Daily Show co-anchor Josh Johnson, 36, believes Mitch McConnell, 84, is gone forever.
The MAGA senator from Kentucky has been missing in action for nearly two months due to a mysterious health issue. He and his team have attempted to shut down speculation with bizarre photographs, vague statements, and sheer avoidance of questions. But five-time Emmy nominee Johnson doesn’t buy their muddled story.
“Everyone who thinks that he has passed will be right eventually,” Johnson told Obsessed: The Podcast. “I personally think that man’s been gone. I don’t see a world where he does a back handspring in front of the media. I think that there’s a reason that we haven’t seen him. If someone is not in as bad of a condition as the public says, you just release an audio recording. Truly anything!”
Johnson received his fifth Emmy nomination this year for Outstanding Variety Series for The Daily Show, where he’s worked for almost a decade, first as a staff writer, then a correspondent, and, since 2025, a rotating anchor.
His debut HBO stand-up special, Symphony, dropped in May and was met with rave reviews. But it is on his personal YouTube channel where Johnson has found his most unlikely success, putting out a new hour of topical material every week and racking up millions of views each time.
For instance, when Johnson performed a show on July 12, the day after South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham died, he immediately addressed the senator’s death on stage: “When I woke up and saw that Lindsey Graham had passed away, I was like, ‘That’s a very weird way to spell Mitch McConnell.’”
Johnson rewrote a large portion of his set to accommodate the unexpected news, molding the structure of his performance to address the situation.
“When you see the Fox News notification, whatever Senator passed away, you’re like, ‘Yeah, of course,’” he said. “And then you actually open the article, and it’s Lindsay Graham, and you’re like, ‘What? That’s completely out of nowhere.’ And so I think that addressing how the room feels—it doesn’t always have to be an elephant. I think it’s only an elephant if you’re ignoring it.”
The turnaround is quicker when writing about breaking news, but the jokes are just as intentional, Johnson said. He puts care into all of his comedy, and sometimes the jokes he writes just before performing are more effective than what he’s been working on for weeks.
Johnson also connects his jokes to broader themes, weaving a meaningful narrative that goes beyond the simple facts of any given news story.
“Sometimes when you are affected by something, let’s say policy or something like that, you are caught within a fifteenth fold of a ripple effect of how this person who passes legislation thinks because of how they grew up,” he explained. “So, outside of the jokes about ‘is Mitch alive or not,’ there was some real thought into the sort of ripples we create for each other. It’s easy to see it when it’s elected officials. It’s much harder to trace it back when it’s person to person.”
“Even if the ripple idea isn’t fully executed in the way that I just said, it sort of colors the background of what writing jokes about Lindsey Graham and Mitch McConnell means to me,” he continued. “In the set, I talk about how everyone thought [McConnell] was at death’s door, and I’m sure he was talking to the devil and was like, ‘Just give me a little bit more time, all right? Because I got somebody you’ll love.’ And then next thing we know, Lindsay Graham passed away.”
Josh Johnson’s stand-up special Symphony is currently streaming on HBO Max. The Daily Show is set to return from its summer break on Tuesday, Sept. 8.
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