Pennsylvania’s junior senator endured the acidulous ridicule of social media after posting on Twitter a “Happy Juneteenth” greeting to African-Americans. Many mocked his commemoration of the holiday by reminding him of a 2013 incident where he pulled a shotgun out on an innocent Black jogger.
Without proof, the politician believed the unarmed Black jogger was part of an earlier shooting.
Like many other politicians, Sen. John Fetterman and his team thought it would be appropriate to mark the federal holiday with a tweet.
“Happy Juneteenth! Today we celebrate emancipation + reflect on the long shadow of systemic racism in America,” the former Pennsylvania lieutenant governor wrote, adding, “PA always stands by the unshakeable truth that Black families matter + Black lives matter.”
GOP stakeholders immediately jumped into his comments and reminded the public of a racial profiling scandal from a decade ago.
Steven Guest, a former special communications adviser for Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, was one of the first to reply to the post with a screenshot of a headline from the Philadelphia Inquirer that read, “Everything to know about the 2013 John Fetterman jogger incident: Lt. Gov. John Fetterman pursued a man in 2013 and pulled a shotgun on him because he wrongly believed the Black jogger had been involved in a shooting.”
One person sarcastically wrote, “Do black joggers matter?” mocking the Black Lives Matter tag.
Another questioned, “Didn’t you pull a shotgun on an unarmed black jogger once? Maybe sit this one out, racist.”
The tweet began going viral for all the wrong reasons.
“Senator, why don’t you tell that story about that time you chased a black jogger and held a shotgun on him because you thought he was a criminal?” tweeted Tim Murtaugh, former President Donald Trump’s campaign communications director.
The debacle has been a sore spot in Fetterman’s political career, with the topic coming up in debates, town hall meetings, and social media forums.
While the mayor of the predominantly Black and very small city of Braddock, located in Allegheny County with a population of 1,718 people according to Census records, he said he heard gunshots while he was outside of his home. According to the then second-term mayor, he assessed that the shooting was close by, and swiftly gathered up his then-4-year-old son and rushed him into the house.
Before going inside, he asserts he saw someone running from the area.
With this information Fetterman called 911, secured his child in the house, grabbed his 20-gauge shotgun, and then hopped in his truck to pursue the person he thought was the suspect.
His goal, he told reporters then, was to stop the individual from getting away from law enforcement. He locked in on one man running and detained him with his firearm.
A police report from the day noted, Christopher Miyares, the African-American man stopped by Fetterman, was unarmed and had been jogging.
He says when Fetterman caught up to him, he used the fear of getting shot to keep him from leaving until the police arrived. Miyares says that the elected official pointed the gun at his chest. This is something that Fetterman vehemently denies.
Miyares also believes there was never a shooting, but the politician was actually startled by bottle rockets.
Neither story has been confirmed.
“I believe I did the right thing, but I may have broken the law in the course of doing it, and I’m certainly not above the law,” Fetterman later said of the incident.
In 2022, during the first Pennsylvania Democratic Senate debate he was asked if he would do anything differently.
“The people of Braddock who know me, that know my heart, know that 2013 had nothing to do with what we’re saying today,” Fetterman said, as he double-downed on his position, “There was no profiling or anything involved.”
That same year an African-American politician from McKeesport called out the justice system for letting the former mayor slide.
Fawn Walker-Montgomery, a former city council member of a municipality near Braddock, said this would have played out much differently had she pulled out a rifle on someone.
“He was a white man with a gun chasing a Black man. I used to be on the council in McKeesport, and if I chased after a person with a gun, I would still be in jail. He’s showing he’s not aware of his white privilege,” Walker-Montgomery said.
The senator’s white privilege and sincerity to the cause were placed under a microscope for more reasons than just the jogger-shot gun incident.
During his election campaign, his website underwent a massive scrub.
Conservative media reported last year that his team removed all references to Black Lives Matter as he opposed the wildly popular Dr. Mehmet Oz in the 2022 year’s midterm elections, although his campaign denied this contention and said a video on the site about gun violence referenced the social justice movement.
He triumphed, securing the seat, but as demonstrated by the Juneteenth uproar from conservatives, he continues to be a target — from the right, at least — about his stand on race relations.
