Perfect! Laura Loomer spreading rumours in the Grok community – what could be more reliable! 
McConnell has always had mobility issues due to having polio as a child. The recent episode may well have made them worse.
Yeah, though it’s weird that some of it was what looked like Spanish before it got garbled. I expect that AI was used to generate that version of the picture. The original photo just had text too blurry to see, consistent with what you’d see from compression in a normal low-resolution digital photo.
That image has been scrutinized heavily by this point and it’s telling that it’s mostly social media and the usual conspiracists casting doubt on its authenticity. There are even articles about how skeptical those corners are about it.
I call it a thematically appropriate juxtaposition.
Yeah, THAT is an AI manipulated image. However by this point the chain of evidence is nonexistent for any serious purpose. People are doing pseudo-CSI “zoom! enhance!” on the lousy published picture using retail AI.
Lesson for the future: do your proof of life pic in high rez and send the raw files to the media.
The conspiracy theorists were coming out of the woodwork when there was no update from McConnell’s office for weeks. Now that there’s an update, they still won’t shut up. This is just nuts, but I guess that’s just how the MAGA crowd “thinks” (that word is sort of an oxymoron when it comes to MAGA) because their Dear Leader and sainted Messiah is an inveterate serial liar.
Yeah, the same thing happened to the workplace portrait of the guy who was shot in Minneapolis a few months ago. It was a crappy low-res picture-of-a-picture, so someone “upscaled” it and that version made it onto at least one news website.
I’m guessing you were not an octogenarian at time.
The older and more frail you are, the harder it is going to be come up with an expected return to duty date.
McConnell is in a rehabilitation hospital. Normally they have a case conference once or week or so and decide if you need another week. McConnell may gets VIP treatment where they have case conferences more often, but they still will not know the date in advance.
Maybe he will never be well enough to go, as you say, back in the saddle. But if it works out that way, back in July 2026, this would not have been known.
Other than declining to switch parties, I don’t see how he is doing anything wrong.
Maybe because he looks better in that picture than he has looked in at least the last decade.
BBC and The Guardian have clear images and report the picture as legit.
In one image, look at the images from the BBC and the Guardian that I provided. The Image is likely made unrecognizable for legal or competition reasons in that one Link. It is best to read all the posts- which completely debunk these weird conspiracy theories.
Yes- IN ONE Link. Look at the others.
It implies nothing.
Right. Look at the BBC and the Guardian links I provided. The text is very clear and readable.
Some weeks of bed rest will often do that.
AAAaanywaayy…
Elaborating a bit from my prior comment…
I am all for respecting public figures’ wish to not have the sometimes-gory details of your medical problem disclosed to the world at large just because news viewers feel entitled. But at the same time if you’re a high elected official I do not believe you should expect to be able to just open-endedly disappear on a “trust me, Bro” basis, either. The House and Senate should update their rules about this.
If the report released was truthful, then all this would be self-inflicted political damage since nothing in there was anything extraordinary. Very Old Man with multiple preexistings has a fall, catches hospital pneumonia, makes it past that and ends up requiring rehab care? Happens in every town. As mentioned before, medical disability does NOT vacate a seat so a short paragraph Monday and Friday may have sufficed to keep people calm.
Always, over and over, it’s the wanting to control the narrative that winds up making it worse.
IMO when you are an elected public official, you have no right to privacy when dealing with things that affect your publicly elected job. That includes your health when such health concerns affect your ability to do your job. You are accountable to the citizens who elected you, no matter what.
Don’t like it? Resign. No one forced you to run for office.
(this is party agnostic - I don’t care if you’re a Republican, Democrat, Green, Independent, whatever)
This seems fair. If McConnell is alert and basically normal outside of some understandable weakness, why hasn’t he called into Fox News with a sentence or two of eulogy of Lindsey Graham? They’ve worked together for decades—why not a brief remark on his passing?
Regardless of what the conventional wisdom is on The Photo, I find it difficult to simply assume he’s “fine.” (And I still find the ‘20-minute conversations’ claims of Jennings, Thune, and Barrasso to be less than credible.)
Anyway, perhaps a little note of levity on the AI front:
You really believe a person named Mitch McConnell really existed? how gullible…
Agreed. I think all we can determine from the photo is that he’s alive. Anything else, we have to take the word of Republican politicians, and people who work for or are otherwise associated with McConnell. The fact that they haven’t done more than a photo with a current newspaper (which, appropriately enough, is a common trope to show that kidnap victims are still alive) leads me to believe that he’s far from okay.
Yes, it’s being called the Proof of Life photo all over, even among those sure it’s been constructed. (Not necessarily AI–Photoshop still gets a mention.)
He’s not the Senate leader of the Republicans anymore, but his vote really DOES matter in the closely-divided body. So if he’s not mentally competent enough to be wheeled into the Senate and cast a vote that will be accepted, that’s an issue.
On the other hand, I can’t complain about one less Republican vote.
(Even though on principle you are correct.)
With you on that one, for sure. And the Republicans certainly know how much a problem it will be for them if Mitch can’t be made to look competent.
I wonder if they’re talking to the pharmaceutical company that supposedly gave Donald special access to new anti-dementia meds…
I wish I believed otherwise.
Don’t we all…
That was kind of my point. You can’t extrapolate anything from that other than that particular image has been manipulated.