Longtime Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell has been in the hospital for three weeks now. And some are saying he's brain dead already, but his wife went to China, that was weird. And then Scott Jennings says, I called him, I had a great conversation with him. That was super weird. So Anna, what in the world's going on here? Well, Cenk, part of the holy matrimony [00:00:19] is to abandon your husband as he's uh possibly brain dead in the hospital. But let me actually lay out the details for our audience. And then we have a wonderful guest to uh share her reporting on this story with us. So as we all know, Mitch McConnell is 84 years old. He should have maybe [00:00:37] ended his political career a little earlier in life but refused to do so. Now he was apparently admitted into the hospital on June 14th. At the time, his office told the press that he was admitted to the hospital and was receiving excellent care with no further details. It [00:00:54] was unclear why he was hospitalized in the first place, but two weeks later, independent journalist Desiree Townsend shared an EMS recording from June 14th when he was hospitalized. This is the same day he went to the hospital. Now, uh the call requested advance life support [00:01:14] to be sent to his home because he was found unconscious. And then later it turned out that he suffered from cardiac arrest. Now it's a little bit difficult to make out what you hear in the audio recording, but this is the uh EMS recording that was later released by the journalist [00:01:29] uh Townsend. Take a listen. Medical local paramedic agents 3, Medic 3 ALS response unconscious 272, in Charlie. Medical local paramedic agents 03, Medic 3 ALS response unconscious 272, in [00:01:48] Charlie. Close of second street on Charlie 11, 836. Not accurate communications. East Farme and Supervisor, CPR in progress. Okay. MS2 respond. for cardiac arrest, 217-33, no TCS in Charlie, EMS2 response for cardiac arrest, [00:02:12] 217-33, no TCS in Charlie, closer second street in Charlie, 11-843. I think it's critical for you to hear that evidence because of how his office is trying to downplay what's going [00:02:30] on here. for now McConnell's team is alleging that his health is improving. On July 2nd, a spokesperson for McConnell said the following, the senator continues to improve and is working closely with his staff on Kentucky and Senate matters while the Senate is out of session. [00:02:48] But that's uh Unlikely if you ask me and if you ask friend of the show Ken Klippenstein who posted the following on X only a tiny fraction fewer than 5 % of octogenarians Survive an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest like the one McConnell suffered I'll speculate further even [00:03:07] if he's part of that lucky few He'll have brain damage as the vast majority of survivors do again. Just want to repeat. He's 84 years old Then reporters came out, or reports I should say came out that McConnell was officially brain dead. It started with Laura Loomer, who's [00:03:24] untrustworthy, I wouldn't take her word for it. However, she posted uh high level source close to the White House tells me Mitch McConnell officially brain dead, he's not coming back. What made this credible was the quote tweet by Desiree Townsend, the independent reporter that I've been referring to who said. I have heard the same thing from my sources for days. [00:03:43] At this point, I am at the hospital for when they eventually decide to move, cut him off life support and move his body. His Capitol Police detail is still here as of 3.39 PM Eastern Time. Now, uh we want to figure out what's going on here. And luckily, joining us is the [00:04:02] independent journalist I've been referring to throughout this story, Desiree Townsend. Desiree, thank you so much for joining us. Yes, thank you so much for having me today. So let me just start off by asking you, what do you think is happening here? Do you think that the speculation [00:04:17] by Ken Klippenstein is correct? Do you believe that Mitch McConnell is in fact brain dead? I personally believe that that is the case or he is still on life support. I find the timing of these statements that came out saying I spoke with Mitch McConnell today. The reason [00:04:38] being is if you listen back to that audio, they were giving him CPR. And then for literally two weeks, we get nothing from the office until Laura Loomer post that clip. I basically is [00:04:53] so I had heard the same thing from multiple sources. Look, what's happened here is there's a lack of information coming out of his office and coming out of his family, and this family's not disclosing much. we had heard that President, so these sources had told us that President [00:05:12] Trump had sent somebody there to figure out what was going on. And that is, I guess, essentially where we were getting this information from. So the timing today of these two people coming forward, I believe it was Brasso and Jennings came forward and said, have both 20 minute [00:05:31] conversations uh with Senator McConnell, I find very odd because also we had staffers, uh some sources that appeared to be within the staff. I got this from another news organization that said that Elaine Chao, his wife, is back as of two days ago. So she gets back two days [00:05:52] ago and now these statements are coming out. I mean, look, it's very possible he's defied all the odds and he's defied that less than 5 % survival rate. If he's capable of having a phone conversation for 20 minutes, he needs to resign right now before July 13th when [00:06:11] the Senate returns so we can conduct in Kentucky a special election and get somebody more capable