CNN chief medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta explained the possible causes of Republican Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell’s freeze ups on “CNN This Morning” Thursday.
The Senate Minority leader froze up for a second time while he stood at the podium during a Wednesday press conference. McConnell stared into the air and appeared to be unaware of his surroundings when a reporter asked him a question about running for re-election in 2026, forcing an aide to approach him and ask if he had heard the question.
Gupta, a neurosurgeon, said it is possible either McConnell could be suffering from a mini seizure, or he is taking or coming off of certain medications. Gupta added a key component of his freeze ups is that it “comes and goes” in short periods of time.
“What I saw, and this is I think an appropriate term here, is the term freezing,” Gupta said. “That does sort of describe this. Freezing of his body, freezing of his speech, freezing of his face, his hands were very clenched to the side of the lectern. One of his aides came over and tried to raise his arm, and he was pretty locked in there for about 30 seconds. But then as Scott [Jennings] mentions, a short time later, he seems to be more lucid again and seems to improve, and when he walks out of the room, he’s moving his arms and his legs, which is important because people think ‘is this some sort of stroke or precursor to strokes such as TIA?’ Less likely, given how quickly the recovery happens.”
“You do think of things like a seizure for example, a sort of mini-seizure that can cause these sorts of symptoms,” he continued. “Or even certain medications or coming off medications. People [who] have Parkinson’s, for example, when their medications start to wane off, they may have freezing episodes. But again, it comes and goes, and I think what is curious is we’ve seen it twice.”
Gupta said the aides’ calm response to McConnell’s freeze indicates they are used to this sort of episode. (RELATED: ‘Physical And Cognitive Decline’: Laura Ingraham Says Mitch McConnell Is ‘No Longer Capable Of Working Full Time’)
“The aides that rushed to his side, they didn’t seem so sort of effected by it, almost to the point where you wonder, ‘is this something they’re more used to?’ If this is the first time this has happened, I’d say look, you got to get to the doctor and figure out is something going on here with the blood flow to your brain or something. They didn’t seem to react that way, which I thought was another important clue,” he concluded.
McConnell froze up in during a weekly Republican press conference in late July and had to be ushered away by Senate Republicans. He later returned to the presser and told the people in attendance he was “fine.”
The senator suffered from a concussion and spent five days in the hospital after falling down the stairs at the Waldorf Astoria in Washington, DC, in March.