Sen. John Fetterman offered a message Wednesday to House Republicans considering impeaching President Joe Biden: “Go ahead, do it. I dare you.”

Speaking to reporters in his Senate office, the Pennsylvania Democrat suggested that the impeachment push by Republicans on the other side of the Capitol was meant to deflect from the mountain of legal problems facing former President Donald Trump.

“Your man has what, three or four indictments now?” Fetterman said. “Trump has a mug shot and he’s been impeached twice.”

“Sometimes you just gotta call their bullshit,” he said.

The first-term senator went on to say that a Biden impeachment "would just be like a big circle jerk on the fringe right,” and “would diminish what impeachment really means.”

Note: As pointed out by reddig33 in comments, this is an old photo. Here’s a couple examples of his new look.

        • Fedizen@lemmy.world
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          this is why the conservative perverts voted for the fake tv businessman who does crimes (Trump) rather than the real businessman (Romney) who does things that should be crimes.

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          I am part of the electorate and I do not crave lies. There are dozens of us. Dozens!

        • lingh0e@lemmy.film
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          Conservatives: We love Trump because he tells it like it is.

          Fetterman: ::speaks his mind::

          Conservatives: No, not like that.

      • prole@sh.itjust.works
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        Which is a fucking joke given Trump’s… everything.

        Fetterman is more mentally fit to serve than most of the octogenarians that have held office recently.

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    So my kid had an end of year project on someone famous from the state he was assigned to research and present. He got Pennsylvania. I immediately said, “you’re doing John Fetterman. He’s badass. Here lemme show you why…” and my kid was all about it. The kids dressed up as their famous person and I got the whole getup. Sweatshirt, athletic shorts, bald cap, stick on goatee, custom made rub on tattoos to match. That was really fun and John Fetterman is bad fucking ass. He should be president.

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      I love how I started reading this comment in my mind’s voice and it turned into the voice of some dude from my youth telling me how awesome Pearl Jam is.

    • Mrdrbojangles@lemm.ee
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      Could you briefly explain why he’s so badass? As I know a little bit about him, but haven’t actually looked into him at all.

      • SomeoneElse@lemmy.ca
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        I’m not OP and I’m not American so I don’t know anything about his policies, but I know he suffers from depression and has been very open about it. I believe he checked himself into a psych facility not long after he was elected. I thought his honesty and openness about it as a man with a kinda macho image was refreshing to see and a good example against toxic masculinity.

      • Morse@lemmy.ml
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        Fetterman was the mayor of Braddock PA, a place I’m rather familiar with, for a long time. Braddock was/is a forgotten borough of Pittsburgh that’s long past its glory days. Fetterman came in and wanted to clean up Braddock. How effective he’s been has been up to debate, but the man really was a strong voice for Braddock and showed that he really cared. For every violent death that happened in Braddock while he was mayor, he’d get a tattoo of the date on his arm. He also got arrested for protesting the local hospital (UPMC), to get them to bring an urgent care center to Braddock.

        Personally I think he’s improved Braddock. He helped bring in a few new businesses, and it’s helped liven the place up a bit. But it’s still a rough neighborhood that needs a lot of work.

      • agentsquirrel@sh.itjust.works
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        He was mayor of Baddock, a town near Pittsburg that had and probably still has a lot of problems. He has tattoos on his one arm of the dates that people were murdered in the town. I live on the other end of the state so I don’t know Braddock well, but I believe he did quite a bit for the community. He’s very straightforward and honest about issues in his life, and many people here can relate to him. His wife Gisele is from Brazil and is an activist and involved in a lot of charity and social efforts. Fetterman doesn’t just talk the talk, he walks the walk.

      • TAG@lemmy.world
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        Part of his bad ass reputation is his look. He is a big, muscular man with a shaved head and goatee (which he has shaved off). He has visible tattoos (the zip code of the town he was mayor of and the dates of every murder that occurred during his tenure as mayor). He is known for being very open and blunt during some of his speeches and lack of fashion sense (he spoke at a formal press conference in athletic clothing).

