'Not normal': Giselle Fetterman has become a new target of Fox News conspiracy theories

In the weeks following Democratic Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman's win against Trump-backed celebrity TV doctor Mehmet Oz, Fox News has pivoted to a new narrative involving Fetterman's wife, Gisele Fetterman.

Essentially, the argument has been that Gisele is serving as her husband's puppet master who will effectively act as the real senator for Pennsylvania — an idea driven by their belief that Fetterman's stroke, which left him with speech and auditory processing issues from which he is recovering, was actually somehow far more serious and debilitating than it actually was.

In an interview with The New Republic, Gisele Fetterman, a Brazilian-born philanthropist, dismissed those attacks.

“The right-wing hates women. They especially hate strong women, and I think that’s what you’re seeing,” she said. “The fact that a spouse of a senator-elect has been attacked nonstop for the past 24 hours and everyone’s okay with it and everyone thinks it’s normal … it’s not normal.”

She added that, “Since entering the Capitol for training, my inbox has been completely filled with threats and horrible things. And that’s because I’ve been a non-stop loop on Fox News. Hopefully it’s not like this forever … and hopefully it’s not like this for the next young Latina or person of color or spouse who enters this space.”

As the article noted, these theories have radiated out from Fox and from similar spaces as the Fettermans prepare for life in Washington D.C.

"On Tuesday, Fox News host Harris Faulkner took issue with a photo Gisele tweeted of herself beside her Senator-elect husband who is partially cropped from the image ...the couple have a running joke that John doesn’t fit in photos," wrote The New Republic's Pablo Manríquez. "A conspiracy theory was implied that Gisele was trying to steal the show (and maybe even the Senate seat) from her duly elected husband. 'First day for Senator-elect Gisele Fetterman,' said Townhall’s Mia Cathell. 'Why is she even there?' asked someone called Bonchie on RedState. Both remarks were quickly aggregated with other jabs against Gisele into a digital story on Fox News’s website, which was followed by a graphics package of mean tweets about the Fettermans that Faulkner gleefully read on-air."

Democrats managed to retain control of the Senate in the 2022 midterm election. As of press time, they hold 50 seats to Republicans' 49, with the last remaining seat to be decided in the Georgia runoff election in December between Democratic incumbent and Christian minister Sen. Raphael Warnock, and Trump-backed NFL veteran Herschel Walker.