So… What Is Actually Happening With Mitch McConnell?

Mitch McConnell is back in the headlines this week… but not for anything tied to his actual political career. Speculation continues to swirl around the health and whereabouts of the longtime United States Senator, after he hasn’t been seen in public in nearly a month.

On June 14th, it was reported that McConnell had been found unconscious in his Washington, DC home, seemingly due to cardiac arrest. Advanced Life Support services had reportedly arrived and performed CPR on McConnell, before the controversial 84-year-old Senator was rushed to a nearby hospital.

Ever since then, updates have been… spotty, at best. McConnell’s office has not divulged any concrete information about his condition, only releasing the following statement on two separate occasions: “Senator McConnell appreciates the outpouring of support he’s receiving while he continues his recovery in the hospital. The Senator continues to improve, and is working closely with his staff on Kentucky and Senate matters while the Senate is out of session.”

Things were complicated even further when reports indicated that McConnell’s wife, former Secretary of Transportation Elaine Chao, made a string of public appearances in China in the days surrounding his hospitalization. Chao returned to the United States on Tuesday, July 7th, with her spokesperson saying in a statement that “the Senator’s health did not warrant an immediate return to the US.”

Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Senator John Barrasso have both claimed that they’ve spoken to McConnell, according to statements released by their spokespeople. Thune’s camp claimed that he and McConnell had a “lengthy and substantive conversation that covered a variety of topics, including national security.”

What Is Going On?!

The vagueness of his team’s statement, and the absence of any other updates or concrete proof of life, have led a growing crop of people to wonder if McConnell’s condition is worse than what is publicly known. A number of nurses and doctors have taken to TikTok to share their experience with similar cases, in which CPR is performed on an elderly person before they are able to be fully hospitalized, and have suggested that the ordeal could have left McConnell comatose, braindead, or dead altogether.

Plenty of jokes have compared the situation to the 1989 movie Weekend at Bernie’s, and the lengths that the characters go through to hide the fact that their boss is already dead. Even a few big names in the right-wing ecosystem, like Steve Bannon and Laura Loomer, have begun to question what is really going on. Loomer wrote on Twitter that “a very high level source told me Mitch McConnell is officially brain dead and machines are keeping him alive, but he is a vegetable and ‘never coming back.'” Desiree Townsend, who initially broke the news of McConnell’s hospitalization, subsequently confirmed that she has “heard the same thing from [her] sources for days.”

Amid all of this, The Hill went viral for accidentally preemptively publishing a memorial piece about McConnell’s tenure in the Senate. News outlets often prepare obituaries or other retrospective pieces in the days leading up to a person’s potential passing, as evidenced by the temporary “DO NOT USE” warning in the piece’s headline.

This ambiguity comes with some interesting political connotations. The US Senate is currently out of session, and is not expected to reconvene until next week, so McConnell has not needed to cast a vote since June 11th. And then there’s the nature of how McConnell’s Senate seat would be filled if he were dead or unable to serve in the role. He is already set to retire at the end of his term in January of 2027, and the most recent changes to Kentucky’s Senate succession law have complicated how a successor would be chosen if his seat was vacated before August 3rd. In that case, a special election would be held to pick his replacement, instead of allowing state governor Andy Beshear to fill the seat. Senate Republicans already have a very small 53-47 majority in the Senate, so the results of that hypothetical special election could tip the scales even further in the Democrats’ favor.

On Wednesday morning, Beshear released a letter flat-out asking McConnell to come forward with some sort of update, writing, “Kentuckians have grown increasingly concerned about the current state of your health and well-being, and ability to hold office.”

This June incident was already the second time that McConnell has been hospitalized this year, after he spent eight days there in February while battling flu-like symptoms. The senator’s behavior has also prompted concern in recent years: he has fallen in public at least twice, fracturing his rib and getting a concussion after one March 2023 incident. He has also been seen freezing mid-sentence on multiple occasions, leading some to speculate that he was suffering from strokes or seizures at the time.

(featured image: Gage Skidmore, CC BY-SA 2.0)

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