        He gained visibility on a national level after the 2020 presidential elections. As lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania (Vice President of the state), he argued against anyone who alleged that Donald Trump won the state or that the election was rigged in some way.

        After that, he ran for US Senate and won a close election against celebrity talkshow host Dr. Oz. Fetterman ran as a populist candidate, campaigning on a platform of solving the problems facing normal people.

    • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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      I have no idea who this is. Is he an ex-wrestler or boxer or something he certainly has the right physique.

      Looking at him you’d think he would be a Republican.

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      I find it refreshing to be honest. He’s definitely not weaseling the answer with slippery language.

      • Fuck Yankies@lemmy.ml
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        Being a fan of Diogones the cynic I to hate vanity. Nowhere is this more apparent than in congress or the house of representatives.

        Quoteth Diogones: “in a rich man’s home there’s nowhere to spit but his face”, and republicans are trells, slaves to their masters and as vein as the emperor’s New clothes, while pretending to be “rebellious”. A bunch of posers, really.

    • PostmodernPythia@lemmy.world
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      I think that if the Republicans don’t manage to turn the US into a one-party state, Federman’s got a bright future, and his plain-speaking nature is part of that.

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    Have they found anything they could actually impeach Biden over, or do they just hope that something comes out of the nowhere once they start the process? This whole impeachment stuff sound to me just like Trumps lawsuits for “stealing my vote” and the whole “I’ll hold a press conference where I will present irrefutable evidence” stuff.

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      Both. They scream “BiDeN cRiMe FaMiLy!” To distract from trumps corrupt ass kids being literally employed in the White House. Like dude said trump has 4 indictments…

      However I am also sure they are desperate to find anything they can twist into scandal regardless of substance. They investigated Clinton for 25 years before settling on a blowjob.

      Remember Trump blackmailing Zelensky to make up dirt on Biden? Nothing. Remember Hunter’s laptop? Nothing. They will keep fishing because they would prefer that over doing jackshit for the average citizen.

    • justastranger@sh.itjust.works
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      McCarthy has admitted a few different times now that they have literally zero evidence to serve as a basis for an investigation or implement

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      I’m sure they’ll eventually find something. The Clinton impeachment investigation didn’t set out to find anything about his affairs, it was some land deal that turned out to be on the up and up after all.

      The point is, they just want to investigate, bog the White House down with discovery, leak anything embarrassing (I’m sure there’s a ton more Hunter stuff to leak), and I’m sure they’ll eventually find something that sorta kinda looks like a crime (or obstruction), because if you investigate anyone you’ll find something eventually.

      It’s basically about hurting Biden politically, and painting Biden as a criminal, so the uninformed voter can just say ‘they’re both the same’.

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        The big problem here is that you have way too many uninformed voters in your country. Which is always a weak base for a working democracy.

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          Not my country, but yeah, Americans are stupid (and are kept that way by the media).

      • ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world
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        some land deal that turned out to be on the up and up

        The most hilarious part of the land deal was that the Clintons lost money on it. Like, that’s not how corruption works.

    • Saneless@sh.itjust.works
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      They just want it as a historical anecdote when they talk about presidents being impeached. They’re really, really sore about Trump going through 2 of them

      Shame the system is rigged to allow your friends on half the jury

    • Alien Nathan Edward@lemm.ee
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      Im from near where he was mayor. When we were trying to get mandatory paid sick time passed in the city of Pittsburgh John came and walked the line with us. He once went on the daily show to outline his plan to get a subway to open in the little hood-ass town he was mayor of, because there was no place in that town where you could get ready to eat food and he was trying to stop tax money leaking out to other towns. Dude has a tattoo for each person who died by violence in his town while he was mayor. He’s no bullshit.

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        At first when I read subway I thought you mean public transport and thought “that’s no small task!” When I realized you meant Subway the sandwich shop I was sad that a town didn’t even have a Subway??? They’re a dime a dozen!

