Mitch McConnell froze and briefly appeared to be unable to continue speaking during a Senate Republican press conference.
He was led away by colleagues and returned not much later, stating that he was “fine”. This is not the first time that the 81-year-old has had a health scare.
The scene occurred on Wednesday as Republicans held their last weekly press briefing before the August recess, and discussed remaining business including the chamber’s effort to pass a defence spending bill before the holiday begins.
Mr McConnell was seen freezing at the podium for several seconds before a number of senators, including Joni Ernst of Iowa, approached him and encouraged him to step away.
He did so, only to come back a few minutes later. He refused to elaborate on what had just occurred.
“Can you address what happened here at the start of the press conference? Was it related to your injury from earlier this year when you suffered a concussion?” asked CNN’s Manu Raju.
“I’m fine,” responded the senator.
“You’re fine? You’re fully able to do your job?” Raju asked in response, to which the minority leader replied: “Yeah.”
Mr McConnell entered the Senate in 1985 and has been the top Republican since 2007.
Mr McConnell’s freezing at the press conference is likely to be looked at with scrutiny given the renewed interest in the issues presented by the increasingly advanced ages of many of the members of the upper chamber of Congress.
Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, in particular, has been the subject of intense criticism on the matter as many have argued that the 90-year-old, who has sometimes appeared confused in interactions with reporters and staff, is no longer up to serving.
This is a rundown of Mr McConnell’s previous health issues:
Childhood polio
He continues to walk with a limp, a residual issue caused by his battle with polio at a young age.
When Mr McConnell was two years old in 1944, his upper left leg was paralyzed by polio and he was treated at the Warm Springs Institute in Georgia established by Democratic World War II President Franklin Delano Roosevelt for his own struggle with the same disease.
“When I was a child and my dad was in World War II, I got polio. I recovered, but my family almost went broke,” Mr McConnell said in a 1990 re-election ad. “Today, too many families can’t get decent, affordable health care. That’s why I’ve introduced a bill to make sure healthcare is available to all Kentucky families, hold down skyrocketing costs, and provide long-term care.”
Since that ad, Mr McConnell has been criticized by his political opponents for working against affordable healthcare.
In 2020, as the Covid-19 pandemic was underway, Mr McConnell told the AP that it reminded him of having polio as a child.
“Why does this current pandemic remind me of that? I think number one is the fear,” he said. “And the uncertainty you have when there’s no pathway forward on either treatment or a vaccine and that was the situation largely in polio before 1954.”
At the time of the AP interview, only 16,000 people in the US had died of Covid-19. As of today, more than 1.1 million have died in the US as a result of the pandemic, according to the WHO.
“There’s hope that we’re going to get on top of this disease within a year, year and a half,” Mr McConnell told the AP in 2020.
Speaking about his childhood polio, Mr McConnell grew emotional as he said he was “lucky” to have a mother “who was determined to see me walk again”.
“Tenacity, hard work and not giving up – my mother instilled all that in me before I was four years old and I think it’s been a guiding principle in how I lead my life,” he added.
Asked how his mother could afford his polio treatment, Mr Connell told the AP: “Honestly, I don’t know the answer to that.”
He recalled the relief at the arrival of the polio vaccine.
“I’ve had a normal life, but I’ve been acutely aware of the disease that I had and the relief that the country had when they found the vaccine,” he said in 2020, months ahead of the Covid-19 vaccine’s arrival. “We’re going to get that relief.”
Triple heart bypass surgery
Mr McConnell had a triple heart bypass surgery in February 2003 in connection to blocked arteries. The procedure was conducted at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, just outside Washington, DC.
A fall that caused a concussion
The 81-year-old Mr McConnell returned to the Senate in March of this year after suffering a fall that caused a concussion.
“Leader McConnell tripped at a dinner event,” communications director David Popp said at the time, adding that Mr McConnell would be in hospital for “a few days of observation and treatment”.
The event was at the Waldorf Astoria DC – previously the Trump International Hotel from 2012 to 2022.
One of the colleagues at Mr McConnell’s side guiding him away after he froze on Wednesday, Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming, a physician by training, said at the time that he expected that Mr McConnell would make a full recovery.
Mr McConnell also fell at his home in Louisville, Kentucky in August 2019, suffering a shoulder fracture.
