Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) will meet with President-elect Donald Trump at Trump’s resort in Palm Beach, Florida, before the inauguration, making him the first Democrat in the Senate to take the trip to Mar-a-Lago.
It’s a journey, often characterized as humbling, that has been popular with American business titans including Mark Zuckerberg (Meta) and Jeff Bezos (Amazon, Blue Origin, Washington Post) and world leaders like Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni, Argentina President Javier Milei, and resigning Canadian PM Justin Trudeau.
As MAGA Republicans — including Elon Musk, who has reportedly been staying at the resort since the election — have made Mar-a-Lago a victory clubhouse and transition headquarters, Democrats have largely resisted “kissing the ring” — as many Republicans have been accused of doing in the wake of Trump’s election victory.
Fetterman’s seminal trip engendered a big headline at CBS News, which the Senator responded to explaining the reasoning behind his Trump courtship, calling it a mission to find “common ground.”
I’m not just a Senator for Democrats—I’m a Senator for all Pennsylvanians.
It’s my job to find common ground and deliver results for everybody.
And because nobody is my gatekeeper, I will meet with anyone to secure some wins, including President Trump. pic.twitter.com/H6MhmYBJXd
— U.S. Senator John Fetterman (@SenFettermanPA) January 9, 2025
“I’m not just a Senator for Democrats,” Fetterman wrote. “I’m a Senator for all Pennsylvanians. It’s my job to find common ground and deliver results for everybody.”
Declaring autonomy and independence (“nobody is my gatekeeper”), Fetterman said securing “wins” made collaboration necessary with whoever can help, “including President Trump.”
Q. What are you hoping to get out of your visit to Mar-a-Lago with Donald Trump?
John Fetterman: “I demand that I need to be made Pope of Greenland.” pic.twitter.com/DEWD0C9sfJ
— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) January 10, 2025
Fetterman’s explanation may have felt necessary to him, as Democrats — stung by Kamala Harris’s election loss — still generally perceive cooperation with or amiability toward Trump as capitulation, as it is still widely believed by many on the left that Trump’s conduct around the 2020 election should have disqualified him from holding office again.
Trump has been repeatedly described by his opponents as an autocratic “threat to democracy” — a conviction that hasn’t changed with his election win. The antagonism toward Trump remains so raw that even liberal lion Barack Obama, the most popular of all Democrats, has come under fire for a brief moment of levity he shared with Trump at the memorial service for the late President Jimmy Carter.
Castigating Obama, Charlamagne Tha God said on his radio show: “After you went so hard calling somebody a threat to democracy and calling somebody a fascist and now you’re just chummy-chummy with the man?”
Fetterman made his post before the Obama criticism went viral, but it is indicative of the current rupture between the parties that he felt the obligation to explain himself to his constituency.
