The alternate reality has been pierced

**David Pakman** (0:00)
We have a Republican Party that is trying to essentially build an alternate reality for Americans. Unfortunately for them, the reality of America keeps breaking through the propaganda. Mitch McConnell appears to be gone from the Senate for good, despite now multiple proof of life photographs. Trump's reflecting pool vandalism story has collapsed and it is now exposed. This botched 14 million dollar renovation and then his Supreme Court crusade to appeal the birthright citizenship ruling. That's over because they just forgot they missed the deadline. Meanwhile, Trump glitches his way through a bewildering Oval Office gaggle before inventing secret polling numbers that exist nowhere other than his own mind. And meanwhile, a leading MAGA figure is warning, hey, all you people ignoring grocery prices and not slamming Trump's foreign war, you're destroying the Republican Party. And speaking of destroying the Republican Party, Laura Ingraham sort of accidentally explains why Trump officials should fear losing power, but it's reversed from reality. That plus Trump's explosive diarrhea parasite problem has now turned deadly on today's show.
Well, I think it is now relatively obvious that Senator Mitch McConnell is never coming back to the United States Senate. Now, of course, his name might stay attached to the seat until January. Formally or strictly speaking, he will be one of the two senators from Kentucky. His staff may keep putting out written statements supposedly dictated by Mitch McConnell or whatever. We may even get another carefully staged picture. But in every meaningful sense, like in the sense of is he going to be acting as senator in his capacity to represent the Kentucky people? Of course not. Mitch McConnell's Senate career appears to be completely over. The very widely discussed August 3rd special election deadline has passed yesterday. It's now August 4th. And that was supposedly the final practical opportunity for him to resign, to declare the seat vacant and to organize a special election, which might happen alongside the November election. Maybe before there would be some discretion for the governor, Andy Beshear. But that date has come and gone. Now, Governor Andy Beshear says that August 3rd was never a binding legal deadline and that it doesn't have any legal impact on his options. And in a sense, that's true. Before August, August 3rd and earlier, he cannot declare a special election. August 4th and later, he must declare a special election. But the law doesn't say when the special election must be. In any case, that's come and gone. Now, here's one really interesting thing.
There is an argument to be made and more and more Democrats are making it that even though in Kentucky, you hear this thing, Kentucky changed the law.
The governor cannot appoint anyone to fill vacant Senate seats. There must be a special election. And it is true that that took place. But I spoken to legal experts who say, listen, this has never really been tested. And if the governor were simply to say, especially because Mitch McConnell is absent, if the governor were simply to say, I'm appointing someone to fill this seat, the seat is effectively vacant. Here's who I'm appointing. It's a Democrat. You and I might go, well, no, Kentucky changed the. What some legal experts are saying is there's a conflict. The conflict is based around whether US. Senator is considered a statewide office or not. This is very technical. The technicalities don't even really matter to us. The point is, there are a lot of people now saying, you know, Andy Beshear should appoint someone. Let the courts fight it out. And in fact, we have a petition at petition David pakman.com with something like seventy thousand signatures saying that is exactly what Andy Beshear should do. So if that's interesting, consider signing that petition that David pakman.com. So the point is, there is no magic solution here. But politically, Republicans kind of got through the most sensitive moment without seeing the seat become formally vacant. McConnell is completely absent. He's not been seen or heard from in terms of publicly speaking since he was hospitalized in mid-June after he supposedly fell, briefly lost consciousness, at some point developed mild pneumonia and he's been in rehab and he's not medically cleared to go back to the Senate. He has missed dozens of Senate votes. Now, as a reminder, his office released two pictures, no video, no audio, no interview, no direct demonstration that he is even cognitively capable of performing the job. The first picture showed Mitch McConnell appearing to hold that day's newspaper, sort of like when a hostage has to prove when a picture is taken, they have him hold the newspaper. And so he did that sitting alongside his wife, Elaine Chao. And then later in July, we had a second picture. And Internet sleuths, as we talked about last week, have looked at Elaine Chao's clothes, Elaine Chao's hair. And they've said, you know, it's kind of interesting that she wore the same shirt on different dates in July. Of course, that proves nothing. People wear shirts more than once. But you don't have to be a rocket scientist to notice that something is wrong here. Something is wrong. The medical update says Mitch McConnell continues to rebuild his strength.