polling, Trump trails Harris by 1.9% in the RealClearPolling average of polls from September 3 to 18, with the vice president’s lead increasing to 2.1% when Stein, West and Oliver are included in surveys.