Logo

The wife of Pennsylvania’s lieutenant governor says a woman at the supermarket unleashed a hateful rant on her in which she was called the N-word.

Gisele Barreto Fetterman, who is married to Democratic Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, said the incident occurred Sunday as she was in line purchasing kiwis at an Aldi’s store near her home in Braddock, the Washington Post reported.

“I ran to the local grocery store and was met by and verbally assaulted by this woman who repeatedly told me I do not belong here,” she wrote on Twitter.

Barreto Fetterman — who was born in Brazil and got her green card in 2004 — said the unidentified woman recognized that she was married to the official, and began pointing and yelling at her.

“She said, ‘There’s that N-word that Fetterman married. You don’t belong here. No one wants you here. You don’t belong here,’” Fetterman told the Washington Post.

Shaken by the verbal attack, Barreto Fetterman left the store, but the woman confronted her again in the parking lot.

From inside her car, she was able to record a short clip of the woman pulling down her mask and saying, “You’re a n—–er.”

“This behavior and this hatred is taught,” Fetterman posted on Twitter alongside the clip. “If you know her, if she is your neighbor or relative, please, please teach her love instead.”

Fetterman said the experience brought back feelings from when her family lived as undocumented immigrants for more than a decade after fleeing Rio de Janeiro for New York City.

1 of 3
John Fetterman and Gisele Barreto Fetterman
John Fetterman and Gisele Barreto FettermanAP
Gisele Barreto Fetterman
Gisele Barreto FettermanAP
Advertisement

“It was a really long time of really living in the shadows and being really scared of every knock at the door,” she said.

“To then being at a place where I’m so grateful that I can vote and that I get called for jury duty and I can finally belong to this country that I love so much — to then having these moments where I completely feel unwelcome all over again and scared.”

Comments
anonymous profile image
Powered by RoundtableBuilt on infrastructure designed for real-time media. Learn more at RTB.io.© Roundtable 2026. By using this site you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy