Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman has admitted that Donald Trump has an "astonishing" connection with local people and that his campaign is "stronger than ever."

In an interview with The New York Times, Fetterman was asked about previous comments he made regarding Trump's "special connection" with Pennsylvanians, a view he strongly reiterated.

He explained:

There's a difference between not understanding, but also acknowledging that it exists. And anybody spends time driving around, and you can see the intensity. It's astonishing.

I was doing an event in Indiana County. Very, very red. And there was a superstore of Trump stuff, and it was a hundred feet long, and it was dozens of T-shirts and hats and bumper stickers and all kinds of, I mean, it's like, Where does this all come from?

It's the kind of thing that has taken on its own life. And it's like something very special exists there. And that doesn't mean that I admire it. It's just — it's real. And now [Elon] Musk is joining him. I mean, to a lot of people, that's Tony Stark. That's the world's richest guy. And he's obviously, and undeniably, a brilliant guy, and he's saying, Hey, that's my guy for president. That's going to really matter.

Fetterman went on to say he was "alarmed" by the reaction when Musk turned up in Washington and Pennsylvania to support Trump's campaign:

I was truly alarmed about that when he started showing up. I mean, I've been there, not at that rally [in Pennsylvania], but when they were having the A.I. conference in Washington, he showed up at my building at Russell, and senators were like, [Fetterman's voice gets very high] Ooh, ooh.

They were like, I got to have two minutes, you know, please. So if senators are all like ooh! Then can you imagine what voters in Scranton or all across Pennsylvania — you know, in some sense, he's a bigger star than Trump. Endorsements, they're really not meaningful often, but this one is, I think. That has me concerned.