On Wednesday, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) reportedly suffered two more falls, this time in the U.S. Capitol.
Punchbowl News’ Max Cohen said in a post to X that the 82-year-old fell twice in a “short span,” once while exiting the Senate chamber and again while entering a closed-door GOP lunch.
One tumble happened after McConnell voted to confirm Scott Turner as Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. Fox News’ Chad Pergram noted that Sens. Steve Daines (R-MT) and Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) helped McConnell up.
John Bresnahan, a Punchbowl News co-founder, offered details on what apparently was the second fall. He said McConnell fell on his side while carrying a plate of food and may have bruised his face.
Cohen later posted a photo of McConnell exiting the GOP lunch. He noted that McConnell was holding onto an aide for support as he entered Majority Leader John Thune’s (R-SD) office.
Yet another post from Cohen showed McConnell in a wheelchair, which his team said was being used as a precautionary measure.
Mitch McConnell is in a wheelchair after falling multiple times today pic.twitter.com/pDd03oBgQl
— Max Cohen (@maxpcohen) February 5, 2025
“Senator McConnell is fine,” a McConnell spokesperson told The Daily Wire. “The lingering effects of polio in his left leg will not disrupt his regular schedule of work.”
McConnell, a childhood Polio survivor, announced last February that he would not seek another term as GOP leader in the Senate following multiple health scares in the preceding months.
The senator was briefly hospitalized in March 2023 with a concussion after falling at a D.C. hotel, and in the months that followed, he appeared to freeze and struggled to answer questions from the press.
More recently, McConnell got a cut on his face and sprained his wrist after tripping in December. McConnell received medical attention, and his spokesperson said the senator was cleared to resume his schedule.
After revealing his plans to step aside from leadership, McConnell indicated that he planned to serve out the remainder of his current term in the upper chamber, which ends in January 2027.
“I still have enough gas in my tank to thoroughly disappoint my critics and I intend to do so with all the enthusiasm with which they’ve become accustomed,” he said during Senate floor remarks.
In a radio interview that followed, he said, “I’m not leaving the Senate. And I’m particularly involved in actually fighting back against the isolationist movement in my own party and so many others as well.”
