← Bulwark Takes
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- [00:00]
Andrew Egger
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- [00:24]
JVL
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- [00:30]
Reese
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- [01:01]
JVL
I'm JVL here with my bulwark colleague Andrew Egger, author of the Morning Shots newsletter. And we got big news on the Mitch McConnell death watch hoax. Is he alive? Is he not alive? The conspiracy theory that is Mitch McConnell's continued presence in American life. Big news today, Andrew. We have word via a statement from Senator McConnell. I'm going to read it to people while they look at it on the screen. I'm still working hard to get back to my full schedule of work in the Senate and in Kentucky, keeping up with intense physical therapy per my doctor's orders. Unfortunately, that means I won't be able to make it to Fancy Farm Kentucky this Saturday. There's no place I'd rather be on the first Saturday in August than with the good people of Western Kentucky feasting on pork and mutton. When I first attended 42 years ago, Fancy Farm. Pretty lonely place to be a Republican. But my, how times have changed. Today Western Kentucky is a conservative Republican sea of red. So I hate I'll miss the fun this year, but I'm sending my best wishes to the St. Jerome community for a successful picnic. As always, I appreciate all of your continued well wishes and I'm looking forward to getting back to the Senate and to Kentucky soon. That sounds like a perfectly natural thing that Mitch McConnell wrote by his own hand, don't you think? Andrew?
- [02:25]
Andrew Egger
You can tell this is serious, right? Because Mitch McConnell is, if nothing else, a generational machine politician. He is in his absolute element, back slapping at the Fancy Farm with All those, the good people of Western Kentucky. He can knock back the pork and mutton with the best of them. And this is what he's done for decades and decades in the Senate. This would have been his last one, cuz he will be retiring come the next Congress. I guess he, he'll still be invited as a sort of an emeritus presence at the, at the Fancy Farm. I'm sure they'll let him show up.
- [02:59]
JVL
Yeah, in August of 2027. Sure. He'll be around in August of 2027.
- [03:04]
Andrew Egger
Oh, come on, JBL. Sometimes these people have long productive retirements. It could happen. It could happen. And I'm not sticking a fork in Mitch just yet. Unlike basically every other person on the Internet, I gather there's more.
- [03:18]
JVL
We also have a statement from the office of the attending physician. Senator McConnell continues his recovery from a fall at home in June. OAP physicians visit with the Senator every day, discussing all aspects of his rehabilitation care. Since his discharge from hospital care, he has maintained a strenuous course of physical therapy and rehabilitation, including multiple sessions a day designed to rebuild strength and reduce the risk of future falls. His bout with childhood polio continues to be a significant factor in his mobility. He's not yet medically cleared to leave the rehab facility and return to office. And we also got another proof of life.
- [03:53]
Andrew Egger
This photo looking good as ever, Mitch.
- [03:57]
JVL
No copy of the July 27 New York Times front page, though. So take, take from this what you will.
- [04:05]
Andrew Egger
Yeah, let me just take two things from this real quick. One of which is it is interesting and I don't know, the conspiracy theories have flown around about this particular absence for a long time. They do. Anytime a politician is out of the spotlight for good reason. I mean, we've seen so many of these cases, whether it's. Who is the. Who is the Republican who was depressed in the hospital for months? Yeah, yeah, him or Dianne Feinstein or Joe Biden. I mean, like, there's just been a lot of these. You know, people are increasingly and painfully aware that many of their politicians are extraordinarily old and their bodies are falling apart as they sit there in front of you. And when they vanish for a bit, some questions get asked. I think I am starting to lean a little bit more toward actual concern here. If it really is just a stability issue. Right. Like they're worried about possible future falls. I mean, he has been in a wheelchair at portions of the last couple of years. They could in theory still be rolling him around. I don't know what the wheelchair access is like at the county fairs in western Kentucky. So maybe there's some logistics involved here. That's like one new eyebrow up for me with all of this. The other thing is just, I mean, you would have a hard time finding a better illustration of how much of a politician from another age who is just completely lost and adrift in this one as a guy like Mitch McConnell putting out two still photos like a month apart or I guess two weeks apart from, from the same sort of hospital rehab center bed with Elaine Chow there kind of, kind of posing next to him and him thinking, oh, that'll do it. You know, that'll, that'll, that, that'll reassure them that that all is well. I mean, like, come on, we are, we are so far through the looking glass in terms of just public distrust of anything that, that, that could come out from, from any politician. Any statement not made from the mouth of the guy. Even if it were a statement from the mouth of the guy, there would still be conspiracy theories. But, but he could be trying a little bit harder than this if he were up for it. So I guess that's the other, that's the other thing where you have to give the conspiracists at least some of their flowers here is like, yeah, they'd be, they'd be, they'd be flaming at the mouth and making up stuff no matter what McConnell had put out there. But it's interesting that he's putting out so little.
