Politics

John Fetterman Says He's 'Very Libertarian in a Lot of Ways'

The Pennsylvania senator discusses drugs, the state of the Democratic Party, and his past support for Bernie Sanders.

Nick Gillespie | From the August/September 2026 issue

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John Fetterman: 'I'm a Very Pro-Capitalist Democrat'

Over a decade ago, Sen. John Fetterman (D–Pa.) looked like the future of Bernie Sanders–style populism, championing higher minimum wages, criminal justice reform, and social welfare spending. After 13 years as mayor of deeply impoverished Braddock, Pennsylvania, and then a term as the state's lieutenant governor, he won his Senate seat in 2022.

Since coming to Washington, Fetterman has charted a unique path. He routinely criticizes his own party for "catering to the fringe and agitated parts of our base," accuses fellow Democrats of Trump Derangement Syndrome, and praises capitalism as the one system that has consistently improved living standards.

In May, Fetterman joined The Reason Interview With Nick Gillespie to argue that the socialist politics of such Democrats as Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani are alienating moderates and spell long-term doom for the party. He denounced former President Joe Biden's failure to control the southern border and President Donald Trump's antipathy toward legal immigration, called the national debt a "ticking bomb," and advocated legalizing marijuana and psychedelics.

Reason: You recently wrote in The Washington Post that you're not going to be changing parties. Yet you also have critical words for your own party. You told Fox News that the Democratic Party is turning into "an orgy of socialism." And in your Post piece, you said that Democrats are "catering to the fringe and agitated parts of our base." What do you think is driving that?

Fetterman: Extremism is driving it, without a doubt. Look at the primaries all across in the Senate and in the House, and look at the kinds of people that have already been elected.

For example, the mayor in Seattle, she's an absolute socialist, if not more. And now people [say], "Hey, I'm leaving," and she's like, "Bye." And then, of course, New York, that's its own situation too. I thought [Florida Republican Gov. Ron] DeSantis had a great line saying, "Mamdani is my favorite real estate agent now." It's driving people away. People can move, and they can vote with their feet. That explains why Florida continues to flourish. But a lot of these states like New York and other blue states, we've read that $2 trillion have migrated out of these states too.

The Democratic Party is the problem, except they love the billionaires that fund those kinds of causes and those kinds of organizations that are actually driving a part, a lot, of the protesting. That's where that energy is as well. Look at some of the views now that people are espousing. It's moving more and more in socialism and communism.

In Maine, for example, [Democratic Senate candidate] Graham Platner: avowed communist. He described himself as a communist. "Antifa"—that's not a slur from me. That's his own words, how he described that.

What about your own personal evolution? In 2016, you endorsed Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.) in the presidential primaries for the Democratic Party. He's an avowed democratic socialist. What is it that rubbed you the wrong way about socialists or communists since then?

In 2016, it was much more about the minimum wage and some other very basic kinds of things. Now that's just turned into much more standing with Cuba, standing with Venezuela, standing with the Iranian regime, and turn that into becoming more increasingly anti-American.

My views really haven't changed that much, things that I supported. I was very supportive about gay rights. Back in 2013, I was officializing a gay marriage when that was illegal. I was happy to get arrested on that. My views really haven't changed; what's really changed is the party. In 2024, I was campaigning for Kamala Harris as a Democrat. It was very clear we were going to lose, and a lot of the excesses that we've had in 2020 came back to revisit, and that really, I think, cost us that election in 2024. The excess of the party back then summoned the second term of the Trump administration.

.@SenFettermanPA endorsed Bernie Sanders for president in 2016. Now he's blasting fellow Democrats for embracing socialism.

What changed?

"My views really haven't changed. What's really changed is the party," Fetterman tells @nickgillespie on The Reason Interview podcast. pic.twitter.com/M2OjvyidQE

— reason (@reason) May 16, 2026

You've said that the Democratic Party has become anti-men. What forms does that take? What's driving the lurch to the far left, both in terms of economic policy and identity politics?

If you make someone feel uncomfortable or unwelcome, they will leave. They've done that. Back in 2016, I witnessed that. I lived directly across the street from a steel mill and the........

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