I'll admit for a few days last week, I started to believe it too.
Today is Aug. 3, the deadline for Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear to call a special election to fill Mitch McConnell's Senate seat if it becomes vacant. And for weeks, a theory has been metastasizing across social media, gossip sites, and even political discourse.
It’s that McConnell is already dead, and that his staff, his family, and half the Senate Republican caucus have been sitting on the news until this exact deadline passed, so the GOP wouldn't have to risk losing his seat to a special election in a state with a Democratic governor.
Can you imagine having a reputation for unbridled ruthlessness so deep and pervasive that people would actually assume you would hide your death for raw political advantage?
McConnell’s reputation precedes him, and it will surely follow him to his grave. But for the moment, I think McConnell is alive, maybe not completely well, and every bit as stubborn as he’s been throughout his political career.
Look, I get why people believe all the innuendo and conspiracy theories, but I, for one, will paraphrase a famous Mark Twain line: "The reports of McConnell’s death are exaggerated."
McConnell was rushed to the hospital on June 14 after being found unconscious at his D.C. home. Since then, there have been no public appearances, no video, no audio, nothing but a couple of staged photos that conspiracy theorists have picked apart like a Thanksgiving turkey.
His hands are discolored, he looks younger than he did in May, the sports section was from years ago, his wife’s arm is awkward. Even to the point of someone taking umbrage that his wife is wearing a see-through shirt with a black bra. Too many "suspicions" to count. Media outlets have even consulted Photoshop experts to dissect the photos.
You know a conspiracy theory has gone mainstream when the likes of Laura Loomer flatly claim he's brain dead. And even when Newsmax hosts demand proof of life. Beshear sent a letter telling McConnell's office to prove he's still capable of reading and responding, or resign.
You might say that McConnell’s death has really taken on a life of its own.
It’s understandable. When an 84-year-old man vanishes from public life for nearly two months and his office responds with vague statements about him "continuing to improve" while working remotely on unspecified matters, people are going to fill that silence with something scandalous for sure.
And it doesn't help that we're talking about a man who spent 40 years being one of the most calculating, cold-blooded operators in American political history. This is the man who rammed three Supreme Court justices through for Donald Trump.
There’s only one person to blame for the overturning of Roe, for virtually carte blanche presidential immunity, Citizens United, and all the horror from SCOTUS, and that’s Mitch McConnell. He’s responsible for all this darkness.
This is the man who plainly said Trump was "practically and morally responsible" for Jan. 6 and then astonishingly voted to acquit him anyway, clearing the runway for a second term.
So yes, if there's one politician in Washington capable of orchestrating a fake-death cover-up to protect his party's razor-thin Senate majority, it's "Grim Reaper" McConnell. By the way, for those unfamiliar with the nickname, he earned it long before the actual Grim Reaper allegedly came calling.
But I don't think he's dead. And it's not because I think he's incapable of deviousness and deception. It's because I don't think anyone around him, not Elaine Chao, not his kids, not his staff, would agree to sit on his corpse for six weeks. If you think about it, that is totally whacked!
The whole idea is so tawdry and demented it would almost erase everything else McConnell ever did. None of it was good, but I digress.
And whatever else is true about the man, he has spent his entire career obsessed with his own legacy. Faking his death to save one Senate seat seems beneath even the bottomless McConnell.
This isn't 2007 or even 2017 McConnell: he voted against some of Trump's second-term Cabinet picks, seemed genuinely pleased to work with Joe Biden, and has little reason to sacrifice himself for the Republican Party Trump remade, and McConnell dislikes.
I don't think McConnell has any interest in martyring himself, secretly or otherwise, to protect this version of the Republican Party from a special election.
Here's what I actually think is happening: Mitch McConnell is old, frail, and too proud to admit either one. I had a grandfather like this, a man who would rather suffer quietly than let anyone see him struggle because admitting frailty felt like admitting the end.
Watching that power drain out of you, watching people stop needing you, becoming irrelevant, that has got to be its own kind of death. I think he would rather disappear from view than let the cameras document what that looks like.
For a very stubborn and very proud McConnell, getting old, losing relevance, and exiting the Senate, well, you’re going to hold on to your seat for as long as you can, infirmity be damned.
And let me add a rather abrasive addendum. I state all of this without feeling any sympathy for the man. That stubbornness and egomaniacal win-at-all-costs mentality is the reason it feels like the Grim Reaper is haunting this country right now.
While many will be expecting the announcement of McConnell’s death in the coming days, I'll be expecting more silence, followed eventually by McConnell shuffling back into the Capitol to collect the retirement tour, the floor speeches, and the commemorative dinners his colleagues will absolutely throw for him.
That's the ending he wants, and it’s one I don’t think he deserves.