I knew the press would be biased when it came to judging Tuesday evening’s debate between John Fetterman and Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania. Still, I’m not sure I expected the clean-up attempts for the Fetterman to begin before the debate even started.

That’s exactly what happened when TIME reporter Charlotte Alter took to Twitter to deliver one of the most shameless, partisan defenses of a candidate I’ve ever seen.

2) Fetterman's vibe is "talks like a normal person," and normal people don't usually speak in fluent paragraphs memorized ahead of time and crafted for maximum political impact. So debates have never been his strong suit

— Charlotte Alter (@CharlotteAlter) October 25, 2022

4) Everyone will be watching for Fetterman's stroke symptoms. I can tell you already what they are: he sometimes says the slightly wrong word, or conjugates something the wrong way. (ie: "understanding" instead of "understood.")

— Charlotte Alter (@CharlotteAlter) October 25, 2022

I want to know how much the Fetterman campaign paid her to make that thread because there’s no other plausible reason for a supposedly unbiased journalist to preemptively defend a candidate that way. That she goes so far as to authoritatively downplay the lingering effects of the Democrat’s stroke is even worse. She has not seen his actual medical records. She has no idea what his actual condition is.

Besides, are we really supposed to just shrug at a US Senate candidate using the wrong words and having to have closed captioning in order to somewhat understand what is being said to him? I can’t believe this has to be said, but debating is a core element of being a senator. The job literally requires people to stand up on television and debate, whether that’s on the floor or in committees.

Alter just kept going, though, doing her very best to lower expectations to the point where the debate simply doesn’t matter.

5) Take one of the least-natural debaters in the Dem party, give him auditory processing issues and a tendency to flub words, and that's Fetterman going into tonight. Up against a slick TV doc who has spent a decade in front of the camera. Gonna be an interesting night.

— Charlotte Alter (@CharlotteAlter) October 25, 2022

Yeah, except Fetterman is clearly brain-damaged. During a recent MSNBC interview, he didn’t seem to know the difference between “yes” and “no.” He often doesn’t process things properly, whether he’s being spoken to or he’s speaking. Strokes damage brains. That’s what they do, and to pretend otherwise is dishonest gaslighting.

But get ready, because what Alter wrote there is going to be the narrative within minutes of the debate coming to a close (and by the time you read this, it’ll probably already be over). The press is going to praise Fetterman for reading closed captioning and not becoming incapacitated. They’ll claim he won on policy points or some nonsense while ignoring what all of us are going to witness with our own eyes. It’s going to be absolutely insufferable.

We can only hope Pennsylvanians see through the gambit and vote accordingly. John Fetterman is not fit to be in the US Senate, and even if he were, his positions are far too radical to be endorsed. Voters should send him back to sponging off his parents, crushing his overly ambitious wife’s dreams in the process.