It has now been at least 74 days since anyone publicly saw Sen. Mitch McConnell.
That’s a long time for anyone. It’s especially striking when the person in question is an 84-year-old U.S. senator whose office has provided remarkably little information about what happened to him, how he is doing, or when — if ever — he expects to return to the Senate this year.
McConnell was last publicly seen on June 14, the same day paramedics reportedly found him unconscious at home and performed CPR after he suffered cardiac arrest. He subsequently spent weeks in the hospital.
And then came the silence.
As questions about his condition mounted, the Kentucky Republican finally issued a statement on July 12 saying he had been hospitalized after suffering a fall and developing what he described as a “mild case of pneumonia.”
But that explanation left plenty unanswered.
There was still no clear timeline for his recovery. No indication of when he might return to Washington. And no meaningful explanation of what had actually happened during those weeks in the hospital.
The last substantive update from McConnell’s office came three weeks ago, on August 6, when his office announced that he had been discharged from a rehabilitation center and was returning home to continue recovering.
McConnell said at the time that, on his doctors’ advice, he would continue an “intensive regimen of physical therapy” from home while remaining in contact with his staff and Senate colleagues.
Since then? Nothing.
Asked Thursday whether there was any new information about McConnell’s health or when he might return to the Senate, his spokesperson, Stephanie Penn, had no update.
She said she had “nothing to add” to the three-week-old statement and provided an excerpt from it instead.
That means the public is still essentially working with the same information it had three weeks ago.
And McConnell isn’t just a private citizen recovering at home. He is a sitting U.S. senator.
The Senate is currently in recess until September 14. Whether McConnell will be well enough to return to work when his colleagues come back remains unclear.
There is, of course, a legitimate argument for giving an elderly public official privacy while he deals with a serious health problem. No one is entitled to every detail of another person’s medical history.
But there is also a legitimate public-interest question here.
McConnell holds elected office. His constituents are entitled to know whether he is capable of carrying out the responsibilities of that office — particularly after a reported cardiac arrest, a lengthy hospitalization and rehabilitation.
For now, they don’t have an answer. They don’t even have much of an update.
They have an 84-year-old senator who hasn’t been publicly seen in more than two months, an office that has offered little information, and a September 14 return date rapidly approaching.
At some point, “nothing to add” stops being an update. It becomes the story.
