Jon Stewart presses John Fetterman on Israel and playing into ‘Republican caricatures’ when he attacks Democrats

U.S. Sen. John Fetterman, in perhaps the most in-depth and toughest interview he’s faced in recent memory, defended his unwavering support for Israel and his harsh criticisms of fellow Democrats when pressed by Jon Stewart in a podcast episode released Wednesday.

The liberal comedian and political commentator repeatedly accused Fetterman of “caricaturing” the left wing of his party and the debate around Israel’s handling of the war in Gaza.

“Jewish community and Israel are not the same thing, brother man. They’re not — that is not the same thing,” Stewart, one of the most prominent Jewish Americans, said at one point as Fetterman described his full-throated support for the war is because of “the Jewish community.”

Asked repeatedly about the United States’ moral obligations in backing the Israeli strikes that have led to the deaths of tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians, Fetterman stood firm.

He said — as he often has since the Oct. 7, 2023 attack by Hamas that sparked the conflict — that it was necessary to go after Hamas leaders. The killing of civilians was “terrible” and “collateral” damage but not a genocide, Fetterman said.

Stewart continued to press — questioning why Fetterman was standing so firmly behind a foreign ally that was “dehumanizing” and slowly killing another population.

“I don’t understand how you have no criticisms over their actions, over their increasingly messianic, ultra-right-wing government that seems to think relentless war is, like, that you can bomb people out of resistance,” Stewart said.

The roughly 75-minute interview, on The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart, came a week after Fetterman once again met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Washington, D.C.

Many other elected Democrats have distanced themselves from the Israeli government and criticized its tactics. Fetterman has acknowledged his position has hurt him politically. In the interview with Stewart, he echoed previous comments — which have also become evident in public polls — that he’s lost the support of his former Democratic base as his and his party’s stances diverged.

“I’m aware that if I happen to disagree with the party line, there’s a price to pay,” Fetterman said. “There’s a lot of stories of how I’ve become increasingly more unpopular with Democrats in my state. And I’m aware of it. But these were all very specific choices… I would rather have people know what I happen to believe.”

Stewart asked Fetterman several times about how he’s voiced those disagreements.

He said the senator has focused far more on arguing with his own party in a way that has further hurt its brand. And he’s broken from their ranks as Democrats try to use even an inkling of leverage that could impact Republicans’ agenda as they control both Congress and the White House, Stewart said. He pointed to issues like immigration enforcement reforms, which Democrats tried to enact by holding out support for a spending bill earlier this year. Fetterman said he supported the reforms but would not go along with the tactic of letting part of the government shut down as a strategic move.

Stewart also pressed Fetterman on how his approach to President Donald Trump has softened as he’s ramped up his criticism of his own party.

“You called President Trump a jagoff in 2016,” Stewart said, prompting Fetterman to say that he put the phrase on shirts and sold them.

“You put it on a shirt. And now you’ve been very complimentary to him. And if your concern with Graham Plattner is you didn’t think he was very nice to women, you’re ignoring an awful lot of evidence for the current president about his relationship with women,” Stewart said, referencing Fetterman’s attacks on the Maine Democrat who dropped out after facing allegations of sexual assault. “So my point is, there seems like there’s a way to go about this that embraces, as you said, the 90% of things that you agree with, and try and utilize that energy to reform a party that has a worse public image than herpes in terms of getting things done. This feels like it’s playing into the hands of Republican caricatures.”

Fetterman pushed back, saying he was trying to stop “extreme” elements of his party in a way that will lead to better success in battleground elections — like in Pennsylvania — after Democratic losses in 2024.

“We keep losing, and now we keep returning back some of the extreme things,” Fetterman said. “That’s not a caricature. That is a fair assessment of where we are with these kind of things.”

Stewart, noting that Vice President Kamala Harris was not the most progressive Democratic option in 2024, rejected the idea that the party lost because of far-left views. In an extended conversation about capitalism and socialism, he also encouraged Fetterman to embrace new ideas presented by democratic socialist candidates who Fetterman, like many Republicans, refers to as communists.

Fetterman, who frequently appears on Fox News but has not appeared on more liberal programs like Stewarts’, described himself as a long-time fan of Stewart and that he believed the interview was “very fair.”

At the end of the podcast after Fetterman left, Stewart said he “wasn’t sure what to think” and was “weirdly thrown off right now.”

“I feel like we all just got out of one of those movies. Do you know those movies where it’s like… there was a weirdly traumatizing scene in the movie,” Stewart said. “And now we’re all just, like, ‘Do you guys, um, do you want to go get something? I guess, I’m just going to go get a slice and maybe go home.’”