Mitch McConnell decided to show up to work this week, ending a 92-day absence that was one of the biggest middle fingers to Americans from an elected official that I can remember. Now God is responding in kind, casting McConnell as the villain in a sad sequel to The Mummy.
The wheelchair-bound McConnell was hospitalized on June 14. His office said only that he was "receiving excellent care," and for the next two weeks that’s all we were told. Then on June 30 came the publication of a 911 call from his Washington home, in which a dispatcher reported a cardiac arrest and a medic radioed that CPR was in progress. Twelve days and a wave of public backlash later, McConnell’s office finally put out a statement. He'd only suffered a fall, they claimed, releasing the below proof-of-life photo.
It took all of two days for the embarrassing display that Capitol Hill was surely dreading. At Wednesday's Senate Agriculture Committee markup of the Farm Bill, the clerk called McConnell's name and nobody could hear his answer. Sen. John Hoeven, seated beside him, leaned over and told him to vote "no." A staffer leaned in from behind. Chairman John Boozman, on his other side, told him "aye." The clerk had to call his name a second time before McConnell produced a hoarse but audible “aye".”
It was also the only word he’d said on camera since his disappearance.
Here’s the video (subscribe to my channel if you’d like to see it grow):
The 84-year-old Kentucky Senator is in many ways the Godfather and final boss of the gerontocracy. Though many older members of Congress have finally decided to retire after enormous public pressure, as I’ve written about, McConnell holds on, clearly unable to fulfill his duties but also unwilling to resign. And not just him: I can’t remember the last member of Congress who resigned mid-term due to health reasons — despite the fact that six have died in office this term alone.
If you want to know how he’s getting away with this — amid an eye-popping 71 percent disapproval rate from Kentuckians in March, *before *his hospitalization — one big reason is that major media have been doing him a solid.
Here’s how The New York Times reported his first public appearance to the press.
“After two years—” McConnell began, correcting himself, the Times wrote: “two decades — of dodging your questions, I wasn’t sure how many of you would be here today.”
Ha-ha. Get it? He hates addressing the public. Yeah, we picked up on that, Mitch.
What the Times story didn’t mention was that McConnell’s staff barred media from recording video of McConnell’s remarks. Nor that McConnell spoke “slowly and with some difficulty,” according to The Guardian.
The funniest part of the Times article is where they recount how McConnell “seemed to freeze while speaking in public” — episodes that were caught on camera in which he clearly froze. Imagine the headline: “Twin Towers Seemed to Fall.”
The Mitch is back. The Office of the Attending Physician, Congress’s concierge medical service, paid McConnell’s office a visit yesterday, according to video 𝕏posted by independent journalist Desirée Townsend (who broke news of the 911 cardiac arrest call in the first place, forcing Washington media to address the scandal).
Why was a doctor needed? Who knows. McConnell’s office won’t say.
Correction: This story has been updated to reflect the ambiguity of what McConnell said when casting his initial voice vote on the farm bill. It sounded to me like a “no” but that was apparently his colleague speaking.
— Edited by William M. Arkin
