Senator John Fetterman, the Pennsylvania Democrat who used to court progressives and now routinely takes aim at the left, said Thursday that he had accepted an invitation to meet with President-elect Donald J. Trump ahead of his swearing-in, becoming the first Democratic senator to do so.
“President Trump invited me to meet, and I accepted,” Mr. Fetterman said in a statement. “I’m the senator for all Pennsylvanians — not just Democrats in Pennsylvania.”
He added: “I’ve been clear that no one is my gatekeeper. I will meet with and have a conversation with anyone if it helps me deliver for Pennsylvania and the nation.”
The meeting, which is expected to take place at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s estate in Florida, and was reported earlier by CBS News, offers Mr. Trump a chance to press Mr. Fetterman to support some of his nominees who will be up for Senate confirmation in the coming days. And it offers Mr. Fetterman an open channel of communication with a president-elect who has proved to be malleable on policies, and highly attentive to whomever he last spoke with.
Mr. Fetterman has undergone a change in political persona since arriving in Washington. He appears to enjoy the spasms of anger he routinely produces from the left, as well as the strange new respect he commands from right-wing media outlets that once dismissed him as a vegetable and lobbed sexist attacks at his wife.
His impending visit, which has yet to be scheduled, is likely to generate more outrage from the left. But that’s just the way Mr. Fetterman likes it. On Thursday, he joked to reporters that the goal of his visit was to “demand that I be pope of Greenland.”
But the visit to Mar-a-Lago says less about Mr. Fetterman’s well-documented political transformation than about the new reality in Washington. In accepting the invitation, Mr. Fetterman appears to be acknowledging that getting anything done while Republicans control both chambers of Congress and the White House will mean finding ways to work with Mr. Trump.
Mr. Trump also won Pennsylvania in November and Mr. Fetterman, highly attuned to the media, knows that a photograph of his meeting with Mr. Trump will break through to voters in a way that other news may not.
What may frustrate progressives is that Mr. Fetterman appears gleeful about making inroads with the incoming administration. Last month, he posed for a photo with Representative Elise Stefanik of New York, Mr. Trump’s nominee to serve as ambassador to the United Nations, giving two thumbs up and then writing on social media that he planned to vote for her confirmation because he was “always a hard yes.”
But he’s not the only one adjusting to the new reality of Mr. Trump and trying to make the best of it.
On Thursday, former President Barack Obama sat next to Mr. Trump at the state funeral for former President Jimmy Carter at the National Cathedral in Washington. The two spoke extensively and laughed together, in an unexpected show of affection that seemed to surpass the cordiality expected at such gatherings.
Mr. Fetterman announced his meeting with Mr. Trump on the same day that the Senate pushed ahead on a Republican bill that would mandate the detention and deportation of undocumented immigrants charged with minor crimes. The Laken Riley Act passed the House earlier this week with the support of 48 Democrats and sailed forward in the Senate on Thursday with scant opposition by Democrats, indicating it is all but certain to clear Congress next week and head to Mr. Trump’s desk for him to sign once he is sworn in.
This week, Mr. Fetterman became one of its Senate co-sponsors and said that if Democrats opposed the measure en masse, it would explain “why we lost” in 2024.
