A special assistant to U.S. Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) was caught on tape saying he believes his boss would probably “be OK with overturning the Second Amendment” and “would prefer nobody have guns at all.”
Luke Borwegen is a Democratic operative who worked on Fetterman’s Senate campaign last year. He now serves as the senator’s “special assistant.” He was caught on tape by O’Keefe Media Group (OMG), a conservative news outlet founded by James O’Keefe, known for secretly taping political operatives and government employees.
In the new video released Tuesday (paywall), Borwegen is shown answering a series of questions from an unidentified interviewer over a meal in a restaurant. He talks about Fetterman’s favorable treatment from friendly reporters, who he describes as “puppets.” He also shares how Fetterman’s team has leveraged “access journalism” into positive press coverage.
“Do you know what access journalism is?” Borwegen asks his interviewer. “It’s like; reporters will tell any f***ing story their subject wants, as long as they get the interview.”
And that, he said, is how the Fetterman team chooses who gets access to the senator.
“The ones we pick will say exactly what you f***ing want them to,” Borwegen said. “They won’t paint him [Fetterman] in a bad light, you know?”
Fetterman’s favorable media coverage has been noted in the past.
For example, Washington Post reporter Jeff Stein posted a tweet he claimed was a quote of Fetterman’s comments during a recent hearing. But the video of the hearing showed Fetterman struggling to make simple sentences and even falling into incomprehensibility. Stein pulled the tweet after being called out publicly, claiming Fetterman’s staff had misled him.
But Borwegen’s description of Fetterman’s stance on gun control could be the biggest political problem from the undercover interview.
“He’s 100 percent for gun control. Banning automatic weapons, all that s***,” Borwegen said of Fetterman. “He’d be OK with overturning the Second Amendment, probably. I think he’d much rather prefer that nobody have guns at all.”
Fetterman supports an assault weapons ban and other gun control restrictions. He has also called for Democrats to end the legislative filibuster to pass anti-gun laws. “Democrats need to be ruthless and united now,” he tweeted last year.
O’Keefe founded OMG after being removed from his leadership at Project Veritas, a guerrilla journalism site he founded, amid allegations of financial improprieties. Some consider his journalism style controversial, using the undercover recording style popularized by Dateline: NBC and other outlets, but relying on citizen journalists rather than j-school grads.
Neither Borwegen nor any representative of Fetterman’s office responded to requests for comment.
