Sanjay Gupta on Fetterman’s Ability to Serve in the Senate After Stroke: ‘Processing Issue’ Not a ‘Comprehension Issue’

Brain surgeon and CNN medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta analyzed John Fetterman’s ability to perform as a U.S. Senator on Wednesday while on Inside Politics with John King. The topic became front and center in the media this week after an MSNBC reporter noted that Fetterman, the Democrat’s nominee for the U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania, required a monitor with a real-time transcript of questions during a recent interview.

Gupta kicked off his analysis by noting that watching the interview “was really interesting” as “you really get insight into how a stroke can affect a particular part of the brain and how people can recover from that as well.”

Gupta went on to explain that observers should not confuse Fetterman’s need for a visual aid with the Senate candidate not understanding the questions.

“He responds quickly and I think that was really important. Sometimes he might mash up a word or two, that’s how he described it. But what I think is so important, John, is that when we think about strokes, a lot of times people co-mingle, what is a functional deficit, auditory hearing, processing problem with cognition,” Gupta explained.

“He does not appear to have a problem with cognition. You know, he’s responding quickly. He supposedly took a couple of tests where he performed well on those tests,” Gupta added.

“So in terms of his ability to serve in the United States Senate, can he understand a tough national security issue before he cast a vote? Can you understand the complexity of a major healthcare bill? If he had to cast a vote, could he understand the major complexities of a tax bill? If he had to conduct a vote, can he read it as opposed to getting a briefing from the staff? Is that kind of the issue here?” King followed up, really pressing Gupta on Fetterman’s potential ability to serve in the U.S. Senate.

“I think so. I think that’s it. I mean, he does not appear to have a problem with understanding comprehension. It is a processing issue that seems to be the case. And again, this is based on looking at these interviews,” Gupta added, noting he has not examined Fetterman first-hand.

“We have not seen his medical records, but that’s really what it does look like, a processing issue versus a comprehension issue. So, yeah, it might need to be presented differently, you know, written down versus spoken, but he could recover in terms of actually being able to improve auditory processing as well,” noted Gupta, concluding:

He’s five months out from his stroke. Typically people will have recovery, you know, sort of six months to 18 months. They can even continue to recover. So whatever deficits he has now in terms of his ability to auditory process may improve as well.

I don’t want to minimize how significant an event this was. It was sounds like it was a significant event. They had to pull a blood clot out of one of the blood vessels in his brain. But people do recover from these as well, and it looks like that’s exactly what he’s doing.

Watch the full clip above via CNN