The Mitch McConnell mystery

0:00Mitch McConnell is 84 years old. It's been 84 years.

0:07That makes him older than Israel, superglue, and the microwave oven. Mitch McConnell, polio survivor, is older than the polio vaccine. And we've known for some time that he's not in peak physical form. It was back in 2023 when he took a nasty fall and was hospitalized with a fractured rib and a concussion. and it was that same year when he froze twice in front of cameras while speaking to the press. Once for like a solid 30 seconds. This week has been good bipartisan cooperation and a string of... We're not going to play the whole thing. The point is, despite years of health issues, the former Senate Majority Leader still managed to mystify the nation when he goes to don Congress and his constituents for a month.

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2:05Today Explained. My name is Annie Greyer and I'm a senior reporter at CNN. When did you first hear that something was wrong with the former Senate Majority Leader? So his team actually put out a statement the day that he was hospitalized on June 14th. It was a very short statement. And all it said was, Senator 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. Yeah. Why does this become a big mystery? if they were transparent about it from the jump.

2:52Because 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. And when you say so long, I mean, we're talking on the morning of Tuesday, July 14th, And I think we got proof of life on Sunday, July 12th. Was there almost no communication or was there actually no communication between that near month? So throughout that month, a couple of things happened. First, there was EMS audio that came out that showed that emergency responders went to McConnell's home on June 14th And we're responding to somebody who was unconscious, who needed CPR, and who was under cardiac arrest.

3:57And that really turned this story because it showed that this was a really serious situation. And that was much more severe than what the simple statements that we were getting from McConnell's team were. 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, why he continued to remain there. It just said that, you know, the senator was continuing to recover in the hospital. So the mystery around all of this just continued to build, continued to build. And then I spoke to one of McConnell's neighbors who witnessed the mourning of McConnell being taken to the hospital on June 14th.

4:52This 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. They saw their face. And the person I spoke to also captured a short video of this moment.

5:18If we had known the circumstances around McConnell's hospitalization earlier or in more fulsome detail, you know, how he was transported to the hospital might not have been that big of a deal. But because we were dealing with such little amounts of information, the fact that he was transported to a hospital on a stretcher was important for this story to fill because we were just trying to fill in any blanks that we could and try and provide that transparency in a moment when we were getting very little from the senator and his team. So while you at CNN are trying to figure out what exactly has happened to one of the most powerful political figures of our era, people online are also trying to figure out, and a lot of them believe him dead.

6:20Mitch McConnell is dead. I mean, that's what all of us think. Is this a full-on Weekend at Bernie situation with Mitch McConnell? Everyone is lying to you about Mitch McConnell, and the reason they're doing so is because it's a soft launch for the eventual announcement that the commander-in-chief, the orange guy, will eventually also be gone. The cockroach just, like, vacated this skin suit, and they're like, oh my god, there's this skin suit left over. How weird is it for a politician of this stature to kind of just ghost? McConnell has a very busy day job. He is supposed to be in the Senate voting.

6:56You know, he serves on the Appropriations Committee, which is in charge for 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. How long do you expect this to take? And what's the legal basis? Take what? Take what? The war. Well, I think it's going very fast. And McConnell has a major role to play in all of that. Republicans also have a very narrow majority in the Senate and where every vote counts and with such slim margins, not being able to count on McConnell's vote is a huge problem for Republicans as they try and navigate their very narrow and unruly majority.

7:44And even some of McConnell's colleagues have said that transparency is always better. For example, Republican Senator John Cornyn from Texas told our team yesterday that, quote, I think we need some transparency. I wish Senator McConnell and his team had done that earlier. I think it would have resolved a lot of questions. So that just shows you that 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.

8:27In 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 Senator 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, Senator Barrasso, also said that he had spoken to McConnell. Leader Thune spoke with Senator McConnell yesterday by phone.

