Kimmel’s Show Nails Mitch McConnell With Damning ‘Well Wishes’
The show found McConnell’s health predicament ironic on Monday.
Jimmy Kimmel Live! sent Mitch McConnell a brutal message amid speculation about the Kentucky senator’s mysterious state of health.
This week’s guest host, The Studio star Ike Barinholtz, reserved part of his Monday night monologue to wish McConnell well—with a huge asterisk.
McConnell released a picture of himself in the hospital alongside his wife.
Mitch McConnell
“Mitch was rushed to the hospital like a month ago after he was found unconscious, but then there’s been no real update on his condition for weeks… which led to all kinds of rumors and conspiracy theories,” Barinholtz began, before slamming McConnell on his lifelong opposition to government interventions on American healthcare.
Then-Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell speaks during a press conference following the weekly Senate caucus luncheons on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. on April 9, 2024.
REUTERS/Amanda Andrade-Rhoades
“I do want to extend well wishes to Senator McConnell,” Barinholtz said. “I hope you get the quality healthcare you’ve fought so hard to deny everyone else, so thank you. Pulling for you, Mitch!”
Barinholtz also roasted McConnell’s “proof of life” photo and statement, released on Sunday, following weeks out of the public eye after first responders were alerted to a “CPR in progress” due to “cardiac arrest” at McConnell’s Washington, D.C. home on June 14. “First of all, thank God he’s still hot as hell,” he joked about the 84-year-old.
Mitch McConnell’s face is not visibly in the clip, although an eyewitness reportedly saw the 84-year0-old on the stretcher.
Screengrab/CNN
In McConnell’s long-awaited statement to the public on Sunday, he revealed that he had suffered a fall and was treated for a mild case of pneumonia. “My doctors have confirmed that I didn’t break any bones or suffer a concussion. I didn’t have a heart attack or a stroke. I don’t have any tumors or hemorrhages,” and that he was “regaining my strength.”
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Barinholtz poked fun at the statement on Monday, saying, “I didn’t break any bones or suffer a concussion. I didn’t have a heart attack or a stroke. I don’t have any tumors or hemorrhages… My brain is not a pile of lukewarm oatmeal.”
“I am not damp and covered in bruises like a peach left in a washing machine,” he continued, “I have no trouble recognizing my own name when it is shouted by nurses into my working ear. My skin is not sloughing off in scaly sheets like a Komodo dragon. I’m not molting. I merely made love too hard with my 900-year-old schlong.”
McConnell froze and stopped talking at the microphones during a news conference in 2023. His doctors attributed the freeze to a prior head injury.
Drew Angerer/Getty Images
The comedian added, “So that’s nice. That’s good - good for him! Good guy! He’s a good guy!” and then pointed the audience to a closer look at McConnell’s photo. “Some people have been speculating online, maybe that this is not a current photo of Mitch McConnell…but I don’t know…I mean, he’s holding a newspaper! Can we just zoom in on that paper?”
After squinting, he joked, “What…Dewey defeats Truman? What the hell? That happened a long time ago, Guillermo. No wonder he looks so young.”
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