Until his team and supporters in the know come clean about his state, they’re lying about it.
Disagree. Mitch is as responsible as anyone for the current deplorable state of the GOP, and that state is the reason that his staff and colleagues feel like they can lie and stonewall about McConnell’s condition with impunity.
Mitch McConnell always deserves the blame.
Yeah, no, the GOP was like that before McConnell became Senate Majority Leader in 2014, or even Minority Leader in 2006. His legacy is going to be a really bad one, but you can’t say Republicans wouldn’t be unabashed liars if it wasn’t for Mitch.
Today’s the day. I suppose we’ll have to see what happens when prophecy fails.
I am baffled how many posts keep happening in this thread. There are many more topics that actually matter.
McConnell is irrelevant until he shows up in a wheelchair to cast a vote. And that ain’t happening!
But McConnell suffering is a bright light in an otherwise dreary political situation.
I would say this whole McConnell affair is massively important both politically and socially. For one, somehow someway there have to be bounds set on truth-stretching, obfuscation, etc. by those that represent us. I know, I know, “politicians lie!” has gotten so stock and accepted that little white lies and grand life-ruining public falsehoods** are treated as equivalent. The first step to changing a state of affairs that should not be is to confront that exact state of affairs. Just letting all the lies, lies, LIES! wash over like an uncontestable river current is not only going to promote the status quo, but also lead to an expansion of what gets lied about and what kinds of power are accessible (or retainable) via naked lying. Truth has to matter, even if it is very difficult to uncover and requires great power to determine.
** not talking about the Mitch McConnell matter here. Need examples? “USAID money was so rife with fraud and abuse, we had to kill the program!” “All those Somali day cares in Minnesota … so much fraud and abuse. All that has to be shut down NOW, and we need thousands of ICE agents on the ground to do it!” “James Comey tweeting those seashells … he was raising a call to assassinate the president!” “The Jan 6 patriots are political prisoners, and must all be released immediately!” Still, the life-affecting lies and the “lies because we can” are all of a piece – the McConnell obfuscation is part of a very large tapestry.
I’m still not convinced they were lying. Not because i don’t understand that politicians lie, but because i don’t see the value of those particular statements to the people making them. And i can imagine them being ordinary “sugar coating” which is both socially normal even among non-politicians and which doesn’t really rise to the level of materiality where i care.
Regarding McConnell’s health, I don’t think there’s been much, if any, straight-up fabrication. I do believe there’s been a lot of “technically and very narrowly true, but intentionally misleading” statements.
I do cop to throwing varying degrees of falsehoods and obfuscations together into a single hat. I happen to believe that varying degrees of falsehoods can be harmful. More to the point, those seeking undue power or influence via propagation of falsehood (or concealment of the truth) need not resort to fabrication or fabulism. Flying under the radar by forgivably “sugar coating”, exaggerating, concealing, etc. can be employed nearly as easily to the same effect.
I’d also say the stakes are higher when national politicians (not McConnell here) and their staffs, fellow travelers, influential media in the political space, etc. sugar-coat information and conceal truth than when lower-profile individuals in wider society do the same. We’re well beyond “that looks great, dear”.
I guess i think it’s reasonably likely that he was able to speak when those politicians said they spoke with him. And he did have a couple of 20 minute phone calls, where he responded in appropriate ways to the comments of his friends, and seemed weak but possibly able to return. And that he’s since then lost the ability to speak.
If that’s true, i don’t think the claims made were unreasonable.
Of course, if he’s been unable to speak since the incident that took him to the hospital, i agree that the statements move from “ordinary sugar coating” to “intentionally misleading”.
And i certainly think the latter is possible. I just don’t see how it benefits the liars, so i continue to think the former is plausible.
If he were able to speak, he would have spoken. When various politicians said that they talked to him for 20 minutes, they were outright lying. Even if it was “Well, I talked to him for 20 minutes, even though he didn’t actually say anything”, then they were still outright lying.
I can imagine him only talking to friends/family for a couple of days, and then losing the ability to speak. 
Scott Jennings stated that McConnell called him and they spoke for 17 minutes.
I have no idea if that’s true or not.
When does he claim this conversation happened?
Discussed extensively upthread, though I know, it’s a long thread. CNN didn’t exactly endorse Jennings’ statement as factual reporting:
As noted in the link above, Jennings made his claim on a CNN broadcast on July 7, and claimed that he spoke with McConnell earlier that day.
Oh, way back. Even if he was telling the truth then, i don’t believe McConnell is currently able to talk.
Yeah. And it should be noted that Jennings is not a journalist; he’s a political strategist and commentator, has been an advisor to McConnell, and worked on three of McConnell’s election campaigns. So, I’m not sure how much credibility he has as a neutral source.
None at all.
Also, i don’t see how it benefits him to lie.
If, as many of us suspect, there is obfuscation going on as to McConnell’s actual condition and prognosis, making a public statement which corroborates that obfuscation perhaps puts Jennings in the good graces of whoever benefits from keeping up the facade of McConnell being still on the mend. Bear in mind that Jennings is from Kentucky, and is a founding partner of a PR firm in Kentucky.
I’m not sure it even does. I think that Republicans might have gotten so acclimated to lying that it’s just their default, knee-jerk response to anything. They’re not telling the truth because it just never even occurred to them to tell the truth.