9:13They had a lengthy and substantive conversation that covered a variety of topics, including national security. Senator Barrasso and Senator McConnell had a lengthy conversation early this afternoon. Their phone call lasted roughly 20 minutes. It didn't do much for that. Just got off the phone with Mitch McConnell. He told me, ah, shit, it's hot. Fuck, there's so much fire. Oh, God, Reagan's here too. Fuck. Just got off the phone with my close personal friend, Mitch McConnell. We spoke for six hours. He told me he is gay and might be interested in exploring polyamory. Just got off the phone with Mitch McConnell.

9:51He's dating Margaret Qualley. Spoke to Mitch McConnell today for about 20 minutes. Said he was heading to Bernie's for the weekend. I think people wanted to hear from the senator himself. They wanted a photo, a video, a statement that was more fulsome 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.

10:27Because on Sunday, we get literally 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 just, it was his way of indirectly addressing, I think, why it took so long to share what sent him to the hospital last month.

11:22And he said, quote, you all know how folks in 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 sort of the balance that lawmakers are grappling with right now is what level of transparency is required while still protecting personal health and sensitive matters.

12:09And I think 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 who get to make their own rules about this, there is no mandate of 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. And we clearly saw the response to that.

12:57It's not just Mitch when we're back on Today Explained.

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16:45Today Explained is back now with Burgess Everett, Congressional Bureau Chief for Semaphore. Burgess, I know you covered the Senate, but over in the House of Representatives, there's also someone who's gone missing. Could you tell us about that person? Tom Kane missed weeks and weeks, months even, of votes over in the House. He's a congressman from New Jersey, a Republican. A congressman is missing. This photo is actually the last public sighting of the man, and he has since missed more than 100 votes in Congress. And he's provided no explanation beyond, quote, a personal medical issue. Republicans need Cain's seat to hold the House in the midterms.

17:26He didn't explain why he was gone. He kept saying he was going to be back and offer an explanation. I understand the need for transparency on this matter, and I look forward to sharing my experience with the public. Finally, he did. He was being treated for depression. Now, when people hear the word depression, many people think simply means feeling sad. But depression is so much more than that. It is physical. It is emotional. And until you experience it yourself, it is difficult to fully understand how powerful this illness can be. This is an interesting one, though, because this is a battleground house seat.

18:03He hasn't been in the house that long. So I could see his race turning into a referendum on his health and whether he was transparent enough about it for his constituents. He didn't want to talk about it. He didn't want to disclose it. It seemed like he was prioritizing his own health over transparency for his voters. But the conflict there is, of course, that they get to weigh in on whether he was transparent enough. So it's going to be really interesting to watch how people in New Jersey respond to the way Tom Kane handled this illness.

18:37What rules are there in Congress to deal with situations like these with Tom and Mitch? There's no rules really on this. Congress governs itself. The House governs itself. The Senate governs itself, right? So if somebody's doing something that other members find inappropriate, your options are pretty limited. You could try to expel them or the ethics committees can investigate them. We really haven't seen that translate to health. Those committees are usually more about investigating scandals, corruption, things like that. So there's really no accountability measure other than these elections.

19:11Why not? Why aren't there rules in place that say like, hey, you know, the people pay your salary and you owe them, I don't know, showing up or explaining why you're not showing up? It's really the same reason that Congress doesn't do a great job policing its own stock trades, right? Like, who likes to put more restrictions on themselves? They'd wrap people would rather say, you know, I'm going to do the right thing. You can trust me on this because they don't want to put those guardrails on themselves if they can avoid it. And we'll see. I mean, I I'm having a hard time seeing Congress ever moving to put those rules on itself regarding health.

19:48But I do think this is going to become more of a political issue to me and my personal experience. It started with Dianne Feinstein and the questions about her fitness to lead the Judiciary Committee. Just say aye. Okay. Just aye. Aye. She's representing 40 million people in California. We need someone who's going to be on top of the job. I do think that if it is impacting her ability to do the job, then I would support a resignation. I think John Fetterman had an election after having a stroke in which he had a terrible debate performance. I do support fracking and I don't I don't I support fracking and I stand and I do support fracking.

