Mitch McConnell’s Hometown Newspaper Publishes Scathing ‘Pre-Obituary’ of the ‘Not Yet Departed’

Joseph KonigThu, July 23, 2026 at 4:06 PM UTC

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Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell and former Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, his wife, appear in a photo shared by his office on July 12.Credit: Mitch McConnell -

As Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell’s weekslong absence from the Senate and the public eye stretches on, his hometown newspaper has published a “pre-obituary”

A local reporter who covered McConnell for decades argued that the 84-year-old Republican senator as “every bit the detestable figure that” President Richard Nixon was

McConnell has still not appeared publicly since his June 14 hospitalization, fueling rampant speculation about his wellbeing and sparking criticism from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle

As Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell’s weekslong absence from the Senate and the public eye stretches on, his hometown newspaper has published a “pre-obituary” of the “not yet departed” 84-year-old that paints the longtime Republican senator as “every bit the detestable figure that” President Richard Nixon was.

The scathing reflection on McConnell’s career was written by columnist Joseph Gerth, who has covered Kentucky politics at Louisville’s The Courier Journal since 1988 — three years into the Louisville native’s first of seven Senate terms.

“Unlike Nixon, McConnell never paid for his sins that have damaged our nation’s trust in government, destroyed the country’s ability to have meaningful dialogue and cemented our nation’s politics as an arena in which winning is the only thing that matters,” wrote Gerth, who spent a decade as the paper’s chief political reporter, in an op-ed on Wednesday, July 22.

Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., makes his way to a vote in the U.S. Capitol on April 30.Credit: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty

McConnell was hospitalized on June 14 with a condition his office refused to disclose, offering virtually no information on his status for nearly a month.

On July 12, his office released his first photo since the hospitalization and a lengthy statement that said he “took a fall” as a result of what he and a doctor quoted in the statement credited to “mobility challenges” from surviving polio as a child.

McConnell insisted that he did not suffer a heart attack, a stroke, a concussion or any broken bones. And he said his doctors determined he had no tumors or hemorrhages.

Mitch McConnell in a hospital bed alongside his wife, Elaine Chao, in a photo he shared on July 12.Credit: Mitch McConnell

The July 12 statement noted that during his hospitalization, he “developed pneumonia, which responded rapidly to antibiotic treatment” and that his treatment going forward will focus “on physical therapy and strategies to reduce his risk of future falls.”

It noted he has been moved from hospital care to a rehabilitation center.

But in the days since, McConnell has still not returned to work or appeared publicly or in a recorded video, contributing to further speculation within his own party and sparking criticism from Democrats like Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear and New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

“I don’t even know how this is legal,” Ocasio-Cortez, 36, said last week. “I really don’t even know how this is legal at this point, and it’s, I just find it shocking.”

“And how is everyone pretending this is normal?” she continued. “This is not normal.”

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Gerth wrote in his Wednesday column that he was sparked to write his evaluation of McConnell’s life’s work after seeing pushback to criticisms of the late South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham following the 71-year-old Republican’s sudden death on July 11.

“That got me thinking about Sen. Mitch McConnell, who was rumored to be dead or on life support or in a coma or whatever and was the odds-on favorite to beat Graham to the gates of hell in the days before Graham’s death,” Gerth wrote. “And, so with McConnell allegedly on the mend, I figured I’d go ahead and tell you what I think about McConnell now — when no one can complain, ‘How dare you write that about a dead guy?’ ”

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., speaks with Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., on June 20, 2022, at the U.S. Capitol.Credit: MICHAEL REYNOLDS / POOL / AFP via Getty

The longtime Kentucky political reporter tallied up McConnell’s achievements during his 42 years as senator: bringing billions in investment to the state, rebuilding the Kentucky Republican Party, and defending unpopular free speech.

Gerth also noted that McConnell once boasted he voted for Democratic President Lyndon Baines Johnson in 1964 over the opposition to civil rights by Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater, the Republican nominee.

Yet as a senator decades later, the columnist wrote, McConnell was the architect of the 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court that has now undone much of the legal achievements of the civil rights movement that McConnell once claimed to belong to — including attending the 1963 March on Washington where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his “I Have a Dream” speech.

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“He had more guts as a young man than he had as an old man,” Gerth wrote. “It seems somehow fitting for the ultimate shape-shifter, who wrote about accompanying Sen. John Sherman Cooper to see Johnson sign the Voting Rights Act into law, that the court he created was the court that struck down the last remaining significant provision.”

The Kentucky Republican’s “biggest failing may be his embrace of a president who he believes is stupid and who he believes led an attempt to overthrow the United States’ government on Jan. 6, 2021,” Gerth continued.

Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and President Donald Trump in the Oval Office at the White House on July 20, 2020.Credit: Doug Mills-Pool/Getty

Beyond McConnell deciding to once again support a president he accused of triggering “a violent insurrection for the purpose of trying to prevent the peaceful transfer of power after a legitimately certified election,” Gerth noted the senator has also tolerated President Donald Trump’s racist remarks towards his wife, former Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao.

“And that is the legacy of Mitch McConnell,” Gerth wrote. “He ends his career adopting the anti-civil rights positions Barry Goldwater supported, handed to him by a despised and distrusted Supreme Court that he created.”

Representatives for the former Senate Republican leader, who vowed to finish out his final term through January 2027, did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment about the “pre-obituary” on Thursday.

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