Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) blamed TikTok for giving young voters a “warped” perspective on the Israel-Hamas war and the way it is being handled by the White House.
During an interview with CNN, Jake Tapper pointed to a new New York Times/Siena College poll that found 72% of voters ages 18 to 29 are not on board with President Biden’s response to the conflict — so much so that 46% of voters in this age group said they would trust Donald Trump to do a better job at handling the war.
Fetterman suggested that TikTok could be the culprit.
“I do know that a lot of people are getting their perspective from TikTok,” he said during the segment, which was earlier reported on by Mediaite.
“I think if you’re kind of getting your perspective on the world on TikTok, it’s going to tend to be kind of warped or not reflective of the history and actually the way things absolutely are.”
Last month, youngsters who tore down posters of Israeli hostages and launched waves of anti-Israel demonstrations told The Post at the time that they were fueled by pro-Palestinian videos, mainly on TikTok and Instagram.
More than a dozen protesters interviewed by The Post at a rally in Manhattan attended by at least 2,000 under-30s who had skipped school to join in on the spectacle confirmed that their opinions about the Israel-Hamas war were shaped mainly by the social media apps — and to a lesser extent their school professors.
Jewish TikTok employees have accused the China-owned company of allowing hostile conditions and internal instances of antisemitism since Israel’s war with Hamas broke out in October.
Jewish employees at the company alleged to Fox Business earlier this month that TikTok has allowed “antisemitic and anti-Israel sentiments” to be “expressed freely” on the company’s internal messaging system, Lark.
Fetterman, who emerged as one of the leading supporters of the Jewish state in the aftermath of Hamas’ brutal Oct. 7 attack, said during the Monday interview that it’s “very clear” that “Hamas started this and they actually broke the cease-fire and they attacked and murdered babies, children, women — attacked a music concert and everything.”
Fetterman doubled down on the stance, telling Tapper: “I believe that I’m on the right side of issues.”
He also suggested that until Hamas no longer exists, there won’t be peace — a sentiment he’s shared before, when he said that Israel has a right to “eliminate the Hamas terrorists who slaughtered innocent men, women and children.”
“It’s been very clear that Israel would very much want there to be peace. But they’ve made it very clear that after Oct. 7, that’s just not possible so long as Hamas is allowed to exist,” the 54-year-old senator told CNN on Monday.
Stay on top of news out of the Israel-Hamas war and the global surge in antisemitism with The Post’s Israel War Update, delivered right to your inbox every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Fetterman’s fierce stance on Israel — along with his strong opinions on immigration reform — had him rejecting the “progressive” label in an NBC News interview last week and again to Tapper this week.
When Tapper asked about his claims that he’s “not a progressive,” Fetterman fired back: “I would just call myself a Democrat.”
Hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters shut down the street outside his Philadelphia office in October, demanding that Fetterman call for a cease-fire as they paraded an enormous puppet resembling the senator.
The former Braddock, Pa., mayor has also been heckled at events and was even confronted at a bar by an individual questioning why he wouldn’t back a cease-fire.
Sixteen former Fetterman campaign staffers penned an open letter to the senator in October calling his support for Israel “a gutting betrayal.”
Senate Republicans are pushing to couple aid to Israel and Ukraine with reforms to US immigration laws, a move that Fetterman described as “not ideal” but a conversation that “we should have.”
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