A top MAGA pundit has demanded that Sen. Mitch McConnell release footage of himself to prove he is alive after going AWOL for 44 days and counting.
“I think he should release some kind of video statement,” Tony Kinnett, a podcast host and national correspondent for conservative media outlet The Daily Signal, told CNN’s Newsnight during a panel discussion Monday night. “How difficult is it to record a simple video?” he added.
McConnell, 84, has not been seen in public since June 14, when paramedics were called to his Washington home. A dispatcher logged the emergency as a cardiac arrest and a medic at the scene reported CPR underway. He was driven to George Washington University Hospital.
His office then said almost nothing for four weeks. Claims the senator was dead or being kept alive by machines poured into that vacuum. Far-right activist Laura Loomer told her followers that sources had told her McConnell was “brain dead.”
The senator’s operation is run by chief of staff Terry Carmack, who joined McConnell’s payroll in 2010 as his Kentucky state director and was elevated to the top job in 2021. His salary this year runs past $226,000. He has declined to answer questions about his boss from the press, and even in Capitol corridors.
The first substantive update on McConnell’s health landed on July 12, when his team issued a statement and a photograph of McConnell sitting up beside his wife Elaine Chao, 73, and holding a copy of that day’s Washington Post. Chao appeared to be supporting him, holding onto his left arm.
The senator said in his statement he had no broken bones and suffered neither concussion, heart attack, nor stroke, and that he lost consciousness briefly before picking up a mild case of pneumonia at the hospital.
Social media users picked the picture apart within hours, with some insisting it had been generated by AI. A second image, dated July 26 and distributed Monday, showed him in a near-identical pose, with his wife again gripping his arm. Doctors have said McConnell is “not yet medically cleared” to leave rehab.
MAGA accounts have likened the set-up of the image to Weekend at Bernie’s, a 1989 movie about two employees who attempt to pass their deceased boss off as alive. “Lmao they want us to think this is real?” wrote Eric Spracklen, a self-described “MAGA realist”, on X. Pro-Trump pundit Gunther Eagleman told his 1.7 million followers the senator was still missing.
Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear has pressed for answers. State lawmakers stripped him of the power to appoint a replacement senator in 2024, leaving a special election the only available route to filling the seat at present.
Kinnett challenged that state of affairs with his Monday night comments on CNN. “This is a really great example of a reason why the 17th Amendment to the Constitution should be abolished,” Kinnett said, referring to constitutional provisions for appointing Senators by public vote rather than the decision of state legislature.
“Because if you have a senator who’s not there, who’s not doing anything useful, and their state legislature does not like what they are doing, they should be able to, as originally the framers intended, bring that Senator back, and then elect and appoint a new Senator,” he added.
The Daily Beast has contacted McConnell’s office for comment on this story.
