“This became the Belichick girlfriend story of politics,” he quipped at one point, referring to the recent media attention around the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill football coach. “It just keeps going and going.”
After his discharge from Walter Reed in 2023, Mr. Fetterman embraced a role as a stigma-busting spokesman for the power of treatment and used his challenges as an opportunity to bridge partisan politics.
“Red or blue, if you have depression, get help, please,” he said in an interview later that year.
These days, Mr. Fetterman is not so sure it was wise to talk about any of that. He doesn’t think it’s anyone’s business whether, as some former aides have suggested, he is or isn’t following the regimen that his doctors recommended to treat his mental health issues. He sings the praises only of Mounjaro, the injectable diabetes and weight-loss drug that he credits with making him feel “a decade younger, as well as clearer-headed and more optimistic than I’d been in years.”
Still, there have been big gaps in his attendance.
Since his return from Walter Reed, Mr. Fetterman has missed more votes than all but two senators, both of whom were campaigning for president last year: Republicans JD Vance of Ohio and Tim Scott of South Carolina, according to a New York Times analysis of Senate roll call records.
This year, the analysis found, Mr. Fetterman also has missed more votes than all but two of his colleagues: Senators Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington, and Bernie Sanders, independent of Vermont. Ms. Murray has been absent to care for her ailing husband, while Mr. Sanders has been on his “Fighting Oligarchy Tour,” speaking out against President Trump and drawing a total of 265,000 people to events across 12 states so far, according to a spokeswoman.