Is Mitch McConnell dead?

This shouldn’t be a difficult question to answer. The response is either “yes”, “no”, or something along the lines of “he’s on life-support but appears to be brain dead.”

However, while it may be a straightforward question, nobody close to the Kentucky senator seems keen on delivering a clear answer. On 14 June, the 84-year-old senator was hospitalized for a medical event. According to a new video and eyewitness account, McConnell was loaded into an ambulance on a stretcher after a possible cardiac arrest at his home. Almost a month later, McConnell’s condition is shrouded in mystery and the source of much speculation.

The mystery deepened this week when Trump ally and far-right influencer Laura Loomer made the explosive claim on Twiter/X that McConnell is “officially brain dead”. Desiree Townsend, an independent journalist who first reported that emergency services had been called to a house linked to McConnell, said she had “heard the same thing from my sources for days”. Townsend added that she was camped out at the hospital waiting for McConnell to be taken off life support.

A number of Republicans have rushed to dispute Loomer and Townsend’s allegations. On Tuesday, majority leader John Thune’s representative claimed he’d spoken to Mitch the previous day and “[t]hey had a lengthy and substantive conversation that covered a variety of topics, including national security.” Senate Republican whip John Barrasso and political commentator Scott Jennings have also said they had 20-minute phone calls with McConnell on important topics.

Has McConnell’s wife, Elaine Chao, also had a nice 20-minute chat with her husband recently? That’s unclear. Chao left for China two days before McConnell was hospitalized and didn’t exactly rush back to his bedside to feed him grapes and offer moral support. In a statement........

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