Fetterman says Trump's 'special' place in Pennsylvania grew after assassination attempt

Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., on Thursday said former President Donald Trump has a "special kind of place" in Pennsylvania that has grown since the July assassination attempt.

The lawmaker told Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, at a festival held by the magazine that Trump's roles in the state and GOP have evolved over the years.

Trump has created a special kind of hold within the coronet he's remade – the party – and he has a special kind of place in Pennsylvania, and I think that only deepened after the first assassination attempt," Sen. Fetterman said.

Trump at the time of the Butler, Pa. shooting was leading President Joe Biden in Pennsylvania by three points, according to a conducted by The New York Times and Siena College Research Institute. The institutions surveyed Americans there again nearly a month later and Vice President Kamala Harris, who took over the Democratic campaign, in front of Trump by four percentage points.

Harris led the former president in the state by the same margin in the most recent conducted by the institutions and The Philadelphia Inquirer. Sen. Fetterman on Thursday pointed to Hillary Clinton's fate in Pennsylvania during the 2016 election, where she lost by roughly 44,330 votes, in explaining his reasons to be cautious of survey results.

Clinton led Trump by seven percentage points in a conducted by The New York Times and Siena College in October of that year.

I was like, 'hey, there's a problem here. Trump is really connected,'" Sen. Fetterman recounted.

"And I joked that his signs became like the state flower – and you see that everywhere – and I'm like, 'I'm not really sure,' because everybody thought that it was in the bag, but that's not the energy and the other kinds of things that were really consistent with what I'm witnessing all across," the lawmaker continued. "And then, sadly, we saw what happened."

Still, Sen. Fetterman predicted Harris will win the November election since enough voters understand Trump's flaws.

"People understand who he is and what he's about, and enough people think that that's the feature, and it's not a bug," he said.

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