Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, the Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate, suffered a stroke earlier this year. While doctors say that Fetterman is recovering well and has “no work restrictions and can work full duty in public office,” the Senate hopeful still struggles with auditory processing, especially when it comes to interpreting spoken words, and has therefore been using a closed captioning device in interviews and during a recent debate.
But to Steve Bannon, the use of closed captioning is a sign that Fetterman has become something else. When Bannon appeared on the “Diamond & Silk Chit Chat Live” program last Friday, the former Trump adviser accused Fetterman of being a “cyborg” because of his use of closed captioning.
“You have a convergence now of advanced chip design, robotics, artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and biotechnology,” Bannon said. “You have the merger of all these technologies at one time onto a point; that point is called the singularity. On this side of that point is Homo sapiens, is God’s creation as defined in the Bible, and as we’ve known for many millions of years.”
“So, you have Homo sapiens made in the image and likeness of God, inspired by the breath of the Holy Spirit, and on the other side of that you have Homo sapien-plus or you have enhanced man, you have something that’s not the original creation,” Bannon continued. “That is the merger of man and actually machine, the computer.”
“What you see in Fetterman and why Fetterman is so dangerous and why Fetterman as a concept is dangerous is here, he had a stroke,” Bannon declared. “What you saw the other night … is that he has a machine in front of him. It’s not a closed caption like you would watch TV and want it to be quiet while you were working on something else and have the closed caption on. No, this is a machine that actually helps his brain think through. Without the machine, he can’t understand human conversations, he can’t engage with people. So, we actually had—we call it a cyborg—you actually had a man-machine merger on that stage the other night.”
Bannon has long been fearmongering about so-called “transhumanism” and has been attacking Fetterman for months. In August, he accused Fetterman of having a “satanic” vibe and of exuding “pure evil.”
Fetterman is in a tightening race against TV celebrity Dr. Oz, who won the Republican nomination thanks to Trump’s endorsement. While Fetterman leads by 5 percentage points according to the latest polling, Oz was able to shrink Fetterman’s lead by attacking his health ad nauseum, a strategy that has been aided by far-right media personalities like Bannon
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