(Daily Beast)Mitch McConnell’s staff have declined to answer basic questions about what work he is doing—37 days after he was loaded into the back of an ambulance and vanished from public view.
His staff, led by $226,000-a-year longtime aide Terry Camack, refused to even say if the senator had spoken to any of them in recent days.
Their refusal comes two weeks after CNN’s MAGA contributor, Scott Jennings, claimed he had spoken to McConnell for close to 20 minutes about Iran, Ukraine, and the Senate race in Maine. Jennings claimed that McConnell was “at some point preparing to go back to work.”
But when confronted by the Daily Beast on what had happened to those claims, his staff offered no comment on when he would return to work.
Despite the silence, the Daily Beast has established that taxpayer funds are being spent on a semi-permanent guard on the Washington D.C. hospital where he was taken on June 14 after a 911 call which said he had apparently had a heart attack, was unconscious, and had received CPR.
But they have done nothing to end a drip-drip of whispers that McConnell is in a vegetative state, brain-dead, or even secretly deceased while his staff cover it up. The staff also refused to comment on his cognitive state.
The McConnell team’s cover-up has also hit Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, who has demanded answers about McConnell’s health status.
The Democratic governor is also facing a growing backlash within his own party to be more aggressive against McConnell.
“It had been a month before anything had been put out, not even an official statement from Senator McConnell. In fact, I’d gotten two calls from different agencies—not state agencies—suggesting he’s passed,” Beshear said on Saturday.
The nearest thing to proof he is alive came on July 12, when his office released a photo and statement purporting to be of him and his wife, with a lengthy statement which the aides said was from him.
In the photo, the Kentucky Republican is sitting on what appears to be a hospital bed, dressed in jeans and a button-up shirt, beaming alongside his 73-year-old wife, former Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao.
But the image immediately sparked widespread skepticism, and then a flood of memes and AI-generated videos mocking it, including from high-profile MAGA figures who questioned its authenticity.
One image posted by a MAGA supporter swapped the faces of McConnell and his wife—“see how easy that is?” it read.
A separate video featured McConnell getting up from his hospital bed and doing an energetic dance in the hospital room.
Another meme featured the senator being visited by Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson, and John Wayne—all of whom are dead.
“New photo just released of other friends visiting Mitch McConnell today,” it read. “He really looks great! Hang in there!”
In the accompanying statement, McConnell was quoted as saying that was “briefly unconscious” around the time he was first taken to the hospital and had undergone various tests to try to determine what led to his fall.
It said he was also treated for mild pneumonia and has been moved to a rehabilitation facility.
“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,” the statement read, adding that the senator was now “regaining my strength.”
But his ongoing silence has left observers speculating about whether he is genuinely alive, while his disappearance has also reignited a broader debate over the gerontocracy in Washington.
Before he was admitted to hospital in June, McConnell was regularly seen being wheeled around Capitol Hill in a wheelchair, having suffered various falls and spells of freezing in the middle of press conferences.
But at 84, he is far from the oldest member of Congress, which is often jokingly referred to as America’s most prestigious retirement home.
In the Senate, Republican elder Chuck Grassley is 92 and still voting. In the House, McConnell’s fellow Kentuckian Hal Rogers is 88, Democrat Maxine Waters is 87, and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who is serving her final term, is 86.
McConnell’s fellow Republican senator, Lindsey Graham, died last week at the age of 71 after suffering cardiac arrest at his Washington, D.C., home