        • Alien Nathan Edward@lemm.ee
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          Yeah, the sandwich shop. All of Pittsburgh got hecked up pretty good when steel manufacturing went to places where workers have no rights like China and Alabama. Some neighborhoods ended up in a spiral where a lot of people moved out, so they didn’t have any money to do anything with, so more people left and people who used to spend money in the community now had to spend it elsewhere (depressing both income and tax revenue in the community). John’s old neighborhood, Braddock, was kinda famous among Pittsburgh neighborhoods for getting absolutely smacked by this cycle.

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            I lived in Pittsburgh for a decade, and man, you’re totally right - there were (are?) some serious ghost towns in the area. I recall a trip to Ford City where it was like “here is a town, there is a neoclassical courthouse, there are streetlights and pavement and buildings, but no cars or people.” Went to a bar there and there was literally nothing inside that would let you know you weren’t in the year 1985 (when it was 200X). Even the prices were out of the past. It was totally surreal.

            • Alien Nathan Edward@lemm.ee
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              Have you ever seen the movie The Deer Hunter? It’s set during the Vietnam war, and it’s shot in Pittsburgh’s Polish Hill neighborhood. It was shot in 1978, 45 years ago. Polish Hill still looks like that today.

              • DarthBueller@lemmy.world
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                I heard Polish Hill was getting gentrified like the “East End” aka the side of East Liberty that bougies decided to rename so their friends wouldn’t think they live in the scary ghetto with GASP… (whisper) black people. I used to hang out at Gooskies back in the day, though I heard it might be closing or closed? EDIT: I have not watched it but now it’s on my list, thanks! EDIT 2: Man you also brought back some memories of Nico’s Recovery Room - where you’d have blue collar guys side by side with Carnegie Mellon future millionaires. Fucking great.

  • Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world
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    My money is on McCarthy running the inquiry so the far right will be forced to fund the government. Can’t run a government inquiry if the government has shut down. MTG has already taken the bate and has said she’d fund the government in exchange for an inquiry.

    • SCB@lemmy.world
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      He had a son who’s a fuckup. Not like Trump, whose children are definitely not fuckups.

      Not fuckups at all.

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        I know we’re supposed to just mock the question, but being serious and looking at right wing media enough to try to figure out what the claims are beneath all the hyperbole…

        It looks like the claim underneath the hyperbole and bullshit is that Biden has been using Hunter as an intermediary for influence peddling, pay-for-access and other things that are or are tantamount to bribery.

        Given where it’s coming from, I assume it’s basically a conspiracy theory with little solid behind it, but they’re explicitly claiming more than his son having a laptop.

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      Strictly speaking, not really true. “high crimes and misdemeanors” I believe is what the constitution says, which unfortunately boils down to “whatever Congress has the desire and political capital to punish” which historically does mean that Fetterman is right. Republicans would likely pay some amount of political price for voting an impeachment with no real or popular basis.

      • whofearsthenight@lemm.ee
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        Correct. They also don’t need anything other than political capital to launch an impeachment inquiry and just generally be a nuisance.

        This is also literally the only reason Trump survived impeachment. Turns out, impeachment means fuck all in a minority-rule-by-design system in which almost nothing is clearly spelled out, and said system is the only check on what passes muster.

    • samus12345@lemmy.world
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      No, a president can actually be impeached for any reason at all. They just won’t be removed unless the opposing party has a supermajority.

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    Can the US just institute a yearly recurring “impeachment day” holiday where you impeach the current president? It will make things so much easier to schedule around, and we know that from now on every president from both parties will be threatened by impeachment anyway.

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      You do realize this would cause impeachment to mean nothing right? It’s not a frivolous tool however much some people want it to be.

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        When one party refuses to hold their own guy accountable then it is indeed a frivolous tool. Trump obviously should have been removed…so what do impeachment do?

        Not much in the mind of the average texan.

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          That’s incorrect. The goal of the GOP is to delegitimize it. They’re just upset because their guy was the only president to be impeached twice for legitimate reasons.