20:36And he still won handily. There's going to be a bunch of this in the race to replace Lindsey Graham because I think it's going to be fresh on voters' minds that Lindsey Graham just died in office at 71. Are they going to choose to send somebody older or perhaps, you know, younger to replace Senator Graham so that they can have more confidence that that person will be able to serve longer? Okay, so part of the reason we don't have rules is because who likes to create rules that, you know, restrict themselves? But also, is part of the issue here that our politicians are, one, living longer and certainly sticking around in Congress longer than they used to?

21:13You know, I think it's easy. There's always recency bias when it comes to these sort of things. And he was around before I covered the Senate, but Strom Thurmond served in office until he was 100, right? Classic. Everybody told me that, you know, by the time he was done, he was very diminished. And I think there's a lot of examples of that in recent history. people hanging on as long as they can.

21:38I think, like, the best example is Chuck Grassley, who's the oldest senator in his 90s. When I started farming in 1960, the saying was, corn should be knee-high by the 4th of July. I was one of the first senators to get a fax machine when they were so useful. Much older than Lindsey Graham has been, And, you know, I do think when he won re-election, to me, there were questions about his health. I went out and covered his re-election race and he challenged me to a push-up contest, which makes you laugh, right? But it's also like, okay, like this guy's trying to meet this challenge of are you too old to serve in office?

22:18And here we are. It's 2026. He's still there. He's not even ruling out running again for a six-year term. I'd be surprised if he does. But, you know, I do think, like, until you put term limits on members of Congress, how long they can serve, it's extremely hard for me to imagine any other way to make people leave office because of age.

22:43What happens when your elected representative isn't showing up to work? Can they still call in a vote from their hospital bed, their deathbed, their rehab facility, whatever it is? The Senate is more antiquated even than the House. There's not even a voting card, for example. So you've got to go in there and give a thumbs up or thumbs down. So if you're not in good enough shape to get to the Capitol with all of your staff, with your drivers, with all of these extras that the government gives you to do your job, then, yeah, I mean, you can't get a vote. You can't represent your constituents. I will say, though, even right now, there's good, experienced people working in Lindsey Graham's office who are probably taking constituent phone calls, helping people with their social – getting their social security benefits, whatever.

23:29The things that we don't really talk about on a day-to-day basis, those are still there even when the member dies or is otherwise incapacitated. I mean, you're talking about politicians not wanting to disclose their health issues because they may seem weak, the optics, whatever it might be, a reelection coming up. But is part of it also this razor-thin margin situation that we have right now where they maybe don't want the party to look weak or vulnerable? Well, I think with Senator McConnell, I think he's a—everybody has their own story, right? And, like, for him, he's a polio survivor. He's always taken his physical health kind of, like, seriously in the sense that he doesn't want to project weakness.

24:12and he wants to say, like, I beat this disease and I became the Senate majority leader. What that has meant is there's been times when he's walked when he shouldn't have. He probably should have been in a wheelchair or with a walker or a cane. But he doesn't like that. And so I know his staff had asked him for years to be more cognizant of his physical safety, and he didn't do it, and he's fallen a bunch. And that was how he ended up in the hospital this time. And I think for him, he doesn't want to go out resigning in July of his last year. He takes his Senate Appropriations Chairmanship of the Defense Spending Committee very seriously, for example, and I'm sure he's got a few legacy things that he wants to tie up.

24:52So I think to him, like, he doesn't want to go out like that. But if his absence were to hamstring Republicans' ability to do X, Y, or Z, I do think that there's some rabble-rousing Republicans who would let you know that they didn't like it. Mitch McConnell, 84 years old. Chuck Grassley, the senior senator from Iowa's infamously 92 years old. Former Senator Mitt Romney recently said he would not run for president in 2028. Not that anyone was asking him to per se, but because he'll be 80 years old by then. And I think even cited research saying that your brain capacity shrinks by the time you're 80.