Senator Fetterman says “it makes you an assh***” to disrupt coffee shops and block roads, as many anti-Israel protesters have done in recent days. Mr. Fetterman tells the Sun that these “obnoxious” protesters should instead be protesting Hamas and demanding hostages be released. 

“Do you really think you’re turning people towards your view by getting a bullhorn and yelling at people drinking coffee at Starbucks or anything like that?” the senator asked rhetorically in a brief exchange on Capitol Hill Tuesday.

“If you really do want to protest and be obnoxious, then you should be protesting against Hamas and demanding that the hostages be brought back home,” he added. 

In a post on X on Tuesday, Mr. Fetterman said that protesters have gone too far and are alienating whatever allies they may have left. “I don’t know who needs to hear this, but blocking a bridge or berating folks in Starbucks isn’t righteous, it just makes you an ass****,” he wrote. 

Videos of the protests have gone viral in recent days, prompting Mr. Fetterman to respond. One video shows anti-Israel protesters barging into a Starbucks in Michigan, saying that Israel was committing a genocide. When the lead protester who was using a bullhorn to chant was asked to leave by staff, she refused. 

Another incident paralyzed a highway in Illinois. Protesters lined up and sat along I-190 at Chicago, which leads to O’Hare International Airport. Flyers were forced to abandon their cars and walk along the highway in order to reach the airport.

Separate groups, as part of an effort Monday to paralyze traffic around the world, closed off the Golden Gate Bridge at San Francisco and the Brooklyn Bridge at New York.

Mr. Fetterman has long been critical of both the “pinko” left wing of his party, as well as his fellow congressional Democrats who have called for a cease-fire since October 7. 

When President Biden demanded Prime Minister Netanyahu change course in the war and threatened to withhold American assistance, Mr. Fetterman was defiant, saying that the president was wrong on the issue. 

“I just think we should have Israel’s back in this situation. I don’t agree with the president,” Mr. Fetterman said. “I would never capitulate to the fringe” of the Democratic Party who are cautioning against strikes.

He also enraged many on the left when he declared that the situation on the southern border was a crisis, which many Democrats have so far refused to acknowledge. “I honestly don’t understand why it’s controversial to say we need a secure border,” Mr. Fetterman said in an interview with CNN.

The senator — whose wife is a Brazilian immigrant — said “I think about immigration … we want to provide the American dream for any migrant. However, it seems very difficult when you have 300,000 people showing up, encountered at our border, to achieve that.”

He said a “Pittsburgh” worth of people showing up at the southern border every month — as happened last year — was not a tenable situation.