In a “Hot Topic” segment glibly coined “Mitch Hunt,” the cohosts of The View weighed in on the swell of questions about the health of Kentucky’s senior senator and former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. McConnell has been hospitalized since June, with reports indicating that a first responder call indicated EMS attended to an unconscious victim with cardiac arrest on the same day.
After reviewing footage of CNN’s Scott Jennings claiming he spoke to McConnell for almost 20 minutes about current events (and being challenged to call him live on-air), Whoopi Goldberg offered a simple solution: The senator should use video calling.
“A lot of people on both sides of the aisle are saying, ‘What the hell? We need more transparency with that.’ I mean, don’t they need to make things crystal clear? I mean, they put Biden under the microscope, so is this not another thing we should do? I mean, why don’t they just FaceTime him? And if you don’t know how to FaceTime, get somebody young to show you what they do, because that would shut everybody up if you send in the FaceTime of him.”
However, Goldberg then noted that this might not even settle the issue, saying, “But then we would all say, ‘How do we know it’s not AI?’”
“By the way, I spoke to Vladimir Putin. He loves ‘View Your Deal’!” Joy Behar then joked in response.
Alyssa Farah Griffin then weighed in on the matter and said that while she has a friend who worked for McConnell and “hope[s] he’s in good health and recovering,” she, too, agreed that there should be more transparency on his health. “His salary is paid for by all of us,” she pointed out. “I think that there’s an obligation to give us more transparency.” She suggested the best way to do that would be to have McConnell speak to a Capitol Hill reporter, rather than have colleagues share their conversations.
Griffin also made it a bit personal, saying, “I do think as a country, because this keeps being an issue, we have to find a way to have a conversation about the age and health of some of our aging members of the Senate and of our government without people just shouting ageism and trying to shut it down. I don’t believe in age-capping who’s in elected office. Our own Joy Behar is an example. Everyone ages differently…. We need to have some kind of standard for the capacity that our elected officials serve, and because the policy they make outlives them.”
Sunny Hostin then joined in on the chat to say, “I’m always uncomfortable when we’re asking for medical information. It’s generally private under HIPAA and things like that. But these are public figures. This is someone that was voted in by Kentuckians, and I do think that they deserve transparency. I think a very easy way for Mitch McConnell to put this to rest is to contact the governor of Kentucky, because as of, I think it was today, this morning, Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear sent a letter to Mitch McConnell asking him to fully update Kentuckians on his health situation. He wrote, ‘As public office holders, we have made a commitment to our constituents to do our best to represent them and to always be transparent. I believe this requires clear communication about one’s ability to serve.’ That’s the governor of Kentucky that doesn’t know how his own senator is feeling, what his health is like.”
Sara Haines completely agreed, saying, “Absolutely, I remember when he froze a few years ago during a speech, and it was really unsettling to watch, because in those moments I think you have a human response of, ‘Something’s not right here.’ So my heart goes out to whatever struggles the family’s going through, my thoughts are with them, but I don’t think, unlike regular citizens, they owe complete transparency, because beyond the age of candidates, we had John Fetterman, who’s now still in office, but he had something happen that we needed to be aware of, or at least as Pennsylvania voters did. It’s not an age thing, that’s the thing… The point being that we just recently had another senator that had a mental health crisis, when people are struggling, privacy is for regular citizens, not for elected officials. You have to be transparent because your boss is the voter, and the voters have to know all the information.”
Behar then joked, “But how do you even believe them? Remember when Trump got this diagnosis from a doctor, that ‘no one’s ever been healthier than him.’ I mean, who even believes that?”
“Well, I’m not saying what you’re getting is accurate, but we deserve answers on what it is, and you can gauge your own thing,” Haines replied. “People decided when President Biden was going through certain things, people saw with their own eyes, people are watching President Trump and what they see. So you’ve got to leave it up to the voters and the American public to make those decisions for themselves.”
When Haines also pointed out that the timing of McConnell’s health woes could result in a special election, Goldberg then noted, “One of the saddest things about all of this is, this is where we’ve gotten to gotten to, a place where, because people are trying to hold on, because they don’t want to miss the power that their group has or their party has, they’re holding on in ways that we’ve never seen them do before. Now, there’s certain things, [Ronald] Reagan had all kinds of issues which we didn’t find out until [later], but this is damaging to the nation. It is. Because we want people to tell us — listen, we understand we all get sick. We all get sick, but we need to know that you’re still into your job, and you can do your job, because nobody else can get away with this.”
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