“Not Fetterman”: Conspiracy Theorists Think Pennsylvania Senator Is Body Double

Online conspiracy theorists are convinced that Senator John Fetterman has been replaced with a body double.

One factor fueling this bizarre belief is that Fetterman has made major strides since suffering a stroke in spring 2022. He continued to campaign, even though many Republicans accused him of being unfit to serve. His progress is now being weaponized against him.

In addition to his improved speech abilities, many conspiracists cite photos that they claim shows Fetterman’s distinctive forearm tattoos have disappeared. It probably has nothing to do with the fact that the before and after photos show completely different angles of Fetterman’s arms.

Obviously, there is no proof that Fetterman has been replaced. As one online jokester pointed out, the senator’s sheer size alone is enough to make it extremely difficult to find a convincing body double.

Fetterman has responded to the conspiracy in his classic sarcastic fashion. If anything, his tweets should prove he’s still the same man. Fetterman’s social media presence continues to be (as the kids say) hot fire.

Replacing public figures with body doubles is a popular theory among QAnon followers. The QAnon conspiracy theory says that the global elite are committing pedophilia and satanic rituals and the only person who can stop them is Donald Trump. Many followers believe that powerful people such as Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton have already been executed and replaced with body doubles.

If that is the case, then it would seem that not even Trump’s inner circle is safe. Throughout both of Trump’s campaigns and his entire time at the White House, conspiracy theorists insisted that his wife, Melania, had also been replaced with a body double. (Although in her case, it was because people suspected she had chosen to have a body double because she didn’t want to be around her husband.)

Representative Lauren Boebert says she’s “back to work” after the nightmare date seen around the country. But her latest comments have raised more questions than they answered.

“All future date nights have been canceled, and I learned to check party affiliations before you go on a date,” Boebert jokingly told TMZ on Monday.

Boebert and a date were kicked out of the Buell Theatre in Denver during a Sunday evening performance of Beetlejuice after their behavior sparked three complaints from other attendees. An incident report said the pair were vaping, singing along, recording the show, and generally “causing a disturbance.” This was backed up by security video, which also showed the couple getting handsy in their seats.

Boebert’s comment about checking party affiliation seems to imply that she had not known the man for very long—and TMZ inferred that the night in question was Boebert’s first date with him. The man has been identified as Aspen, Colorado, bar owner Quinn Gallagher. Gallagher is believed to be a Democrat, and the bar he co-owns has hosted multiple LGBTQ-friendly events, including a drag show. Boebert, meanwhile, has repeatedly pushed the false and dangerous Republican conspiracy theory that drag queens are grooming children.

If all of this is true, then we have some questions.

1. This was their first date? They seemed very comfortable with each other.
2. Does Boebert vape near (and then tell off) pregnant women on all of her first dates?
3. How did their politics not come up beforehand?
4. If Gallagher’s a Democrat, why would he go on a date with Boebert?
5. And why would she go on a date with him?

Rudy Giuliani has been sued by his former lawyer for failing to pay nearly $1.6 million in legal fees.

Giuliani faces an increasing number of legal battles, mostly related to trying to keep Donald Trump in the White House, but a dwindling amount of financial resources. Things took a turn for the worse on Monday when Giuliani’s former lawyer Robert Costello sued for unpaid fees.

Costello worked as Giuliani’s lawyer from November 2019 until July of this year. He and his law firm said in the suit that Giuliani has paid just $214,000 of his enormous tab. The last payment was in September, shortly after Trump hosted a $100,000-per-plate fundraiser for Giuliani, the AP reported. Costello and his firm are seeking a full repayment from Giuliani, including for costs incurred trying to get him to settle his debt.

Giuliani denied that he owed his former lawyer that much money. “I can’t express how personally hurt I am by what Bob Costello has done,” he said in a statement Monday. “It’s a real shame when lawyers do things like this, and all I will say is that their bill is way in excess to anything approaching legitimate fees.”

The man once affectionately known as “America’s mayor” is scrambling to find cash for all his legal fees, and even listed his Manhattan apartment for sale in July. In August, after he was indicted in Georgia, Giuliani asked his social media followers to donate to his defense fund. He has also started representing himself in some cases to save on legal fees.

He also flew to Mar-a-Lago to beg Trump to pay him for working as Trump’s personal attorney. That didn’t work, but Trump did agree to host a fundraiser dinner for Giuliani. Entry cost $100,000 a plate, but Giuliani paid Costello just $10,000 in September. Giuliani’s son Andrew said Trump has agreed to host a second such event later this year.

But the bills keep piling up. In addition to defending himself against charges of felony racketeering in Georgia, Giuliani was ordered to pay more than $130,000 to Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss. The two women served as 2020 election workers in Georgia, and Giuliani falsely accused them for months of fraud.

