MCGONNELL

Fox Star Gives Missing Mitch an On-Air Ultimatum

The senator has been AWOL for more than 80 days.

A Fox News host has issued an ultimatum to missing Mitch McConnell.

The 84-year-old senator from Kentucky has been AWOL from Congress for 85 days following a fall at his home that left him “briefly unconscious.”

The near three-month absence, however, is under increasing scrutiny, and conservative commentators are showing signs that they’re losing patience.

“If he does not come back in September, he needs to step down,” Fox News contributor Joe Concha said of the longest Senate party leader in history.

“How many months has it been since we even heard from him directly?” he fumed on The Big Weekend Show. “I don’t want to see, you know, proof-of-life photos from a hospital bed anymore. He needs to get in front of a microphone and prove that he can do this job. And if he can’t, he needs to step aside. Period.”

Following the fall, he was said to have suffered from a mild case of pneumonia, but secrecy about the details that have kept the veteran lawmaker out of public service for so long has angered MAGA. His absence also endangers the GOP’s wafer-thin Senate majority.

In a bid to pacify critics, his team has released two photographs showing him propped up in a hospital chair, smiling with his wife Elaine Chao.

During Saturday’s show, co-host Tomi Lahren suggested that that wasn’t good enough. “I don’t know if that’s quite fair to the American people though that unelected staffers are running the show for Senator Mitch McConnell,” she said. “I think you’ve gotta play it fair here.”

The senator has now been missing roughly the same number of days the House has been in session for the entire year.

The former Republican Senate leader has already missed 60 votes in Congress since his hospitalization, on everything from a war powers resolution on Iran and policies on housing affordability, to the confirmation of new Attorney General Todd Blanche.

McConnell’s chief of staff Terry Carmack, who receives an annual salary of $226,850, has been spotted at his Washington, D.C. townhouse numerous times, but he has refused to answer any questions about the senator’s status. Other staffers also ignored questions when cornered about their boss on Capitol Hill.

In early August, McConnell released a statement saying he wouldn’t be back in active service soon, explaining that “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.”

“I certainly hope to see him in the Senate in the next few weeks,” Kentucky Republican Rep. James Comer said on the show. “And if he’s not, there’ll be a reason why and the senator will be able [to] explain that to the American people. But hopefully he’ll [be] back in two weeks.”

He said he hadn’t spoken with him since the hospitalization.

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Harry ThompsonNews Reporter

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