On the first Saturday in May, at a Derby-week party in Louisville, Kentucky, Mike Ward ran into Senator Mitch McConnell. They hadn’t seen each other in years, though they had been circling each other for nearly half a century, mostly as adversaries. Ward, a former Democratic representative, first tangled with McConnell in 1977, when Ward chaired the Kentucky chapter of the election watchdog group Common Cause and McConnell was running for county judge/executive of Jefferson County. What Ward knew of him lately he knew the way everyone did, from stories and clips: the falls; the two episodes in which the senator froze mid-sentence before cameras and had to be led away. So it was a surprise when the 84-year-old McConnell, who stepped down as Senate Republican leader in 2025 after a record 18 years in the job, spotted him across the room, walked over, greeted him by name, and put out his hand.

“Well, wow, you’re doing well,” Ward said. “That’s a good firm handshake.”

“What’d you expect?” McConnell replied.

A little more than a month later, on June 14, McConnell fell at his Washington home, briefly lost consciousness, and developed pneumonia, according to his office. He spent a month in the hospital and most of another in rehabilitation; in August, his office announced that he had returned to his Washington, D.C., home to continue recovering. In the meantime, the public has gotten a few written statements, secondhand assurances from Republican colleagues and friends, and two photographs — one showing McConnell upright in a hospital bed beside his wife, Elaine Chao, holding that day’s Washington Post, not unlike a hostage proof of life.

Online sleuths promptly began examining the image for signs of AI amid rampant speculation that McConnell was hiding the severity of his poor health or perhaps had even expired. The rumors were supercharged by revelations that Chao had initially declined to rush to his bedside while on a tour of China, which was indeed pretty weird. And Andy Beshear, Kentucky’s Democratic governor and a potential presidential candidate, has loudly suggested that McConnell has not been forthcoming with voters, saying, “Provide proof of your capacity to serve, or resign.”

People who have known him for decades say they have little more idea what condition he is in than anyone else does. “He could be barely able to communicate, or he could be just as articulate as ever. We got no way of knowing,” Ward told me. “Mitch doesn’t give a shit about letting the people know how he’s looking or feeling.” Keith Runyon has known McConnell just as long as Ward and from considerably closer range: He spent 25 years running the Louisville Courier-Journal’s editorial page, McConnell attended his wedding, and Runyon’s wife........

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