MAGA physician Dr. Drew Pinsky has called BS on Mitch McConnell’s claims that he’s on the mend.
The Kentucky senator’s health has been a subject of speculation since he began freezing during news conferences and falling at work. Chatter intensified after McConnell was found “unconscious” at his home last month.
In the immediate aftermath, his team remained tight-lipped, creating a vacuum in which conspiracies formed. Then, on Sunday, the Trump ally emerged with a proof-of-life photograph from his hospital bed.
Posing alongside his wife, former Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, the 84-year-old clutched what appeared to be a copy of the day’s Washington Post.
The stunt was supposed to abate speculation about his health. However, it appears to have had the opposite effect. McConnell was still in the hospital three weeks after his initial health episode. He said in a statement that a fall and “a mild case of pneumonia” landed him there.
“He’s a very, very sick man,” Pinsky said on Newsmax’s Finnerty on Thursday, suggesting that McConnell is more ill than he is admitting. “If it were just simple syncope, he might have been sent home afterwards. But he’s still in the hospital.”
“The pneumonia itself with sepsis could have caused this, but we’ve seen him have these episodes where he either falls or he’s frozen,” Pinsky added.
“This could be cardiac arrhythmias. This could be blood pressure changes. This could be stroke, seizure, a million different things,” he said.
“And he has not been forthcoming about what’s going on with him,” Pinsky continued. “Aren’t you tired of the sort of the lies and distortions that we get? That’s where fake news comes from.”
On Tuesday, Chao, 73, was seen exiting the D.C. area rehab facility where her husband remains, wearing a mask, dark sunglasses and a trench coat despite a heat wave seeing temperatures reaching almost 100 degrees.
McConnell’s staff have declined to provide details about the rehabilitation facility and what it specializes in. His staff is led by Terry Carmack, whose salary rose from $224,749 in fiscal year 2025 to $226,849.94 in fiscal year 2026.
McConnell has twice frozen in public while speaking. He first stopped speaking for about 20 seconds during a Capitol news conference in July 2023 before aides escorted him away. He suffered a similar episode roughly a month later while taking questions at an event in Kentucky, standing silently for around 30 seconds before resuming. Both incidents prompted widespread concern, though his office said the second episode was caused by a brief bout of lightheadedness, and the attending physician to Congress later cleared him to continue working.
He also has a propensity to fall. In March 2023, he was hospitalized after tripping at a Washington hotel, suffering a concussion and a fractured rib that sidelined him from the Senate for weeks. He later fell while disembarking from a plane at Washington’s Reagan National Airport in July 2023, shortly before his first public freezing episode. In December 2024, he sprained his wrist and cut his face after falling during a Senate Republican lunch at the Capitol. Then, in February 2025, he fell twice on Capitol grounds in one day.
Dr. Drew Pinsky, meanwhile, has faced multiple controversies throughout his career, primarily stemming from ethical concerns over his reality TV shows, undeclared financial ties to pharmaceutical companies, his initial downplaying of the COVID-19 pandemic, and his spreading of cannabis misinformation.
Pinsky’s reputation as a trusted TV doctor was badly damaged after he repeatedly downplayed COVID-19 in the early weeks of the pandemic, even though he later apologized and admitted he was wrong. Between February and mid-March 2020, he repeatedly compared it to the flu, called it a “press-induced panic,” said influenza was “vastly more consequential,” and even likened the odds of dying from COVID-19 to being “hit by an asteroid.”
He has also been a vocal proponent of the controversial off-label use of ivermectin, both for treating viral illnesses and as an experimental cancer therapy.
McConnell’s representatives have been contacted for comment.