of serving in that office. Let's dive in a little bit more. So Scott Jennings says he talked to him for 20 minutes. I think Scott Jennings is lying, period. Maybe he talked [00:06:29] to Mitch McConnell for 20 minutes, but Mitch McConnell did not talk back, right? uh So, but let's game out what happens if McConnell is uh brain dead or he's not, right? Because uh first of all, to your point about CPR, once uh CPR has been done to revive someone after [00:06:49] a heart attack. that their chances of being brain dead is significantly higher, right? So it feels like under both circumstances, we need clarity for sure, right? Which one is it? And his wife is back, so she has an obligation to tell us, the citizens, which [00:07:07] one it is. Real quick, when's the last time you actually check your Medicare plan? Can't remember? That's what I thought. But the costs creep up, the plans change every year, and they're counting on you not noticing. It's another rigged system. So please check, check with Chapter, the only Medicare advisors that compare every plan nationwide. They're independent, [00:07:27] they're honest, they advocate for you, not the insurance companies. A listener of ours out in California was skeptical when he first dialed Chapter, but in just one call, they found him coverage he'd been missing for months, and he's not alone. People who switch the chapter [00:07:43] save more than $1,000 a year on average. And if you're already on the best plan, they'll just tell you. Free help in under 20 minutes, call 805-201-2275. Worst case, you'll be certain [00:07:59] that you have the best coverage. Best case, you stop overpaying and get the coverage you need at the lowest possible price. That's 805-201-2275. 2275. But you're saying that if he is conscious, [00:08:15] then he should resign. I view it the other way, if he's not conscious, then we definitely need to go to a special election because Kentucky doesn't have a senator. He's 84 years old, he should resign. Okay, sorry to interrupt and interject, come on. Yeah, okay, but it's not [00:08:31] just about age. yes, what's your, tell us about the situation about what would happen under those two scenarios. The problem is unlike the 25th Amendment for a president who's become incapacitated. There's really no way of doing that for a member of Congress. They either [00:08:47] have to be conscious and then they resign or they die. Those are the two options. And so if he's legitimately conscious right now, he needs to immediately resign before he loses consciousness again. Otherwise, it's a waiting game to see if he's going to recover enough [00:09:06] to make it back. to the Senate on July 13th. You have to understand the Senate is only in session from July and then May. quickly head into August recess. We have all of fiscal year 2027 appropriation bills to get done in which Senator McConnell sits on the appropriations [00:09:25] committee. His vote is needed to get these out of committee and then vote on these bills. If he's incapable of coming back on July 13th and he needs to resign, otherwise if he refuses to resign, we have to wait for him to pass. There's nothing to stop him from coming to [00:09:41] the Senate. I don't think he's going to show. But this puts us in a really tough bind in July before August recess because we have all these fiscal year appropriations that get done. So with him absent, uh what happens with his vote during these appropriations debates, right? [00:09:59] When Senate is voting on certain bills, with him absent, what happens? Do they just miss out on one Republican vote? It's a not vote, correct. It's a lost vote. This is unbelievable and unacceptable. And by the way, this is a bipartisan issue. I mean, as you probably know, [00:10:16] Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein died while in office when she shouldn't have run for her last term. And she should have stepped down and allowed for someone who was capable of actually serving the people of California to do that. But it seems like right now Congress [00:10:34] is just Kabuki theater. It's not really there to serve the people at all. And you could literally have someone who's brain dead continue to serve in the Senate, it's out of control. Yeah, just wanna, so uh take that and talk about an important reason why they might not go [00:10:51] forward uh in trying to get McConnell out. In the case of Feinstein, the Democrats had Nancy Pelosi's uh daughter wheeling her around in a wheelchair. So uh Pelosi's daughter was effectively the senator from California cuz- At that point, Dianne Feinstein was not at [00:11:09] all cognizant of what was happening. So in this case, A, who do we think is the senator from Kentucky? Is it Elaine Chao now? Or is it some staffer? Is it a consultant? Is it a donor? Okay, and then B, uh why wouldn't the Republicans want an extra vote? They desperately [00:11:27] need an extra vote. Right, if there was a special election, there's another guy from Kentucky that the Republicans really, really don't want to be the next senator. which is Tom Massey. And is that relevant here? I think there's two different issues here. think a lot of, there [00:11:46] are a lot of Republicans that still, they admire maybe the sum of what Massey has done. I know that President Trump on the other hand has a different view of Massey. However, I think at this point, Republicans and Democrats should be really concerned because again, the kind [00:12:07] of joke running joke at Capitol Hill is Elaine Chao is running Senator McConnell's office. And we've seen staffers whisper to him in hearings and on the Senate floor on what to do on protocol. And so they could easily just be whispering in