Sen. Mitch McConnell's hometown newspaper has a bone to pick with his wife, but not about the swirling rumors around his health.
In a Louisville Courier Journal column, opinion writer Joseph Gerth said he doesn't much care about the specifics of McConnell's condition, arguing the public doesn't need detailed health updates on one of 100 senators the way it would for a president. What he does want to know, however, is why Elaine Chao didn't come home.
"Are you kidding me?" Gerth wrote, after recounting that paramedics performed CPR on an unconscious person at McConnell's Washington home the morning he was hospitalized on June 14. Chao, he noted, was in China, where she met Chinese Vice President Han Zheng on June 17.
McConnell, 84, has not been seen publicly in more than three weeks, and his office has never confirmed why he was admitted, though dispatch audio referenced a cardiac arrest. Chao's travel has drawn pointed criticism across the spectrum, and in a Tuesday statement — her first since the hospitalization — a spokesperson said she was on "a long-planned trip" supporting "her family's philanthropic endeavors" and that "the Senator's health did not warrant an immediate return to the U.S."
Chao departed June 12, two days before he was hospitalized, and was in Shanghai when the emergency happened. Fact-checkers have knocked down a viral claim that she flew over after his cardiac arrest, while former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene floated a baseless claim that she is a Chinese spy.
Chao returned to the U.S. on July 7. McConnell's prognosis remains undisclosed.