Gisele Barreto Fetterman honestly talked about her life in an interview about her modern book about Whyy in Philadelphia on Friday. She talked about her crying habit, a conversation about immigration with President Donald Trump, confusing with “help” – and defended her husband who became a polarization force in Washington.
Barreto Fetterman, the wife of Senator John Fetterman (D., Pa.), Was already crying before Mary Moss-Coane, the host of “The Connection”, had the opportunity to ask her first question. She began to cry again just a few minutes later – and said that she also cried on the train to Philly.
Why? It is a self -proclaimed “softie”.
“I’ve always been like that,” she said. “I think some people are this way.”
And this softness is consistent with the title of her book: Radical tenderness: the value of sensitivity in the often rude world.
“I am able to get closer to others with delicacy, because I do not flatten my own emotional experiences. I have hurt equally, sadness and joy,” Moss-Coane read the Barreto Fetterman book aloud. “However, this emotional range is discouraged in a society that attaches greater value on traditionally male features, and not those perceived as feminine.”
Here are some of what Barreto Fetterman revealed in an interview that included anecdotes from her 240-page book, which he published on July 8 and is partly-Memoir, Part-Manifesto.
About crying
“I really care about everything,” said Barreto Fetterman, a fireman who runs a “free shop” in Braddock in Allegheny.
When she began to cry, trembling her voice, Mary Moss-Caane said: “This is very normal.”
“We will be born crying, and on the way we were told to stop,” she added. “And I think I never stopped.”
She said that she was not ashamed of this and she thinks that other Criers should accept who they are and release more.
Being an undocumented immigrant as a child
Barreto Fetterman emigrated to Queens with a family at the age of 7 in December 1989 to escape from normalized violence in Brazil. She crossed her visa and became undocumented before she won the green card in 2004 and became a citizen in 2009.
The most hard part of being a undocumented child was to know that she was doing something bad while her family is doing “everything well”, she said. She got good grades at school, paid taxes and volunteered. Her mother worked in many tasks as spotless, coat control, server and catering.
She had to be careful not to be too dynamic and risk damage because they had no health insurance. She was terrified when an unexpected knock was in the door or when a police car drove, but her mother had a positive attitude and did everything with each day full of “adventures and obstacles that we had to defeat to get to the next level,” she said.
She was taught not to pay attention to herself – as she said that they were positioning with her personality because she did not like this day, whether based on birthday parties or the media.
Her first memory of America? “Cold”.
After meeting Trump
Barreto Fetterman said Trump’s breakdown into immigrants: “Every day it’s a broken heart.”
She said that immigrants helped to keep companies open during the Covid-19 pandemic, choose food that we eat every day, and generally “contribute to society so much.”
“But not only, like people, and that’s enough, right? I think that contributing is great, but just a desire for a better life for your family is enough,” she added.
But she said that to go through the rest of Trump’s administration: “We have to talk to each other.”
That is why she decided to meet the president with her husband in Mar-a-Lago. For the first time, a sitting democratic senator met him in Palm Beach Resort.
Barreto Fetterman said that she went to tell her story and supporter of other undocumented immigrants who came to the country as a child – “not to be naive thinking, that I would change his opinion, but I should at least try”.
She said that she told Trump about the “dreamers’ contribution” and that undocumented families “are not numbers” but “real people”.
“And at this meeting, about dreamers, he said he was correct,” she said. “He said that dreamers are Americans. He said that many of them do not even speak their native language.”
So how does the sense of this conversation with his policy? Moss-Caane asked.
“I don’t think there is sense,” Barreto Fetterman replied. “I think that this is what we have to go until he changes. And you know, the more people who celebrate and attribute to him things that he speaks and does, it simply allows him to do more.”
Senator Fetterman recently defended Trump ice. He hit the call to abolish the agency and said that “he plays an important role” and supports agents “doing his work”. He said that he also supports the amnesty “for hardworking, otherwise migrants who follow the law”, but he wants Ice to “sum up and deport criminals.”
On mistake as “help”
Barreto Fetterman said that she had been wrong as “help” many times and tried to face these situations in a dainty and witty way, she said.
She shared that in one case she organized a party as a second lady from Pennsylvania and was confused by someone as a server.
After she took a glass of wine from the pantry, the woman told her that she “saw what she had done” and at that time she told Fetterman, who was the Governor of the lieutenant. Barreto Fetterman said that she would usually say nothing or cried, but her glass of wine made her “a bit spicy”, so she said, “Please, don’t tell him, I don’t want to slow down”, knowing that the guest will soon find out who he really was when they welcomed the guests in their home.
The woman felt terrible, and Barreto Fetterman drank wine with her and had a heart on her heart.
»Read more: Then for Gisele Fetterman: Fire Gasa, saving and being “good today”
About stroke and depression of Fetterman
Barreto Fetterman looked back when she noticed her husband’s stroke during his senatorial campaign, noticing her mouth for a moment. She said that nothing else seemed wrong and successfully encouraged him to go to the hospital, even though he insisted that everything was fine.
“His lips moved differently for a second. It wasn’t left in this position,” she said. “His speech was not about, the things you expect from stroke. He did not feel physical pain. … he says:” I am fine, she is crazy. “
Moss-Caane asked Barreto Fetterman about news about his husband in recent months, in which previous employees expressed concern about his health, citing explosions and neglecting the observance of the doctor’s orders.
Barreto Fetterman defended his husband and said that his mental health is “great” and that he was doing everything his doctors told him.
“When you have the stigma of mental health, he follows you,” she said, citing when he worked at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in February 2023.
Barreto Fetterman relied on the accusations that Fetterman did not like his work as a US senator after he told reporters that he wanted to “return home” when he delved into the Act on Trump’s budget, lamenting that he had left his “all journey to the beach.”
She He said “sometimes you close yourself there and they don’t let you go”, and “one thing that he can’t wait for in his life is as a shore with children once a year” on a four -day “very modest” vacation in Jersey Shore.
“It’s not like that at all,” she said. “I think there are many things he didn’t work differently.”
She emphasized that she and her husband are their own people and that although she was trying to “not hate anything”, “does not like” the policy “very deep”.