- [06:16]
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- [07:38]
JVL
Yeah, that plus the, like the Scott Jennings. And who else was he supposedly talked to to talk policy? It was John Thune. So yeah, there are these like a handful of secondhand like, oh, I was talking to him. You know, I heard from this guy at 31 Flavors whose brothers sisters was Ferris's geography teacher, that he was talking. And again, I keep saying this. It would be very easy to put all this to bed. Just, just pick up the phone and call Jake Tapper. That's it, right? Jake would dutifully put it on his show. You do a five minute conversation with Jake Tapper in which you reassure him that, oh, Jake, I know what they say about me, but don't worry, it's all fine, I'm doing good. That, that's it. Why, why can't you do that? Right?
- [08:28]
Andrew Egger
I genuinely think, like, let me, I hate to just be the guy who's like gassing up Mitch McConnell this entire video, but I mean, it does remind me in some respects of what we saw with Biden, right, Where, where it was just very plain that like it was, it was apparent to the people, all the people around him long before it was really apparent to him how much of a, how much of his fastball he'd lost, how much he was sort of slowing down and falling behind and just appearing quite old and unwell. And I also just think for a guy like McConnell, who somewhat unlike Biden, I mean, Biden was always, you know, the gregarious, charismatic guy who was out there, who always loved the limelight and, you know, mugged for the cameras and kissed the babies and all these sorts of things. McConnell has been a very private politician on the national stage for a long time. I remember this, just when I was a congressional reporter, you could not just stop Mitch McConnell and shout out Mitch McConnell, right? He had a very stage managed political presence. He, even when things were doing great, even when everything was operating according to the plan and by design for years and years, I imagine it's just very hard personally for him to get up to this point where his body's failing him and everybody in politics hates him and he actually can't, he doesn't have the power he used to have. He can't perform the functions that he used to have. I don't know what it's like to be that guy. And I imagine it's very weird on a personal level and probably kind of hard to figure out what the right way to sort of exit gracefully or run out your time gracefully would be.
- [09:54]
JVL
Isn't just us. Shawn Davis, one of the voices of reason over at the Federalist, tweeted that the refusal to release a simple video of him talking is really, really weird. This was retweeted by Megan Basham saying it's unacceptable that proof of life photos from sitting members of Congress are necessary. It's a good point.
- [10:13]
Andrew Egger
I agree.
- [10:14]
JVL
I want to talk semi seriously about like the reasons to think that this is actually worse than McConnell's letting on. And, and this is, it just has to do with like health care stuff. By his own timeline here, he seems to have been hospitalized for about a month before they transferred him to a rehab facility. That's a long time to be in the hospital. Insurance companies don't want you in the hospital that long. Doctors don't want their patients in the hospital that long. I mean, I don't want to impugn hospitals or anything, but a hospital is not a place you want to check into for a long stay. Right. You want to get out of hospitals as quickly as you can because hospitals are full of sick people. There's a lot of germs floating around. Like, if, if you can get better someplace else other than a hospital and it is safe for you to do so, then everybody wants you to do that. Right. Your doctors want you out, you want to be out, your insurance company wants you out and they want to move you to where the burden of care is the minimum viable. Right. So he's in the hospital, hospital for a month and now he's been in a rehab facility for at least two weeks since then. Coming on three weeks. That's a long time to be in a rehab facility. I mean, this is all of which suggests to me that whatever is going for, again, for a guy who by his, what he said very, very beginning was I didn't suffer any broken bones or suffer a concussion. I didn't have a heart attack or a stroke. I don't have any tumors or hemorrhages.
- [11:58]
Andrew Egger
Yeah. The way, the way he put it makes it sound like it's like precautionary or something, like you fell unconscious, like they needed to kick the tires on everything health wise and it all turned up fine. But you're right, like he's still there in that case. Yeah.
- [12:10]
JVL
This is what I'm saying. I just don't see how all of these things can be true. Right. How all the things that he said he didn't have were true, but yet it is also true that he is still there. And it is also true that he is totally fine and totally together and nobody has to worry about his cognitive functioning.
- [12:30]
Andrew Egger
Yeah.
- [12:30]
JVL
It just seems like one of these three things is not right. At least one of these three things.