Giuliani’s third ex-wife says he owes her more than $260,000 for her country club memberships, condominium fees, and health care as part of their divorce settlement. Giuliani narrowly avoided jail time over that lawsuit in December.

And one of Giuliani’s former associates sued him in May, accusing him of promising to pay her a $1 million annual salary but instead raping and sexually abusing her over the course of two years.

We now have even more details about how little Donald Trump cares about classified documents. His former executive assistant allegedly told federal investigators that Trump used classified documents as scrap paper.

Molly Michael, who worked as Trump’s assistant from 2018 until 2022, told special counsel Jack Smith’s team that Trump would write to-do lists for her on the backs of documents that had visible classification markings, ABC reported Monday, citing anonymous sources. The classified documents were originally used to brief Trump about phone calls with foreign leaders and other international matters.

The documents that Trump used as scrap paper were at Mar-a-Lago when the FBI raided the resort in August 2022, but agents did not find them. Instead, Michael found them the following day when she went to her office to clean up. She gave the documents to the FBI that day, ABC wrote.

Michael resigned due to how Trump handled the pre-raid requests to return the classified documents kept at Mar-a-Lago. The sources also told ABC that when Trump heard the FBI wanted to interview Michael, he told her, “You don’t know anything about the boxes.”

These new allegations about how Trump treated classified documents should come as no surprise. Trump was indicted in Florida for hoarding classified materials at Mar-a-Lago, and charged with keeping national defense secrets, making false statements, and conspiracy to obstruct justice, among other things.

The indictment reveals that Trump hid boxes of classified documents everywhere throughout Mar-a-Lago, including in the ballroom, a bathroom and shower, and his bedroom.

While he was in office, Trump reportedly tried to dispose of classified documents in the toilet. In her 2022 book Confidence Man, reporter Maggie Haberman wrote that Trump would tear documents up and flush them down the toilet, in violation of presidential records law. Trump has denied doing so.

Former Trump ally and White House adviser Omarosa Manigault Newman alleged in her 2018 memoir that Trump got rid of a sensitive document by eating it. (Trump denied this, and the validity of Manigault Newman’s book has been called into question, given her track record of bending the truth while at the White House.)

A Republican billionaire megadonor who used to be one of Ron DeSantis’s biggest financial backers has yet to say whether he will donate to the Florida governor during the presidential primary.

Hedge fund CEO Ken Griffin told CNBC, in an interview that will air Monday night, that he is disappointed with all of the Republican candidates and has not decided which one he will back. Griffin highlighted DeSantis in particular.

“I don’t know his strategy,” Griffin said. “It’s not clear to me what voter base he is intending to appeal to.”

Griffin was DeSantis’s biggest donor during the 2022 election, giving $5 million to his gubernatorial reelection campaign. Griffin also repeatedly said he would “love” to see DeSantis run for president in 2024.

But now he’s suddenly changed his mind.

One of Griffin’s biggest issues is DeSantis’s battle with Disney. “The ongoing battle with Disney, I think, is pointless,” Griffin said. “It doesn’t reflect well on the ethos of Florida.”

DeSantis has been locked in a bizarre and increasingly ridiculous battle with Disney for more than a year. When the company’s then chairman condemned DeSantis’s “Don’t Say Gay” law last year, DeSantis retaliated by stripping the park of its autonomous governing powers and installing a leadership board of his own allies.

Disney sued DeSantis in April, alleging that he weaponized the government against the company’s free speech rights—and the lawsuit cites extensively from DeSantis’s own memoir. The two parties continue to engage in weird legal tit for tats.

Griffin also told CNBC that he would rather both Republicans and Democrats have younger candidates to put forward. If that were the case, “we’d have a debate around ideas and principles and policies to make this a great nation,” he said. “We’re not having that dialogue right now.”

Griffin was the third-biggest individual political donor in the country in 2022, having given a total of $71,050,000 to exclusively conservative causes, according to OpenSecrets. The 2022 elections were the most expensive midterms ever, as billionaires such as Griffin rushed to exert influence over the outcomes.

Griffin actually was one of Barack Obama’s biggest fundraisers when he first ran for election in 2008. But by 2012, Griffin had flipped, transferring his vote and his money to then–Republican nominee Mitt Romney. He alleged the Obama administration had “embraced class warfare as being politically expedient” and argued that wealthy people had “insufficient influence” in politics.

“Those who have enjoyed the benefits of our system more than ever now owe a duty to protect the system that has created the greatest nation on this planet,” Griffin told the Chicago Tribune in 2012.

This article has been updated.

