McConnell Staffers Not Surprised By Another Freeze-Up

Mitch McConnell froze up again while talking to reporters last week, marking the second time in the last few weeks that he’s had an episode. But what’s interesting is that in both instances, his staffers didn’t seem surprised that it happened, a sign that they’ve known there’s something seriously wrong with him. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

Mitch McConnell froze up again while talking to reporters last week, marking the second time in the last few weeks that he's had an episode. But what's interesting is that in both instances, his staffers didn't seem surprised at what happened. They didn't rush him to the hospital. They asked him what was wrong. Chances are they know exactly what's wrong. Otherwise, after an event like that, you would take him to the hospital immediately. Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins joins me to talk about what's happening along with many other issues. Yeah, this, it's a pitiful story. I mean, he looks pitiful up there in front of the podium. He's barely hanging on. He's 81?

Yeah.

81 years old. Too old to be doing this. Whether the GOP says, well, he's still sharp. He's still brilliant. That's nonsense. Okay. You look at it, it looks like early Parkinson's, doesn't it?

It really does. And that's actually, you've got a lot of medical professionals, the ones who go on TV regularly who are saying, listen, we obviously haven't examined him, but if we're looking just at the symptoms that are visible, this is Parkinson's. And they're all saying this is Parkinson's. And you bring up that great point of the fact that if we were standing here and I suddenly stopped responding, or you stopped responding, we would freak out.

Would you take me to the hospital please.

Immediately. I wouldn't just be sitting here waiting for you to respond. But his staffers looked like they almost expected it. So this was nothing new to them.

It was no surprise.

Which is a very telling thing.

I mean, two staffers sauntered up to him and talked to him, whispered, look, if this were something that they didn't know, and you know we're handling the Paraquat case, which is Parkinson's. We handled the, we've handled so many different cases that have been involved with, welding cases, those were Parkinson's disease. This is one of the early symptoms. And that's, apparently that's what they're talking about on television. I don't know. I'm not a doctor, but I've seen this before. And they say, well, it's possibly a seizure related to the belated concussion that took place. I don't know. I'm not buying any of it. But the most telling thing is the staff, isn't it?

It is. That's what just shows you, they're used to this. So what I'm willing to bet is that they've seen this more than just these two instances. These are people, they meet with him in his office. They drive him around. So if this is something that they've seen happen before, and then 30, 60 seconds later he snaps out of it, you're not shocked. Nobody's eyes widened when this happened, except for all the people in the crowd watching it. They could tell something was wrong. The staffers were almost annoyed by it. I mean, they just seemed like, okay.

Again.

Here he goes. Yeah. And it's, listen, McConnell, they're in trouble when he leaves because he has been leading some of the worst legislation we've seen. All the judicial picks. But that's all him. And he's their top fundraiser. He went to a fundraiser that night.

Is Thune strong enough as a whip, as the Republican whip? I don't think so.

I haven't seen that, but I get why Republicans want to hang on to him. And then I contrast that with like Feinstein. Democrats have no reason, I mean, Feinstein's not a top fundraiser. She's not directing policy, but there're still holding onto her too.

She's basically a corpse at this point that they shuffle around and she's barely cognizant of what's going on around. But this is no different. Democrats.