After three months of missing votes following a June hospitalization, the 84-year-old senator returned to work on Sept. 14, 2026.
On Sept. 14, 2026, Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., returned to the Senate after a three-month absence.
In July 2026, McConnell’s office revealed he had been hospitalized after a fall the previous month. The 84-year-old — whose long absence rekindled a debate about age limits for members of Congress — has spent more than 40 years in the Senate, including a record 18 as party leader. He has announced he will retire at the end of his term in January 2027.
Okay, this thread is over 1000 posts long, In those 1000 there are hundreds of rumors and conspiracy theories. This Snopes link will clarify and often debunk those.
The clips I’ve seen showed him in a chair; and being pushed, not maneuvering it independently. But I don’t know whether at some point not shown in the clips I’ve seen (at least one cited earlier in this thread) he got out of it and walked a short distance. I haven’t seen any evidence of that, though. @BigT, do you have any? @bobot, where did you hear that he walked?
DrDeth’s link is to several Snopes articles about McConnell’s health. The first one says this under “What’s True”:
Video provided by C-SPAN shows McConnell attended the 19-hour, 45-minute session and remained seated continuously for stretches as long as six hours. Periodically over the first few hours of the session, he can be seen standing up, moving around and walking in and out of the chamber, albeit leaning on desks for support.
The quote you posted is in reference to June, before his hospitalization. There was nothing in DrDeth’s link related to his current status.
This isn’t really the full story. The discussion for the last several hundred posts has been about his recent hospitalization. Either your link was purposely misleading, or you didn’t read it closely enough to realize it was all old news.
It bugs me that Snopes has started doing this although I guess it makes sense for them to aggregate stories rather than letting their search engine get pounded. But what they have done here is put today’s date on old news. They did articles about McConnell months ago and this article from Sept 19th is just the collection of anything tagged “Mitch McConnell” over the past few years. But it isn’t an update at all, hence the confusion about whether or not he can actually walk right now. Although in my opinion, I don’t think there is any chance he is walking anywhere unassisted right now. One fall and he’s dead the moment he hits the ground.
, the 84-year-old senator returned to work on Sept. 14, 2026.
Yes, the older linked stories are old news.
What’s True
Video provided by C-SPAN shows McConnell attended the 19-hour, 45-minute session and remained seated continuously for stretches as long as six hours. Periodically over the first few hours of the session, he can be seen standing up, moving around and walking in and out of the chamber, albeit leaning on desks for support. During the session, he was visibly slow and weak. At the end, an aide helped him out of the chamber.
The only thing that isn’t old news is the opening 3 paragraphs, in which Snopes states that McConnell has been hospitalized and there has been a lot of speculation about his health since then. And then Snopes says ‘here are 12 things we’ve investigated’, the newest of which was June 4 of this year and the oldest back in 2017.
Any news about McConnell in the Snopes article is old news.
There is absolutely nothing in the Snopes link which says or shows that McConnell was walking this September.
If there’s anything anywhere in this thread, or elsewhere, showing evidence that McConnell has been walking this September, I would like to be shown it.
Maybe he can walk; I don’t know; but I doubt it. However, if anybody’s claiming there’s evidence that he can walk since the recent hospitalization, again, please show your work. If you just got confused about the date of an article or a post which only said that he could walk last June, there’s no shame in saying so.
In any case, the issue isn’t really whether he can walk. It’s whether, and how well, he can think, and can in some fashion express what he’s thinking. Functional legs aren’t required to vote in the Senate, and shouldn’t be. A functional brain apparently isn’t required to vote in the Senate, but it ought to be.
I believe he can still breathe without oxygen! That’s about it! Do you think the GOP would allow him to function and vote without the ability to read and comprehend?….I do ! Right in front of the public’s eyes!
Right. There’s absolutely no rain a sensor has to be able to walk. It would be nice if they were all capable of thought, though. Too bad that’s not a constitutional requirement.
So are we finally all in agreement? He’s alive, he’s in terrible shape, and there’s nothing that will be done about it? (And really, nothing that should be done under existing law. I think the Senate rules around expelling a member are about moral failures, and it’s not a moral fault to be frail and senile.)