This weekend, Senator Chuck Schumer announced that the Senate will no longer enforce a formal dress code—and Republicans have been losing their mind ever since.

In particular, Republicans are mad that Senator John Fetterman’s casual fashion sense is officially acceptable. The Pennsylvania senator has become known for forgoing the suit and tie worn by his colleagues and wearing shorts and sweatshirts instead.

On Sunday, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene took to X, formerly known as Twitter, to lambaste the change in the Senate’s dress code as a “disgraceful” attempt to “appease Fetterman.”

“Dress code is one of society’s standards that set etiquette and respect for our institutions,” Greene wrote. “Stop lowering the bar!”

In response, Fetterman reminded everyone that it was actually Greene who’d lowered the bar.

“Thankfully, the nation’s lower chamber lives by a higher code of conduct: displaying ding-a-ling-pics in a public hearing,” he wrote in a post on X, referring to MTG’s decision to hold up poster-size prints of Hunter Biden’s nude photos during a House Oversight Committee hearing this summer.

But Greene isn’t the only Republican making a stink.

On Monday morning, former Trump political adviser Stephen Miller took a break from his new career of filing lawsuits against Pop-Tarts and M&Ms to also criticize the new dress code.

Fox News has similarly been quick to pick up the supposed controversy. In an interview on Fox Business on Sunday, Oklahoma Senator Markwayne Mullin was asked about the change in Senate dress code and called Fetterman’s outfits “completely disrespectful.”

“There’s a side of me that’s super excited about it because I hate wearing a tie, and I’d rather be in blue jeans and a pair of boots and a white T-shirt,” Mullin admitted in surprising detail. “But the fact is, that you do dress for the job. And we need to be respectful of the position we hold,” he added.

When asked if the change in dress code was Schumer’s attempt to appease Fetterman, Mullin replied, “Of course it is. Hundred percent.”

Last week, Representative Matt Gaetz also freaked out about Fetterman’s clothes. In an interview with Steve Bannon, Gaetz remarked, “That is the best-dressed we have ever seen John Fetterman.”

“His shirt had both buttons, and the entire pant was not elastic. There were elastic features, but it was not exclusively elastic,” Gaetz said.

Fetterman had this to say to Gaetz: “Instead of crying about how I dress, how about you get your shit together and do your job, bud?”

As the government hurtles toward another shutdown, it’s good to know that Republicans have more interest in fashion commentary than governing.

Donald Trump has once again doomed his legal defense, this time by placing himself at the center of the plot to overturn the 2020 election and saying in a new interview that it was entirely his decision.

Trump was indicted in Washington for trying to overthrow the presidential election. He faces charges for conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to corruptly obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against the right to vote. The indictment, one of four, hinges in part on the argument that Trump knew he had lost the election but still actively worked to overturn the results.

In a Sunday interview with NBC, Trump revealed that multiple legal advisers had told him the election was legitimate. When anchor Kristen Welker asked why he chose not to listen to them, Trump replied, “Because I didn’t respect them.”

“I respected many others that said the election was rigged,” he continued. “You know who I listen to? Myself. I saw what happened.”

Welker then asked if Trump was ultimately “calling the shots.”

“As to whether or not I believed it was rigged? Oh, sure,” Trump replied. “It was my decision.”

Trump’s biggest defense so far has been that he genuinely believed he had won the election and was following his lawyers’ advice. Yet he and his legal team continue to undermine his own defense strategy. When he was arraigned for the January 6 indictment in August, Trump’s lawyer Alina Habba also undercut their main argument.

“I think that everybody was made aware that he lost the election, but that doesn’t mean that that was the only advice he was given,” Habba told reporters outside the courthouse. “There are a numerous amount of advisers and politicians and lawyers, not just one or two, that are giving you advice and telling you what they believe is true.”

“The president has the right, as every one of us do, to listen to several opinions and make their decision.”

The thing is, Trump is legally allowed to say the election was rigged as much as he wants. But he is not allowed to act on that belief, as he now admits to doing. As The New Republic’s Matt Ford pointed out, there is no constitutional right to organize a coup.

Donald Trump marked Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year, by threatening American Jews.

Trump shared a graphic on Truth Social Sunday night detailing everything that he did supposedly in support of Jewish people. This included moving the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv and recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights and settlements in the West Bank. All of these moves were highly controversial and widely decried when Trump announced them.

“Just a quick reminder for liberal Jews who voted to destroy America & Israel because you believed false narratives!” the image was captioned. “Let’s hope you learned from your mistake & make better choices moving forward! Happy New Year!”

Seven in 10 American Jews identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party, according to polling from the Pew Research Center.

