New update in McConnell's health saga

**Brian Tyler Cohen** (0:01)
Mitch McConnell's health continues to be a problem as the Senator's office releases a new statement. And I've got three interviews, Jamie Raskin, Yassamin Ansari, and Puck's Peter Hamby. I'm Brian Tyler Cohen, and you're listening to No Lie.
As questions about Mitch McConnell's health and frankly his survival continue to mount, his office has released a new statement. This is according to Washington Post. David Popp, who is a McConnell spokesman, said, Quote, The Senator continues to meet with staff regarding Senate and Kentucky business, including discussions on defense appropriations, foreign policy, the Farm Bill, constituent services, and constituent federal grant requests. As the Senator continues to improve in rehab, we will be sure to keep you updated.
Now look, this is obviously conjecture on my part, but with Mitch McConnell in the hospital for over 40 days, the notion that he is continuing to meet with staff to discuss foreign policy and constituent services sounds absolutely insane. Like, here's the thing, this is a sitting United States Senator whose absence is functionally shifting the balance of power in the Senate, and the public has every right to know more than a staged photo op actually tells us. Which by the way, is not something that I should have to say against a political party that spent four years decrying Joe Biden's cognitive function. If anyone should have some modicum of concern for the ability of an elected official to do his job, it is this Republican Party whose entire identity was predicated on their collective concern about the Democratic president's cognitive health. Although I gotta say, there is something so fundamentally Mitch McConnell about the rules suddenly changing for Republicans. Remember, McConnell himself would not allow Merrick Arlen to be seated on the Supreme Court for a year because God forbid a Supreme Court nominee was appointed during the year of an election.
Until, of course, Amy Coney Barrett was seated while votes were already being cast. And the architect of that scheme? Mitch McConnell. So the irony is not lost on me that he is yet again at the heart of a scandal where only one side has to operate by any rules. So look, I say this as somebody who is not a doctor and who shockingly in the year 2026, when everybody pretends to be everything online, doesn't even claim to know anything about health care. But I'm going to go out in a limb and say that far from doing constituent services, I would be surprised if Mitch McConnell is even lucid or capable of surviving on his own right now. Which raises the question, why does this matter? Why would the GOP or McConnell's office be hiding this? And the answer to that question is that there is a deadline buried in all of this and that deadline is August 3rd. So under Kentucky law, if McConnell seat becomes vacant before August 3rd, the state is required to hold a special election to fill it. After August 3rd, there isn't enough runway to administer that special election before Kentucky's already scheduled November election for his seat. And so instead, the seat would just sit vacant, unfilled until whoever wins that November race is sworn in in January. And of course, this is the exact law that Kentucky Republicans rammed through back in 2024 And this wasn't some neutral, good government reform. This was a bill written specifically because Republicans looked at their aging senator and said, We cannot risk letting our Democratic governor have any say in who replaces him. So they stripped Governor Andy Beshear of the appointment power entirely, and they mandated a special election instead. And that was all while McConnell was 82 years old and very obviously not at peak health. So here's where the truly fitting part of this story comes in. If McConnell's seat goes vacant before August 3rd, Kentucky has to run a real special election, one that Democrats could theoretically compete in, or where Thomas Massey could run in. Obviously, he is persona non grata in the GOP, or somebody else that can put up a real fight and cost Republicans a lot of money at a bare minimum to compete in that seat, if not win outright. But if McConnell's office just keeps the lights on, keeps issuing vague little, he's recovering nicely statements and run out the clock past August 3rd without an official vacancy, then that seat just sits empty until January, where the already scheduled November race, which is a race largely shaped by Kentucky's Republican electorate, decides who gets it. No competitive special election variable, no wild card, just a clean handoff to whoever wins in November without ever having to test the seat in an open contest before then. Which means there is now a very real, very cynical incentive for McConnell's team to say as little as possible, for as long as possible, to just get him, or at least the legal fiction of his still-occupied seat, across the August 3rd finish line. Whether or not that's actually what's happening, I can't tell you. Nobody can, because that's the point. The opacity itself is doing the political work.