Right-wing commentator Megyn Kelly is not convinced by Mitch McConnell’s “proof of life” photo.
During Monday’s episode of The Megyn Kelly Show, the broadcaster-turned-podcaster scrutinized the picture and accompanying statement shared by the Kentucky senator’s team, finding the matter to be a bit fishy.
Kelly, 55, started by addressing the emergency dispatch call that claimed the former Senate majority leader had suffered a cardiac arrest, conflicting with McConnell’s telling of events.
She then highlighted the photo shared by McConnell’s team, which showed the 84-year-old senator next to his wife, Elaine Chao, while holding Sunday’s edition of The Washington Post sports section, which she said was a “true proof of life photo.”
The podcaster noted that McConnell looked “propped up” and had an “odd” facial expression in the photo.
“It is a little off. I respect and like Mitch McConnell. I—this is not—I’m trying to be respectful of him, but this has a lot of tongues wagging about whether this is real, whether we can trust this photo,” Kelly told her guest, fellow conservative podcaster Michael Knowles.
“And now the team is saying—they’re not saying it was a heart attack,“ she continued. ”They’re just saying it was something else, like he passed out, and he had some amorphous issue, but not a heart attack. Mitch McConnell is allegedly saying that himself.”
“So, why was he getting CPR? It’s just, there’s a lot,” she added.
Kelly also questioned the handling of Lindsey Graham’s death, calling attention to the fact that his team initially said he had died from a “brief illness.”
“A brief illness? Why’d they say that?” she said. “The autopsy says aortic dissection—that means your heart’s split, and you dropped dead. That’s not a short illness. Why wouldn’t they have just said a cardiac event?"
“I don’t know what’s going on, but this is exactly how conspiracy theories get started,” Kelly added.
After further examining McConnell’s statement, which claimed that he did not suffer “a stroke or a heart attack,” Kelly then questioned why EMS professionals said they had performed CPR if there was no instance of cardiac arrest.
“I think I’d be most unhappy if they performed CPR on me when I—my heart was fine. Seems like a novice mistake, Michael Knowles. I think there might be a lawsuit in order there,” she said. “I don’t know what’s going on, but I don’t trust anybody anymore.”
On Sunday, McConnell broke his nearly month-long silence over his mystery hospitalization, announcing that he has been recovering in the hospital after a “fall” and a “mild case of pneumonia.”
Speculation had swirled in the weeks following his hospitalization, with some reports claiming that the octogenarian senator was “brain dead” after an apparent heart attack.
The attempt by McConnell’s team—led by his longtime, camera-shy aide Terry Carmack, who is on track to earn more than $226,000 this year—to put the rumors to rest with a photo and statement has only stoked further scrutiny from both sides of the political spectrum.