- [12:35]
Andrew Egger
Yeah. And it's strange too, because obviously they are aware that he is the subject of an enormous amount of online questioning, you know, online hypothesizing about what's going on here. I mean, that one of the funniest things about that first Proof of Life picture is that he's like pointing to the date in today's newspaper. Right. I mean, it's very much a, like we didn't just dig this one out of the archives. Here's Mitch today, you know, smiling at the camera with his wife Elaine. So, like, plainly there is some, some attempt to cut down on this to a certain extent, but it is the feeblest imaginable attempt given all of the stuff that you're talking about now when, again, like, as, as we said before, it doesn't seem like it would be that hard for him to do a little bit more press and, and, you know, chop down on some of this stuff. And again, some people would say, oh, that's just an AI video. Or that's, that's, that's Mitch McConnell's body double calling into Jake Tapper. But it would be, you'd be pushing that discourse over to a crazier part of the population. You would, you would reassure some, some less insane people about some of this stuff. And so the fact that they're not, again, like, yeah, it does, it does make you wonder what the heck they're up to over there now.
- [13:43]
JVL
This is getting into like, real criminology. So maybe this is me going crazy, but I don't know if you recall, we could put the, the picture up, Andrew, that first Proof of Life photo. His shirt is untucked. Does Mitch McConnell strike you as a shirt untucked guy?
- [14:02]
Andrew Egger
You're getting too rich for my blood, jbl. I don't know.
- [14:05]
JVL
No, I'm just saying, like this, this seems to me to be indicative of a guy who, like, they could not stand up and get dressed normally, you know what I'm saying? Like, like where we are strapped, we're just throwing stuff on and, you know, just trying to make him look minimally upright and together and who knows? I don't know man. But here I, I will then offer the anti conspiracy. The question behind all conspiracy theories is ultimately to what end? And there is kind of a question like why? Why would they, either he or his team or Elaine or his office or public, why would they be going to the trouble of doing a Weekend at Bernie's if he was incapacitated or not together or something like that. And I, I honestly don't have any answer for that, do you?
- [15:01]
Andrew Egger
This isn't real, but it just occurred to me and so I'm going to present it to you because it strikes me as kind of funny. I think that they are deliberately laying the, this is all a big bank shot. They are laying a trail that deliberately looks like a Weekend at Bernie's to make him seem more incapacitated than he actually is. He's really out there doing fine. He's golfing on the weekends. But he understands that if he were in D.C. right now, the only thing he would be doing would be catching an enormous amount of flack for supposedly pulling the strings behind the scenes to keep the Senate from passing the Save America Act. He's just happier away. Donald Trump doesn't want a single piece of legislation passed except this stupid elections bill that Mitch McConnell doesn't like and therefore he is judging it prudent to remain convalescing, ailing at a question mark level of health and hailness. And once, once Trump finally gives up on the Save America act and finally releases the Senate and they're all back
- [15:52]
JVL
together, Mitch is just gonna stand up from his chair and be like, don't tell me what's not possible. Like Jon Voight is fdr. You know what that is. So first of all, we're gonna call that the Christopher Buckley scenario because this is what would happen in a Christopher Buckley novel about Washington. People who aren't familiar with him go check him out. He's the author of thank you for smoking. He's amazing. It's not crazy, Andrew. And in fact that your scenario here, the Christopher Buckley scenario, is certainly no crazier than the opposite, which is that he' actually a brain dead vegetable. Like I, I, I would probably in fact lean more towards yours. This is all him sandbagging the SAVE Act. And you know, I, I, I buy it.
- [16:36]
Andrew Egger
It's preposterous. But I did talk myself into it a little bit. I will be honest. As I was saying it, I was like, I, I, I kind of fell in love. I fell in love a little bit with this idea. I hope that's what proves true and not all. Not least because I just hope he's okay. You know, I don't. I don't want. I don't want Mitch to be a vegetable. That'd be too bad.
- [16:50]
JVL
You know, everybody has inherent human dignity. You know what? Tom Riddle, Lord Voldemort, he also has inherent human dignity. And I hope nothing bad happens to him either.
- [17:00]
Andrew Egger
Fictional character never retired. Famously, Mitch McConnell. He's getting out of here. You know, let him go spend some time with his grandkids.
- [17:07]
JVL
The late, great Lord Voldemort. Yeah, it's great. All right. Well, you know what? Best wishes to Mitch and Elaine Chow. I hope that his convalescence is going great. Hit like hit subscribe. Save your darkest thoughts for the comments and maybe don't put them in the comments. Maybe, maybe take the first thing you think and hit delete on that draft and go with your second instinct in the comments, people. It'll prevent you from having to go to confession later. Trust me. He's Andrew Egger. I'm jvl. We'll be back again with more good news because America is full of good news. Good luck, America.
- [17:52]
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- [17:54]
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Andrew Egger
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- [18:13]
JVL
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Andrew Egger
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