Fetterman still has ‘a hard time understanding’ conversations, NBC News correspondent reports

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NBC reporter says Fetterman has 'lingering' auditory issues

NBC reporter Dasha Burns described Senate candidate John Fetterman as having lingering auditory issues following his stroke back in May while previewing her one-on-one interview.

NBC News correspondent Dasha Burns reported Tuesday that John Fetterman, the Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania, still has "a hard time understanding what he’s hearing" ahead of the midterm elections. 

Burns appeared on MSNBC’s "Katy Tur Reports" to preview her exclusive interview with the lieutenant governor, which will air in its entirety on Wednesday. Both Burns and Tur noted that this would mark the first time that Fetterman has sat down for a one-on-one interview with a reporter since his stroke in May.

Regarding the stroke, Burns commented that the interview itself showed Fetterman struggling to have verbal conversations.

"We had a monitor set up so he could read my questions because he still has lingering auditory processing issues as a result of the stroke, which means he has a hard time understanding what he’s hearing. Now, once he reads the question, he’s able to understand. You’ll hear he also still has some problems, some challenges with speech. I’ll say that just in some of the small talk prior to the interview, before the closed captioning was up and running, it did seem that he had a hard time understanding our conversations," Burns said.

John Fetterman, lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania and Democratic Senate candidate, speaks during a campaign rally in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, US, on Saturday, Oct. 1, 2022.  (Nate Smallwood/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

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She also described the interview as "unconventional" and a departure from how she originally spoke with him prior to the stroke.

"Now, Fetterman has always been an unconventional candidate, but this is a particularly unconventional interview. I sat down with him at his home in May before the stroke. This was very different, including literally what the set up looked like," she said.

Burns offered a preview of the interview with Fetterman who also remarking that he still suffers from "lingering" issues after his stroke.

"Every now and then I’ll miss a word, every now and then, or sometimes I’ll maybe mush two words together. As long as I have captioning, I’m able to understand exactly what’s being asked, but even after the stroke, immediately after that, I was able to read everything and I haven’t lost any memories or anything like that. It’s just really the lingering issue that I have," Fetterman said.

Media pundits have begun questioning Fetterman's fitness to run following his stroke in May. (Michelle Gustafson/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Burns also noted that Fetterman’s team continues to deny requests for medical records for the candidate after his stroke.

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"What you saw and heard there, the auditory processing challenges, the speech challenges. I’ve spoken with stroke experts. They say folks can fully recover from that, but the caveat that every expert gives is that they can’t fully assess a patient without details on their health records, without that information that the campaign has yet to disclose. We’ve asked multiple times for medical records, for interviews with someone from his medical team. Those requests have been denied to NBC News and other outlets that have requested this as well," Burns said.

Fetterman has only given four nationally televised interviews, all of them with MSNBC, since May. (Screenshot/MSNBC/TheReidout)

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Although Fetterman’s campaign team has insisted that he has appeared more frequently in the media, so far he has only appeared four times in nationally televised interviews since his stroke in May. All of them have been on MSNBC.