If the first days of Gisele Barreto Fetterman alongside Sen.-elect John Fetterman, D-Pa., in Washington, D.C., are any indication, media and critics can expect a tumultuous relationship.
After the senator's wife posted a full photo of herself at the door of her husband's office, cropping out the senator's brain, media and critics have been suggesting the wife is making the senator's trip to Congress about her.
Gisele Barreto Fetterman fired back at media with some retaliatory hate.
"The right-wing hates women," she told The New Republic (TNR). "They especially hate strong women, and I think that's what you're seeing.
"The fact that a spouse of a senator-elect has been attacked nonstop for the past 24 hours and everyone's OK with it and everyone thinks it's normal. It's not normal."
Critics have been suggesting Gisele Barreto Fetterman is seeking the spotlight far more than usual spouses in Congress, and the photo with the top of her husband's head cropped off made for a lively exchange and, she says, hate mail.
"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 nonstop loop on Fox News," the Brazilian-born wife of Fetterman told TNR. "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."
Gisele Barreto Fetterman says she jokes her husband is too tall for photos, but the photo had him cropped off the side, while she was shown in full on all sides.
She has taken credit for her husband being alive, too, saying she told him to go to the hospital when he was having a stroke that has left him partially impaired.
"I noticed something was off; he didn't even want to go to the hospital, but I insisted," she said in her hospitalized husband's place during the Democrat Senate primary celebration, "and as usual, I was right.
"I'm so glad I made him go, for two reasons. The first is that doctors were able to get him back on his feet quickly.
"And the second reason is I now have one more thing I get to hold over him. I mean, I saved his life, right? I will never let him live that down."
As for her own political future, she demurred.
"Never; it’s not for me," she told TNR. "It's a very cruel world, and I am not cruel. I don't ever wanna become cruel. I'm sensitive. I want people to like me. It hurts me when people are mean."
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