For someone who says he is incredibly pro-Israel, Trump has a habit of threatening Jewish people in his own country. In October, he accused American Jews of failing to praise his Israel policies enough.

“No President has done more for Israel than I have. Somewhat surprisingly, however, our wonderful Evangelicals are far more appreciative of this than the people of the Jewish faith, especially those living in the U.S.,” he wrote on Truth Social. “U.S. Jews have to get their act together and appreciate what they have in Israel—Before it is too late!”

Then, just two months later, he criticized Jewish leaders for their lack of “loyalty” toward him, despite the fact that he had just had dinner with neo-Nazis Nick Fuentes and Kanye West.

“Jewish Leaders forgot that I was the best, by far, President for Israel,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “They should be ashamed of themselves. This lack of loyalty to their greatest friends and allies is why large numbers in Congress, and so many others, have stopped giving support to Israel.”

In the nearly a year since that now-infamous dinner, Trump has yet to condemn Fuentes or West for their open embrace of Nazi beliefs, admiration of Hitler, and Holocaust denialism.

Special Counsel Jack Smith and his team are seeking a gag order against the former president to limit what he says in the run-up to his trial on charges that he participated in a plot to overturn the 2020 election.

To that end, Smith has asked a federal judge in Washington, D.C., to impose a “narrowly tailored” order limiting Trump—who is famous for saying literally anything that sluices through his brain at any particular moment—from making public statements that could “present a serious and substantial danger of prejudicing” the trial.

A copy of the government filing was released on Friday—and it is unsparing in its criticism of Trump.

Smith’s office is accusing Trump of engaging in a “disinformation” campaign and of intimidating witnesses, prosecutors, and the court itself.

“As set forth in the indictment, after election day in 2020, the defendant launched a disinformation campaign in which he publicly and widely broadcast knowingly false claims that there had been outcome-determinative fraud in the presidential election, and that he had actually won,” federal prosecutors wrote in their filing. “In service of his criminal conspiracies, through false public statements, the defendant sought to erode public faith in the administration of the election and intimidate individuals who refuted his lies. The defendant is now attempting to do the same thing in this criminal case—to undermine confidence in the criminal justice system and prejudice the jury pool through disparaging and inflammatory attacks on the citizens of this District, the Court, prosecutors, and prospective witnesses.”

Trump has been indicted in four separate cases—and he has repeatedly attacked witnesses, co-defendants, and prosecutors involved in all of them. In March, for example, he posted a photo of himself wielding a baseball bat next to Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s head. (Bragg was the first prosecutor to indict the former president for alleged hush-money payments made to porn actress Stormy Daniels.)

If the gag order is granted, this would be another major setback for Trump—though his tendency to overshare in public settings has added more to his pile of legal woes than it has solved, so it could be that Smith is doing the former president a major favor.

Drew Barrymore confirmed Friday that she will continue to film her talk show, a move that undermines the ongoing writers guild strike.

The actress found herself at the center of a P.R. storm last week after she announced she would resume filming without her writers. Writers for The Drew Barrymore Show have since picketed outside the studio, and Barrymore herself is facing intense backlash for being a scab.

“I believe there’s nothing I can do or say in this moment to make it OK,” Barrymore said in a video posted on Instagram, noting she wanted to “take full responsibility for my actions.”

“I know there is just nothing I can do that will make this OK for those it is not OK with. I fully accept that. I fully understand that,” she said.

Then, tearing up, Barrymore said, “I deeply apologize to writers. I deeply apologize to unions.”

There are actually several things Barrymore could do to make the situation OK. She could, for example, announce she will not resume filming. She could also invite union leaders onto her show, instead of her usual celebrity guests, to explain what workers are striking for and why the protest is important.

Barrymore also compared filming during the strike to when she launched her show during the Covid-19 lockdowns. “I just wanted to make a show that was there for people in sensitive times,” she said. “And I weighed the scales and I thought, if we could go on during a global pandemic, and everything that the world has experienced through 2020, why would this sideline us?”

Launching during a pandemic and working through a strike are wildly different circumstances. In the pandemic, people needed moments of levity and Barrymore’s crew could avoid spreading the virus by wearing face masks and social distancing.

But filming during the strike defeats the whole purpose of the labor action. “When any production that is covered under WGA comes back during a strike it undermines our whole group effort to come to a fair contract with the AMPTP,” Chelsea White, a co-head writer on Barrymore’s show, told Rolling Stone.

Barrymore is not just facing backlash from her writing staff. A Writers Guild council member and negotiator told Rolling Stone that several major stars, including Matthew McConaughey, Samantha Bee, and Leslie Jones, had canceled guest appearances on Barrymore’s show in solidarity with the strike.

Actor Bradley Whitford called Barrymore out directly.