U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell abruptly “freezing” mid-sentence for almost 20 seconds during his Wednesday news conference made headlines, as did his serious trip and fall incident in March, when he was hospitalized with injuries including a concussion.
But McConnell’s disturbing, apparent health-related incident on Wednesday wasn’t the first time the 81-year old Kentucky Republican has had a concerning health-related event while talking to reporters, nor was his serious trip and fall the first time that had happened either.
Wednesday “was the second time in as many months McConnell has had an unusual incident at his weekly news conference. The other incident occurred in June when he has having trouble hearing questions from reporters who could be clearly heard by the senators next to him,” CNN reports.
CNN also reports on a previously unknown trip and fall incident “in Finland when McConnell and a US delegation met with the Finnish president in Helsinki, according to three sources familiar with the matter.”
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“As he got out of his car on a snowy day and walked towards his meeting with Finnish President Sauli Niinistö, the GOP leader tripped and fell, the sources said of the incident which hasn’t been previously reported. He dusted himself off and continued on with the meeting.”
That incident occurred just days before the trip and fall that led to McConnell being hospitalized for five days with a concussion and rib injury. He was away from Washington for nearly six weeks, and only returned after a news outlet reported his own Republican leadership team was making plans to find his successor.
Also unreported until now is a trip and fall incident McConnell suffered at Reagan National Airport on July 14. NBC News was first to reveal the event Wednesday night. McConnell reportedly “had a ‘face plant,’ someone who was on the plane at the time but did not witness the fall told NBC News. That passenger also said they spoke to another passenger who helped tend to McConnell.”
McConnell, the longest-serving Senate Republican Leader in U.S. history, “has also recently been using a wheelchair as a precaution when he navigates crowded airports, said a source familiar with his practices.”
The Senate Minority Leader and his team have done a good job of hiding or minimizing these events, refusing to offer full explanations, or any at all. On Wednesday they claimed he merely felt “light-headed.” No medical report was released, nor was McConnell rushed to a hospital.
In October of 2020 McConnell’s lips and hands appeared bruised and blue, yet he refused to explain why.
He “dismissed the issue as a media fixation, despite his own history of health issues related to his heart and a serious fall last year that left him out of the public eye for five weeks,” The Washington Post reported in October of that year.
“McConnell,” the paper continued, “who overcame polio at a young age, suffered a fall in early August 2019 that he blamed on an old tennis shoe as he walked out of his home in Louisville, suffering a fractured shoulder that required follow-up surgery and weeks of physical therapy.”
“I can just tell you that I’m just fine. And I can’t believe y’all have played with that all week long,” McConnell told the Post in an interview.
McConnell often jokes about these incidents, telling reporters when he returned to D.C. in April, “this wasn’t the first time being hard-headed has served me very well.”
On Wednesday, after President Joe Biden called and spoke to McConnell to see how he was doing, the Minority Leader told reporters about the call.
“The president called to check on me. I told him I got sandbagged,” McConnell quipped in an apparent ribbing after President Biden literally tripped on a mis-placed sand bag when he delivered the commencement address at the U.S. Air Force Academy in June.