Mitch McConnell’s Team Fuels Health Mystery With Cryptic Update

Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Getty Sen.

Mitch McConnell’s office has only deepened the mystery surrounding his condition with a puzzling update.

It has been two-and-a-half months since emergency responders dispatched to McConnell’s home for a reported cardiac arrest rushed the 84-year-old senator to the hospital.

Since then, no one outside his team and inner circle has seen the Kentucky Republican, and his failure to appear on video to address his constituents has fueled speculation about his true condition.

McConnell’s office has offered only sporadic updates.

The latest came on Aug.

6, when a statement attributed to the senator announced that he had been discharged from a rehabilitation facility and was maintaining an “intensive regimen of physical therapy” at home.

But three weeks have passed since then, and when HuffPost reached McConnell’s communications director, Stephanie Penn, to ask about the senator’s health status and his timeline for returning to the Senate on Thursday, she declined even to say how he was faring in his supposed recovery.

Penn, who reportedly earns $214,000 per year, told HuffPost she had “nothing to add” to his Aug.

6 statement and shared an excerpt from it.

“On the advice of my doctors, I’ll maintain an intensive regimen of physical therapy from home during the state work period, and I’ll continue to engage with my staff and colleagues on important Senate business,” McConnell said in his three-week-old statement, which did not include a video or any photographs illustrating the former Senate leader’s recovery.

Penn’s silence on McConnell’s supposed recovery only adds another layer to the mystery surrounding the senator’s health and disappearance.

She did not immediately respond to the Daily Beast’s request for comment.

The lack of answers is all the more curious given the McConnell team’s claim that the senator was hospitalized after falling in his home and later contracting “mild” pneumonia, and that he did not suffer a heart attack or stroke.