In an interview with NBC News, Fetterman said Democrats need to rethink their messaging in purple districts versus districts that are easily winnable for the party. When asked if Democrats should take more risks in the media, Fetterman said the issue for Democrats might not even be a particular candidate, but what other candidates say that gets in the way.

“For all of the very hard-left, kind of ‘woke’ things [Republicans] loaded up into the clips … are unloaded on the backs of all of us in purple states, and we’re paying for all of the things that our colleagues might say in these hard blue kinds of districts,” Fetterman told the outlet.

He said that Democrats from safe districts “can’t forget that anything you say is immediately going to be nationalized” and that those comments would be “weaponized” in hard-to-win states or districts. 

“So it’s not so much what we say or our own views, it’s what the most extreme in our party say and project that’s going to get weaponized, and it’s undeniable that’s happened,” Fetterman said.

In advice to fellow Democrats, Fetterman said he would tell them that “all of the safe positions in your district, or those things you say, those will be weaponized on the backs [of] the purple states and colleagues that have to defend that. It’s like, they are running your record [in] some of these purple states, as well.”

Fetterman said his advice is less so “criticism,” and more so “the reality.”