Conservative commentators have been trying to manufacture outrage about Gisele Fetterman ever since she posted a photo of herself and her partially cropped out husband Senator-Elect John Fetterman during his Senate orientation yesterday. But they’re mostly outing themselves as meme-illiterates.
“The actual Senator-elect is halfway cut out of the photo!!!,” Tiana Lowe, a Washington Examiner commentator said in a Twitter post. “She wanted this so badly for herself lol. I hope subjecting her husband and her marriage to this was worth her 15 minutes.”
By lobbing the Very Serious accusation that Gisele Fetterman is someone stealing her husband’s spotlight, the right-wing media is almost intentionally missing the joke. Posting badly cropped images of her 6′8″ husband has been a running joke for Gisele Fetterman for over a year. And it didn’t take long for many who have been following her posts to point it out.
Another post badly attempting to dunk on the senator-elect’s wife showed Gisele Fetterman’s photo with the caption: “First day for Senator-elect Gisele Fetterman.”
Snark and satire was the Fetterman campaign’s go-to tactics throughout their campaign, so Gisele Fetterman’s continuation of the bit shouldn’t come as a surprise. After Fetterman’s stroke, the campaign heavily relied on pithy social media posts (a mix of tweets, memes, and celebrity appearances, including Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi from “Jersey Shore”) to portray his opponent Dr. Oz as an elitist who is out of touch with the working class and who is, most notably, not even from Pennsylvania.
The campaign even hired a plane to fly a welcome-home banner over New Jersey, where Dr. Oz resided before moving to Pennsylvania ahead of his Senate run.
But still, conservatives swung hard going after Gisele Fetterman and missed harder.
Fox News, in typical fashion, attacked the senator-elect’s wife for stealing the spotlight, while also emboldening some bizarre new conspiracy theory that’s been circulating the right-wing swamp that claims Gisele Fetterman would be appointed as the senator for the state of Pennsylvania if Fetterman couldn’t do the job. Fetterman, of course, suffered a stroke leading up to the midterm elections and is recovering.
“Well she is a lot better looking than he is,” Clay Travis, a right wing commentator, said on Fox News Wednesday. “The reality here is that it does feel as if basically Pennsylvania elected his wife and she certainly is furthering that idea with these photos.”
Gisele Fetterman is unbothered.
She even tweeted after posting the photo, writing, “me a few hours into Senate spouse orientation … when someone said: I love your dress … ‘thanks, it’s thrifted! $12!’”
