Medical professionals gave some insight into what might be behind Mitch McConnell’s recent health episodes.
After freezing for the second time in a month, the Senate minority leader has raised eyebrows among the public, with many questioning his health.
As previously reported in The Dallas Express, the Republican senator for Kentucky appeared to be unable to answer a reporter’s question during a press conference on August 30.
A reporter had asked the 81-year-old whether he had plans to run for another six-year term in 2026. After some grumbling and a pause, McConnell gave a partial answer and then was ushered off for a few minutes. Later, he returned and was guided through the rest of the session by a staffer.
Shortly thereafter, McConnell was checked out by the attending physician at the Capitol, Brian Monahan, who suggested that dehydration could have been to blame, as previously reported in The Dallas Express.
McConnell was otherwise “medically clear to continue with his schedule as planned,” said Monahan in the statement, according to The Hill.
However, while none have examined him personally, some other medical professionals have suggested that other ailments might be behind McConnell’s recent troubles.
For instance, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, who is a neurosurgeon and medical reporter for CNN, explained that a range of possibilities could be behind McConnell’s apparent inability to speak and hear the reporters, including a potential traumatic brain injury (TBI) suffered in one of his past falls.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly half of all patients hospitalized with TBI incurred the injury during a fall.
While TBI symptoms might not be apparent to the patient, others might notice slurred speech, unusual behavior, confusion, agitation, weakness, and more.
“I think what we saw was pretty concerning, and I think most people could see that,” Gupta said, according to The Independent. “It was similar to what we saw in July where there’s this freezing: the freezing of the speech, the freezing of the body, the tight grasping of the side of the lectern.”
Yet Gupta noted that McConnell’s aides did not seem overly concerned, leading him to speculate that these episodes may be more frequent than they appear.
Meanwhile, Fox News medical contributor Dr. Marc Siegel suggested that McConnell’s episodes might be the result of Parkinson’s disease.
“In its later stages, it can give you a freeze, and it can also explain why no one around him in these freezes is panicking and saying, ‘This could be a stroke or this could be a seizure,’” Siegel noted, according to The Independent.
In a series of interviews conducted by The New York Times with neurologists like Dr. Orrin Devinsky from the NYU Grossman School of Medicine and Dr. Jeffrey Saver, medical director of the Stroke Unit at the UCLA Medical Center, suggested that while many explanations are possible, dehydration isn’t likely.
“If I gave that tape to a medical student and that was his explanation, I’d fail him,” said Devinsky, referring to McConnell’s latest freeze and Monahan’s diagnosis.
It could be that the freezes are being caused by focal seizures, which are localized electrical surges in the brain that may inhibit a person’s ability to respond to questions or take direction for a couple of minutes, according to the CDC.
Explaining that such seizures can be managed with medication and that a patient can function well in spite of them, Saver noted, “Seizures have a stigma in our society, and that’s unfortunate because these are very brief electrical interruptions in behavior.”
McConnell has not yet confirmed whether he intends to run for another six-year term in 2026.