Long time TV host Dr. Phil McGraw said on The Joe Rogan Experience last week that he believes both Pennsylvania Senate candidate John Fetterman and President Joe Biden are cognitively impaired and that it wouldn’t be wise to get on an airplane if Fetterman was the pilot.
While McGraw said he had not tested either one, he said, “President Biden is not at his best and that Fetterman is not at his best.”
About Fetterman, he said, “And I’m not trying to be unkind. He had a stroke. I mean, the poor guy, he had a stroke.”
“Just ask yourself,” McGraw added, “Let’s say you were getting on an airplane and the airline pilot had had a similar cognitive impairment. Would you get on? Well, hell no.”
Debate disaster
The two discussed Fetterman’s October 25 debate appearance, during which he had trouble forming coherent sentences at multiple points during the exchange.
Rogan agreed that Fetterman was “clearly compromised, to the point where while he’s communicating, he’s not just stumbling. He kind of lost in thought and can’t form a coherent sentence and bounces around from it.”
“He looks… he looks troubled,” Rogan said. “And I was watching MSNBC and they were trying to say, ‘well, I mess up sometimes when I talk and you know, I misspeak and I stumble on my words.’”
An online poll taken after the debate in Pittsburgh by WPXI showed that 82% thought Republican candidate Dr. Mehmet Oz won the debate over Fetterman, even though the majority of voters in the area had favored Fetterman.
Narrowing gap
The polls show a narrowing race between Fetterman and Oz, even has early voting and absentee voting have been underway for almost two weeks in the state. Some polls now show Oz with a small lead over Fetterman, while others show Fetterman maintaining a narrow lead on Oz.
Most of the polling is within the margin of error at this point. FiveThirtyEight’s average of polls has Fetterman at 46.8% and Oz at 46.4%.
Given that most polls skew Democrat and the number of undecided voters seems larger than the gap between the two candidates, Oz definitely has a chance to win the race.
It remains to be seen whether Oz can overcome an earlier deficit and prevail. The race is considered a key one for Republican control of the Senate; Republicans can still regain the majority without Oz, but it will be more difficult.