Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) finally broke his roughly month-long silence this week regarding his state of health, though one journalist flagged what they said was a revealing detail in the Kentucky Republican’s statement.
McConnell was hospitalized on June 14, though his office initially disclosed few details about his state of health. Weeks later, it was reported that McConnell may have been discovered “unconscious” at his home and administered CPR for cardiac arrest, details that suggested the senator's health incident had been far more serious than initially disclosed.
Rumors quickly spread regarding McConnell’s health, and to such an extent that Kentucky GOP Gov. Andy Beshear publicly urged the senator to provide voters with “an update on his health.” On Sunday, McConnell’s office released a photograph of the Kentucky Republican at the hospital with his wife, accompanied by a 600-word statement.
In an analysis published Monday, independent journalist Ken Klippenstein pointed to one section of that statement as particularly telling.
“McConnell says ‘I didn’t have a heart attack or a stroke.’ But nowhere in the letter does he address the cardiac arrest,” Klippenstein wrote. “Swapping out ‘cardiac arrest’ for ‘heart attack’ is a clever move because most people use the two terms interchangeably. They are not.”
Klippenstein went on to argue that McConnell's statement was a "masterclass in political manipulation" – technically accurate in denying he'd had a "heart attack," but misleading in leaving out any mention of the cardiac arrest.
“A heart attack is a plumbing problem – a blocked artery starving the heart of blood, with the patient usually awake and in pain,” Klippenstein wrote.
“Cardiac arrest is a much more dangerous electrical problem – the heart stops pumping, the patient collapses, and death follows in minutes without CPR. So you can truthfully deny a heart attack while having had the more lethal thing.”