We know, generally speaking, where Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell is: in a hospital in the Washington, D.C., area. What we don’t know is why he’s there, when he will leave, and what state he is in right now.
McConnell, 84, has been hospitalized for a full three weeks. He was initially taken in on June 14 for unclear reasons. While McConnell’s team and several Republican allies have insisted that he is communicative and will return to work, the vague information they’ve provided and McConnell’s health record have sparked a fierce rumor mill speculating that the former Senate majority leader’s condition may be far more dire than his political team is letting on.
Right now, here’s what we know for sure: McConnell has not been publicly heard from since he entered the hospital. The best indication we have about the reason he’s there comes from EMS dispatch audio recorded the night that McConnell was admitted. The audio was subsequently obtained and reported by multiple news outlets, including The New York Times. The recordings don’t mention McConnell’s name, but they do note that EMS was called to respond to an “unconscious” person found at McConnell’s home in Washington sometime between 8:36 and 8:43 the morning of June 14. Shortly after those calls, a medic reported that there was “CPR in progress” at the site.
While this seems dire, two Republicans — current Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Senate Majority Whip John Barasso — have claimed that they have spoken to McConnell in the hospital.
Thune claimed back on June 15 that McConnell was “clearly dialed into what’s going on,” and said that the ailing senator was “following the stuff we’re doing this week up here. Very much so.”
On Tuesday, former McConnell adviser and conservative political operative Scott Jennings wrote on X that he too had spoken to the senator. “We talked for just shy of 20 minutes … about IRAN, UKRAINE, the unfolding situation in MAINE, my visit to the TR Presidential Library, and even a little bit of Senate history,” Jennings claimed, noting that McConnell was “still recovering in the hospital.”
Thune and Barasso also both released statements on Tuesday saying that they had spoken to McConnell.
“Senator Barrasso and Senator McConnell had a lengthy conversation early this afternoon. Their phone call lasted roughly 20 minutes. They caught up about the latest news impacting Senate races, the Graham Platner scandal, and the recent Supreme Court ruling on coordinated spending limits,” Kate Noyes, a spokesperson for Barrasso told The Hill.
“Leader Thune spoke with Sen. McConnell yesterday by phone. They had a lengthy and substantive conversation that covered a variety of topics, including national security,” a Thune also told The Hill.
The statements are clearly meant to respond to the enormous amount of speculation and outright rumors swirling around McConnell’s health. The senator’s own office has been extremely vague about his health, referring most reporters to the same statement for the past week, saying that McConnell “appreciates the outpouring of support he’s receiving while he continues his recovery in the hospital.”
That hasn’t been enough for the right-wing fever swamp. On Monday, far-right troll Laura Loomer claimed on X that sources have told her McConnell is “brain dead,” and “not coming back.” Loomer is, of course, a highly unreliable source — she’s regularly posted disinformation and outright hoaxes, and has highly partisan reasons for casting doubt on McConnell’s fitness to serve (the MAGA movement’s more extremist wing considers McConnell to be a centrist impediment to their goals).
Loomer’s claims got a boost from independent reporter Desirée Townsend, who was first to release the audio of the EMS call to McConnell’s house. Townsend reported that her sources were telling her similar things, but offered no real evidence for them.
Attempts to run these claims down by the mainstream press have also turned up inconclusive responses. Huff Post directly asked McConnell’s team if he was brain dead, and were referred back to the same statement.
Despite Thune and Barrasso’s statements, In the absence of any public comment from McConnell himself, the rumors are only going to gain momentum, because McConnell’s health has been tenuous for years. He has been hospitalized for both illnesses and physical accidents in recent years, and in 2023 had a bizarre series of incidents in which he appeared to freeze up in public, briefly losing the ability to speak. In his most recent public appearances, he used a wheelchair to move around the Capitol.
How have Republicans responded?
One of the more striking things about a ranking member of the Senate going AWOL for three weeks is that his colleagues — aside from Thune and Barrasso — don’t seem to know much about it. Republican Senator Mike Lee, for instance, wrote on Monday that he was completely in the dark. “Many of us aren’t speaking about Mitch McConnell’s condition because we know nothing about his condition,” Lee said.
Again, you have to take these statements with a grain of salt: Lee is one of the more reactionary senators in the GOP’s caucus, and has publicly feuded with McConnell in the past. McConnell has become the avatar for the wing of the conservative movement that the MAGA faithful consider to be “RINOs” or “Republicans in Name Only,” for any number of perceived slights against President Donald Trump.
However, even Trump himself doesn’t seem to be saying much about McConnell’s situation. Trump hasn’t commented on McConnell, but does seem focused on legislative priorities that McConnell’s presence in the Senate could be crucial for: late last night, the president posted a long rant calling for a new reconciliation bill that would provide an additional $350 billion in defense spending.
One of McConnell’s last public statements before his hospitalization was the prediction that it was “safe to conclude there will not be another reconciliation bill.” McConnell has stepped down from Senate-wide leadership but still heads the Defense subcommittee on the Appropriations Committee, which means he’d have a direct hand in whatever third funding bill Trump is trying to pass, after the so-called Big Beautiful Bill and the follow-up immigration and border security package.
What happens if McConnell dies?
If McConnell dies or is otherwise unable to serve out the rest of his final term, it would shake up a Congress that is on the verge of a hugely consequential midterm election.
Ordinarily, the governor of a state can appoint a senator to serve out the term of a retired or deceased politician. In Kentucky, that would mean that governor Andy Beshear, a Democrat, could fundamentally alter the makeup of the Senate — if not for a key switch in Kentucky’s laws back in 2024. That year, Kentucky passed a statewide bill requiring the governor to call for a special election. But legal observers have noted that this bill appears to conflict with the 17th Amendment, which says that the governor can appoint a successor while an election is being set up. This law has yet to be tested, meaning we could be in for a protracted legal snafu if McConnell dies.
If there’s an election, though, the candidates and parameters are already pretty much locked in. Because McConnell announced he would retire in January, there are already two candidates set for the general election in November — and it’s highly likely they’d represent each party in some kind of snap special election to serve out the last months of McConnell’s term. The Democrats have nominated Charles Booker, a former state representative who was the party’s nominee in the 2022 Senate election against Kentucky’s other senator, Rand Paul. Booker lost to Paul in that election by over 20 points. He’s running against Representative Andy Barr, who has been representing Kentucky’s 6th congressional district since 2013.
We’re not likely to get much more clarity on the situation absent McConnell himself making a public statement. All we know right now is that he’s lying in a hospital bed.