his ear. to vote yes or no on a certain [00:12:27] thing. that's why, so here's kind of what alerted me to something being amiss here. So McConnell's very fierce Republican conservative, the moment he blocked the SAVE Act, President Trump's sort of uh baby, his bill, I knew something was wrong because Mitch McConnell, the old [00:12:49] Mitch McConnell would have never blocked the SAVE Act. And so that's when I started digging in and noticing that there's a lot of that he has these handlers. When I have seen him, at least on June 11th, vote on the Senate floor, he's not even in the camera. You can't see [00:13:06] him actually vote, meaning they probably rolled him in. It's very likely somebody could have whispered in his ear, put your thumb up. And that's how things are sort of being conducted. That's not democracy. You can't have someone else running someone's office. And continue, [00:13:22] even if the vote is helpful to Republicans, can't allow this to go on. So there's a second component here because, look, again with both McConnell and Feinstein, my view and the view of a lot of our viewers is that they're puppets anyway, right, for all their donors. [00:13:40] And so they're irrelevant tools for the donors and servants, etc. So who cares? The consultant's gonna make the decision or- The donor is, it's not the senator anyway, right? uh But in this case, there's a different component, which is Elaine Chao. So now we've got uh Benjamin [00:14:02] Netanyahu and the head of Mossad going into the situation room and telling Trump what to do before the Iran war. Now we have Elaine Chao going to talk to the Chinese vice president while her husband is either brain dead. Or apparently, according to Scott Jennings, miraculously [00:14:19] recovering from being brain dead. But she's not there, she's talking to the vice president of China. That is incredibly strange. This is what you need to understand. And I think this is where the voting public gets this piece wrong. You think that whoever the handlers [00:14:37] are, are just having them vote one way or the other. What you don't realize is that these members of Congress get access to classified briefings. Senator McConnell was granted access to the classified Iran briefing. The classified budget on fiscal year 2027 for the Department [00:14:57] of Defense, Department of War, they're given classified information. Now if you have handlers voting for them and now handlers who have access to classified information are running off to China with that, that is a big problem. I totally agree. This is outrageous and What is your [00:15:13] sense, just last question for me, what is your sense of uh how the Republican base is reacting to this if they're reacting at all? The Republican base is reacting and I think they're all furious right now because this is not right. And I think a lot of it's because it's connected [00:15:34] to Elaine Chao in China. Now if it was just- probably anyone else and Diane Feinstein sort of situation. Maybe they would have looked the other way, but this is a bigger issue to have somebody who is closely tied to the Chinese government taking meetings with the vice president [00:15:54] just three days after her husband had cardiac arrest and she didn't bother flying back. So she had this pre-planned trip. She was seen at a university in Shanghai on June 12th. June 14th, she should have jumped on a plane. She has private chats. She should have jumped on a plane, come back to DC to be by her husband's side. Instead, she took a meeting with the [00:16:13] vice president of China. Now that takes me back to, this isn't about votes. This is about largely that classified information. So there is one other piece that could disrupt our economy. Again, Mitch McConnell's lack of a vote will shut down the US government. in October because [00:16:31] his vote is so important to move forward fiscal year 2027 appropriations. had Senator Kennedy on record saying basically that. So what this could do if he refuses to resign is it causes chaos with our appropriations and shuts the government down, leading us to potentially [00:16:50] have laps in the Department of Homeland Security again, Department of Defense, TSA, you name it. It opens the It opens up our country for national security threats because we're not paying the people responsible for defending this country. And then it opens us up again [00:17:09] to losing in the GDP because we have all of these contractors that are not getting paid and government operations shut down. Wow, mean, I can't believe she flew to China two days before her husband. uh admitted into the hospital, had cardiac arrest and didn't fly [00:17:28] back immediately. But Desiree, I really appreciate you taking the time to explain your reporting with us. And I hope you'll come back when there are updates because this story is important, not just for Republican voters, but for this country. If we're supposed to live in a democracy, we should have senators who are able to represent us. And that's not what's happening right now [00:17:47] for the people in Kentucky. Thank you again, and hopefully we'll speak soon. Thank you. Yes, have a great evening. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, and by the way guys, just remember two different issues. One is he's been falling down at the job literally since 2023. He's just fall down and get concussion. He's been freezing, etc. So they've known for three [00:18:10] years straight that he is totally incapacitated and they didn't care because it's the same results either way. But now, that is- very strange to have an in person visit with the Chinese vice president while McConnell is dying. That is not normal. uh