Sen. McConnell Appears to Suffer Medical Incident During Press Conference

WASHINGTON — Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) appeared to have suffered some kind of medical problem during a press conference Wednesday afternoon.

McConnell, 81, stepped up to a lectern, greeted the reporters, and began speaking about the Senate Republicans’ agenda in the near term when he stopped in the middle of a sentence. He stood still for about 20 seconds and said nothing, and then was led away from the lectern by his fellow Republican senators. He returned about 11 minutes later and carried on with his remarks as if nothing was amiss.

Asked by a reporter to discuss what had just happened, he said he was “fine” and quickly changed the subject. CNN later reported that an aide said the senator “felt light-headed and stepped away for a moment.”

In March, McConnell tripped and fell while attending a dinner at a Washington, D.C. hotel, suffering a concussion and breaking a rib. He went to a rehabilitation facility and was released on March 25, then returned to work at the Senate in mid-April.

Physicians on social media expressed concern about the incident. “ER doc here,” Jeremy Faust, MD, MedPage Today‘s medical editor-in-chief and an emergency physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, wrote on Threads.

“This is clearly an acute change in mental status,” said Faust. “Possible causes are extensive, but certainly include small strokes or transient ischemic attacks. He would absolutely require medical attention. If this sort of thing has been happening often, it may not necessarily need an ER or hospital visit, but that would be certainly worrisome overall for different reasons. But generally, if I saw this in a patient and it was a ‘new event,’ I’d be doing a pretty big barrage of tests.”

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