Dead or alive is the wrong question about Mitch McConnell

Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky sits in a wheelchair strapped into an accessible van, flanked by staff members, absently staring straight ahead. Reporter Desiree Townsend calls out to him, “Sen. McConnell, do you want to go to work?” McConnell slowly turns his head, acknowledging he’s heard the question but his blank stare indicates he may not have processed it.

The reporter continues, “Do you want to go to work, sir? Would you rather be home?” McConnell replies by slowly raising his right hand and stretching out two fingers. He looks at the hand, offers a confused smile, then forms a peace sign as a staffer closes the van’s sliding door. One of the world’s most powerful men is off to work.

Alive or dead?

The exchange above occurred early in the morning of Sept. 23, McConnell’s fifth day back to work at the Senate after a 92-day absence. Three months ago, on June 14, the senator was found unconscious at his D.C. home.

The following day, Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters McConnell “sounded good” and was “clearly dialed in on what’s going on.” Thune also said he was hopeful McConnell would “be back this week.” This was the start of a pattern where Republican officials and McConnell staffers would express one thing about the senator’s health only for independent reporting to paint a much more serious picture.

For example, audio from 911 dispatch revealed an ambulance with advanced life support services was sent to McConnell’s home while police scanner audio confirmed paramedics conducted CPR on a person experiencing cardiac arrest. However, two weeks after these revelations were made public, McConnell’s team released an announcement that the senator “didn’t have a heart attack or stroke” without actually clarifying what had led to his collapse and hospitalization.

This continued lack of transparency led to an initial tongue-in-cheek suggestion that worked its way into a full-blown conspiracy theory. Mitch McConnell was either dead or permanently incapacitated.

Trump acolyte Laura Loomer poured fuel on the fire, claiming on X that a “high level source” told her that “Mitch McConnell is officially brain dead.” Desiree Townsend, the reporter from the story beginning this article, said sources had told her the same. Things escalated to the point that the governor of Kentucky, the state McConnell serves, officially requested a full public update on the senator’s health.

McConnell’s team remained cagey but eventually revealed the senator had been released from a rehabilitation center and would work from home. Finally, after a 92-day absence, a noticeably frail McConnell returned to the Senate. As it turns out, the rumors of his death were an exaggeration. And we all moved on.

The past Mitch McConnell

The left-wing insistence — whether serious or joking — of McConnell’s death set an incredibly low bar for his return. All he had to do was have a pulse. This simplified the narrative. We could have been talking about what level of transparency in health matters should public servants have with the public. We could have been talking about how the average age of a U.S. senator is above 65, three years past the most common retirement age. We could have been talking about how McConnell received full pay during his absence while having voted 23 times against paid or unpaid medical leave for American workers.

“Republicans had won the battle of Mitch McConnell’s continued existence and avoided the battle of his continued competence.”

These things, as evidenced by the links I’ve shared, had some discussion. But the national, popular-level discourse distilled the issue into a simple binary: Alive or dead? So once McConnell gave a belated proof-of-life, that was enough. Republicans had won the battle of Mitch McConnell’s continued existence and avoided the battle of his continued competence.

Whatever you think of him, you cannot deny that Mitch McConnell has been a politician’s politician. He’s corrupt, immoral and strikingly unpopular but keeps getting reelected. For 40 years he has proved himself to be an effective and powerful tactician for the Republican Party. Joshua Hurder, a senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Government Affairs Institute, has called him a “key architect of the Senate’s institutional transformation.” The Atlantic’s Idress Kahloon wrote that “no man has so thoroughly thwarted Democratic ambitions.”

The man always has known how to use power for his own partisan and personal purposes.

This is the man who successfully engineered a 2016 campaign of obstruction against the Obama White House to prevent a vote on Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland. McConnell argued that a Supreme Court seat should not be filled during an election year and, as Senate majority leader, refused to hold hearings or a vote. The seat remained vacant for the rest of Obama’s presidency before being filled by Trump nominee Neil Gorsuch. Four years later, McConnell would do a 180, rushing Trump’s nomination of Amy Coney Barrett through the Senate, getting a confirmation vote just one week before Trump lost the 2020 election.

That’s Mitch McConnell. Politically shrewd, tactically ruthless — someone who knows how to get his way no matter what. That is not the Mitch McConnell who returned to the Senate floor.

The present Mitch McConnell

Two days into his return, the Senate Agricultural Committee held a meeting to discuss the 2026 Farm Bill. With McConnell’s absence, the committee had been stuck in a months-long party-line deadlock, with Democrats objecting to the bill over its funding cuts to nutrition aid programs like SNAP. McConnell was wheeled in to be the deciding Republican vote.

In a video of the vote, McConnell can be seen seated to the left of Republican Agriculture Committee Chair John Boozman and to the right of Republican Sen. John Hoeven. A yes vote will advance the bill; a no will set it back. The clerk calls his name, “Senator McConnell?” He replies with a weak “No.”

There’s murmuring among the other senators and gathered staffers. Hoeven leans toward him and says something while a staffer behind McConnell also interjects. Boozman also joins in to talk to McConnell as the clerk asks him to repeat his vote. This time he says, “Aye.”

Now, this is undoubtedly the vote McConnell actually wanted. But the fact remains that he apparently could not understand what he was voting on and had to be coached to the proper answer.

When does this become elder abuse?

Imagine this were not a United States senator but an elderly member of your own family recovering from a serious medical incident that had left them hospitalized for months. They appear confused and unresponsive in public and require significant assistance to move around.

Now imagine them being placed in a situation where their authorization or decision is necessary — maybe they are being pressured to change their will, enter into a reverse mortgage or send money to a family member. We wouldn’t feel comfortable or satisfied just knowing they were alive. We’d want to know that they understand what they’re being asked to do and that they know why they’re doing it. We’d want to know that those around them were not there to take advantage of them.

“The concern is whether or not the person exercising the enormous power of a Senate seat is actually the person making the decisions.”

And we deserve to know the answers to all these things when it comes to our senators, particularly when their vote is the deciding vote on important legislation. McConnell’s physical limitations are not, in themselves, evidence of incapacity. Needing a wheelchair does not diminish someone’s ability to govern — just ask FDR. The concern is whether or not the person exercising the enormous power of a Senate seat is actually the person making the decisions.

If McConnell is fully capable of understanding the legislation before him, communicating his wishes and independently directing his staff, the public deserves reason to believe that. If he is not, the public deserves to know that too. Instead, McConnell and Republicans are continuing to obfuscate and cover up McConnell’s status.

Mitch McConnell’s value to his party is no longer what he can do, but what his presence can authorize. He does not need to give a speech. Staffers can craft written statements. He does not need to draft a bill. He can add his name as a co-author. He is no longer valuable as a human, but only as a vote encased in failing flesh. The political system surrounding him — the system he created — has found a way to preserve his power even if it’s not clear that he has retained his agency.

The question never should have been whether McConnell was alive or dead, but whether he was still here in a way that matters for his political position. After three months of silence, conflicting accounts, evasive statements, rehabilitation, a mysterious return and a Senate vote in which his colleagues appeared to help him arrive at the answer, we still don’t know.

For 40 years, Mitch McConnell worked his way into a position where the gears of government did not move without his permission. Now, he is reaping the consequences.

 

Josh Olds is a public theologian and pastor for those disillusioned with institutional church. He is the creator of the small-group video series “Year on the Mountaintop” and a featured contributor to Fostering Hope: A Prayerbook for Fostering and Adoptive Parents. Follow his work on Facebook or at JoshOlds.com.