Mitch McConnell’s mysterious disappearance had everyone going a little wild.
After the Kentucky senator was abruptly hospitalized last month, little information was given on his condition or the cause of it. Politicians and internet conspiracists immediately started to wonder if there was more to the story. Far-right political activist Laura Loomer even went so far as to say he was “brain dead.” Things moved quickly.
It all seemed to come to a head when McConnell’s office shared a proof of life photo on Sunday with an accompanying statement in which the senator explained that he was recovering from a fall and undergoing some physical therapy. He’s smiling and holding the Sunday sports section of the Washington Post. But the image wasn’t enough to quell the questions about his health.
How did McConnell’s whereabouts become such a mystery? Annie Grayer is a senior reporter for CNN, where she has been following and breaking news about McConnell’s health journey. She joined Today, Explained co-host Sean Rameswaram to discuss why his nearly one-month disappearance rocked the country and why the public demanded more information than he gave.
Below is an excerpt of the conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full podcast, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.
When did you first hear that something was wrong with the former Senate majority leader?
His team actually put out a statement the day that he was hospitalized on June 14. It was a very short statement and all it said was Sen. McConnell was admitted to the hospital this morning. He is receiving excellent care. That short statement set off a firestorm of trying to figure out more because we learned so little from just that one sentence.
Why does this become a big mystery if they were transparent about it from the jump?
Because I think it’s one thing to alert people that the senator’s been hospitalized, but to go on for so long and not say why he was hospitalized initially or what is keeping him in the hospital just led us to continue to ask more questions because we were getting no answers.
We’re talking on the morning of Tuesday, July 14, and we got proof of life on Sunday, July 12. Was there actually no communication over that month?
A couple things happened. First, there was EMS audio that came out that showed that emergency responders went to McConnell’s home on June 14 and were responding to somebody who was unconscious, needed CPR, and was under cardiac arrest. And that really turned this story because it showed that this was a really serious situation and much more severe than the simple statements that we were getting from McConnell’s team.
After that EMS audio, McConnell’s team put out another statement, but, again, it didn’t really address the larger concerns or the questions about why he was hospitalized. It just said that the senator was continuing to recover in the hospital. So the mystery around all of this just continued to build.
And then I spoke to one of McConnell’s neighbors who witnessed the morning of McConnell being taken to the hospital on June 14. This person witnessed emergency responders carrying somebody out of McConnell’s home on a stretcher. This person was wrapped in a blanket and their feet were exposed and somebody else remarked, “Oh, that’s Mitch McConnell.”
If we had known the circumstances around McConnell’s hospitalization earlier or in more detail, how he was transported to the hospital might not have been that big of a deal. But because we were dealing with such [minimal] amounts of information, the fact that he was transported to a hospital on a stretcher was important for this story. We were just trying to fill in any blanks that we could and provide that transparency at a moment when we were getting very little from the senator and his team.
How weird is it for a politician of this stature to just ghost?
McConnell has a very busy day job. He is supposed to be in the Senate voting. He serves on the Appropriations Committee, which is in charge of funding the entire government. And he’s specifically the chair of the defense subcommittee. Now the Defense Department, kind of busy right now in the middle of a major war with Iran, needs more funding from Congress.
McConnell has a major role to play in all of that. And Republicans also have a very narrow majority in the Senate and where every vote counts. With such slim margins, not being able to count on McConnell’s vote is a huge problem for Republicans as they try [to] navigate their very narrow and unruly majority.
Even some of McConnell’s colleagues have said that transparency is always better. For example, Republican Sen. John Cornyn from Texas told our team that, “I think we need some transparency. I wish Senator McConnell and his team had done that earlier. I think it would’ve resolved a lot of questions.” That just shows you even some Republicans are aware that the way that McConnell’s team handled the situation didn’t necessarily help things when senators know how much is at stake, how much that goes into their day job. And for him to just not be there for so long is not normal.
In these weeks where Mitch goes dark, goes quiet, is anyone talking to him? Is anyone communicating with him? Is anyone vouching for him?
When the firestorm online really started to take off and the conspiracy theories were at their peak, the majority leader in the Senate, John Thune, Republican, said that he spoke to Sen. McConnell for about 20 minutes. They talked about a variety of topics and that was supposed to quell the noise online. Another Republican leader in the Senate, Sen. [John] Barrasso, also said that he had spoken to McConnell. It didn’t do much for that.
I think people wanted to hear from the senator himself. They wanted a photo, a video, a statement that was more [complete] than one sentence, to really understand what was going on. And even though there were Republicans in the Senate trying to vouch for him, I don’t think it was until Sunday that people started to understand more what was going on.
On Sunday, we got a proof of life photo from Mitch McConnell. It’s got Mitch and his wife and he’s got his hand on a copy of the Sunday sports section from the Washington Post. Is that how you thought this story would come to an end?
I didn’t know how this story was going to come to an end. And frankly, I don’t know if it’s over. We still need to see McConnell return to work. And he is no longer hospitalized, but he is in a rehabilitation center and unable to come to the Senate. And there’s one quote from his statement that I want to circle back to because I think it was his way of indirectly addressing why it took so long to share what sent him to the hospital last month. He said, “You all know how folks of my generation often hesitate to share the vulnerability that comes with growing older. Even in the public eye, I feel that same instinct — I can’t help it.” He’s essentially saying there that he wanted to maintain his privacy. He felt that he didn’t have to share more than what his office was putting out there. And that’s the balance that lawmakers are grappling with right now is what level of transparency is required while still protecting personal health and sensitive matters.
What we learned from the public response to this is people want transparency. People are invested in this. They want to know what their representatives are doing, if they are able to work, what their status is. And lawmakers get to make their own rules about this. There is no mandate that you must show up for work after X days or explain why you’ve been gone for X number of days. There’s no protocol here. It’s totally up to each member how they do this. And how McConnell and his team handled this situation was one way. We clearly saw the response to that.
