In this year’s midterm elections, Democrats are overwhelming favourites to win the House, and the party’s chances of winning the Senate are improving daily.
However, if their worst-case scenario comes to be, Republicans may have an advantage: Flip John Fetterman.
In the Trump era, Fetterman, a Democrat from Pennsylvania, has continuously defied his party. He might now turn out to be the ultimate Trump card.
According to a recent Politico article, President Donald Trump wants Fetterman to change parties and even use Fox News host Sean Hannity as a mediator.
Hannity expressed Trump’s wishes to Fetterman, saying, “Your job is to tell him: He’s going to run as a Republican, he’s going to have our full support, more money than he ever dreamed of, and he’s going to win big.”
Dave McCormick, a colleague senator from Pennsylvania, and his wife, Dina Powell McCormick, a former Trump NSC adviser and current vice president at Meta, are close friends of Fetterman’s. According to recent polls, he is outperforming McCormick and doing better with Republicans than within his own party.
Additionally, he has a good rapport with Alabama Republican Senator Katie Britt, who joined the Senate in the same year as Fetterman. In fact, he is in a group chat with her husband, Wesley, a former Alabama football star.
However, Fetterman himself told Politico last Friday, “I’m not changing,” rejecting the notion of switching to an independent or Republican party.According to Politico, Fetterman added, “I’m a Democrat, and I’m staying one.”
On March 3, 2026, Pennsylvania Democrat Senator John Fetterman addresses reporters in the Capitol in Washington, DC.
Following his State of the Union speech to a joint session of Congress in the House chamber of the US Capitol in Washington on Tuesday, February 24, 2026, President Donald Trump passes Fetterman on his way out.
On February 24, 2025, US Senator John Fetterman was spotted on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC.
Additionally, Fetterman told Politico, “I’d be a shitty Republican,” citing the party’s rejection of individuals who have defied Trump, such as Thom Tillis and Bill Cassidy.
Fetterman has been a rare Democratic vote on important Trump agenda items, including as approving the Department of Homeland Security budget and, earlier in Trump’s second term, approving Pam Bondi’s nominee as the administration’s attorney general.
A mainstay on Fox News, Senator Fetterman has been open about his contempt for his party’s members, particularly those on the extreme left.
Days after the shooting at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, which he attended, Fetterman argued in an interview with the Daily Mail last week that Democrats should “drop the TDS” and support President Trump’s proposed White House ballroom. “The leader of the Democratic party is TDS,” the Pennsylvania Democrat said, referring to “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” a term used by Trump supporters to characterise what they perceive to be an irrational, obsessive opposition to the President.
“This [ballroom] is necessary and deserving for our country,” he continued.
Fetterman doesn’t seem to have any public plans to leave his own party, despite its ongoing criticism.
