AWKWARD SILENCE

McConnell’s Bizarre Run-In Reignites Health Concerns

The 84-year-old senator blanked when asked a simple question by a reporter.

Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell appeared dazed and confused when asked about this week’s midterm results in a video that has renewed concerns about the 84-year-old’s fitness for office.

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McConnell, the former Republican Senate Majority Leader who is retiring at the end of his term in January, responded with silence and a blank gaze when Newsmax Congressional Correspondent Kilmeny Duchardt approached him on Capitol Hill to ask for his “quick reaction to the GOP’s midterm losses.”

Duchardt was eventually waved away by the senator’s minders, after McConnell spent several seconds staring into space without responding to the questions.

The clip, circulated widely on X, has been seized upon across the political aisle as evidence of McConnell’s inability to serve the people of Kentucky from the Senate seat he has held since 1985.

“That can’t be legal, he’s a vegetable,” said conservative activist Carl Higbie on Newsmax. His guest, former Department of Justice official Theo Wold, said it was a sign of a generational conflict for the Republican Party’s soul.

“We’re tired of the Gerontocracy ruling the conservative movement,” he said.

On X, Rick Wilson, a prominent anti-Trump conservative, was blunter.

“This is elder abuse at this point,” he wrote.

McConnell took a three-month absence from the Senate this year after he was hospitalized for a fall in June. That lengthy period of leave further ignited speculation about his health as he refused to address the public with anything more than a written statement and photo. McConnell stepped down from the Republican Senate leadership in 2024, after two separate episodes in which his face appeared to freeze while he was speaking.

In a statement upon his return, McConnell said his recovery had been a “long and frustrating process,” hampered by “the lingering effects of childhood polio.”

But days after his return, McConnell appeared to require assistance from aides and fellow senators when voting in a Senate committee.

McConnell’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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Kishor Napier-RamanBreaking News Reporter

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