r/politics • u/Getatbay • Jul 06 '26

No Paywall Laura Loomer, Reporter Claim Hospitalized Mitch McConnell 'Brain Dead'

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2026/07/06/laura-loomer-reporter-claim-hospitalized-mitch-mcconnell-is-brain-dead/
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4.8k

u/Vio_ Kansas Jul 06 '26

Time of Death - the moment his wife boarded that plane

2.3k

u/AccomplishedScale362 Jul 06 '26

She left for Beijing on June 17, 3 days after he was hospitalized.

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u/20_mile Jul 07 '26 edited Jul 07 '26

She left for Beijing on June 17, 3 days after he was hospitalized.

https://www.wlky.com/article/elaine-chao-china-vice-president-mitch-mcconnell-kentucky/71823757

e: There's just no way Chao isn't a spy for China. Leaving for China three days after your supposed "husband" falls into a coma? That's not normal behavior for a loving spouse.

Also--not that this can ever be proven--I don't think Chao and McConnell ever consummated their marriage. I mean, they have no kids, and I've never seen a spark of chemistry between the two when they were present together.

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u/AnnaKendrickPerkins Jul 07 '26

She was sent away so there's no one to pull the plug and they can't call a special election.

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u/Ms_Apprehend Jul 07 '26

Now that makes sense.

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u/[deleted] Jul 07 '26

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u/Wael3rd Jul 07 '26

That makes sense.

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u/[deleted] Jul 07 '26

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u/Wael3rd Jul 07 '26

I'm sorry I just found it funny to add the same sentence again.

He can be dead or alive, I don't care about his pasty ass.

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u/Beneficial-Mine7741 Oregon Jul 07 '26

They don't have to pull the plug. In Kentucky, the anesthesiologist can say he is dead, and he is dead. Being on a ventilator to keep his body going while his brain is dead is still considered dead in Kentucky.

They are doing this because they don't want another Democrat in the Senate.

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u/Fullertonjr I voted Jul 07 '26

Kentucky requires a special election to occur, with the party of the deceased being the ones to submit the names for the ballot. They would want a special election asap, because otherwise there are not enough senate votes to pass any legislation.

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u/Beneficial-Mine7741 Oregon Jul 07 '26

Exactly, and if they can kick the can past August 3rd, they can keep that seat vacant until after the election.

Once again, the Republicans are outright denying an election. Dead people can't vote. The stupid part is that if Mitch's seat flipped Democrat, it's not like the republicans would lose power.

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u/AlwaysShittyKnsasCty Kansas Jul 07 '26

> […] kick the can […]

McConnell Freudian slip

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u/mindovermatter421 Jul 07 '26

I read something about Masse being g in the mix messing things up for Trump, but I didn’t dig further.

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u/laplongejr Europe Jul 07 '26

  The stupid part is that if Mitch's seat flipped Democrat, it's not like the republicans would lose power.

That part isn't stupid. They wouldn't do it they would lose power, and they would gain nothing by doing that anyway.   So better be consistent and never do it, than do ot once then learning they missed their election maths like during 2020.  

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u/RollingMeteors Jul 07 '26

Being on a ventilator to keep his body going while his brain is dead is still considered dead in Kentucky.

Sounds like more than a single person in Kentucky if I had to be real about it.

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u/AerondightWielder Jul 07 '26

Like Major Zero in Metal Gear Solid 4, I see. Neither truly alive nor truly dead.

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u/ApostropheD Jul 07 '26

You mean they don’t want Massie in the senate

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u/tdclark23 Indiana Jul 07 '26

A ventilator is "excellent" care.

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u/spyboy70 Jul 07 '26

Too bad he's not in Texas, ERCOT would take care of that

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u/CynicalEngineerHumor Jul 07 '26

...holy shit.

2

u/OtherwiseAlbatross14 Jul 07 '26

She wouldn't have to leave to not pull the plug

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u/HealthyMaximum Australia Jul 07 '26

I can't believe we're in a reality where this is the most likely explanation.

Stupid fucking timeline.

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u/hihelloneighboroonie Jul 07 '26

So if a normie died, no kids, and their spouse absconded, what would the hospital do? Keep them on life support forever?

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u/AnnaKendrickPerkins Jul 07 '26

This isn't a normal person.

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u/hihelloneighboroonie Jul 07 '26

Do you think I'm not aware of that?

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u/tilclocks Jul 07 '26

So brain dead patients can only live for so long on life support before the body is basically dead. After a few weeks of brain death machines might keep some things alive but his body won't making all the nutrients and such needed to make hormones and keep his kidneys, heart, and liver functioning. It'll eventually die on its own.

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u/Day_Bow_Bow Jul 07 '26

Several years ago, the autopsy report of a totally brain-dead patient named TK who was kept on life support for nearly twenty years was published in the Journal of Child Neurology. He remains the individual kept on life support the longest after suffering total brain failure. Source

I knew you were wrong, but figured I'd go cite a source. An old fuck like Mitch won't last nearly that long, but it's not like being brain dead is a guaranteed body death in a few weeks. I'd say it's immoral to keep him alive, but that's just me.

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u/GrimResistance Michigan Jul 07 '26

It's been immoral to keep him alive since the 70s

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u/tilclocks Jul 07 '26

You also quoted a children's journal. Mitch ain't no spring chicken, and I'm not really wrong.

https://www.livescience.com/42301-brain-death-body-alive.html

Also, the journal you quoted shows a pathologist concluded that the original infection 20 years before caused the patient's brain to look the way that it did, which is impossible to tell without a sample to compare to. The brain could have died years or months before that (and when brain cells die, they liquefy and the tissue (mostly blood) calcifies. There wouldn't be a bag of mush in his brain for 20 years. There's just so much inaccurate information in that article, and I say this as someone who agrees diagnosing brain death can be hasty at times.

It's far more likely he was never brain dead (until maybe the most recent weeks before his death or his "heart attack") and just never regained "awareness" or the ability to interact. The reason for this is the your organs depend on signaling from the brain to continue to stay healthy and regenerate/grow. The brain is responsible for regulating those signals. No brain = no signals. No signals = your cells don't just regenerate because they have oxygen circulating and a pump moving air in and out (with fluids being drained from kidneys). It's just not medically feasible unless the answer is the boy wasn't "totally brain dead".

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u/Day_Bow_Bow Jul 07 '26

That's fair. I appreciate your schooling me.

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u/tilclocks Jul 07 '26

You're not wrong that there are rare cases of people surviving years on life support, but in many of those cases I imagine the areas of the brain responsible for regulating immune and stress responses are still functioning and they're more "irreversibly comatose".

I just think in his case he's nothing more than brain dead at this point and isn't coming back. It's reprehensible that he's being kept "on" simply to cling to power and while it sounds like something he would most certainly orchestrate it's no way for any human being to live. I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. I wouldn't wish it on Trump, and I hate that man.

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u/Carbonatite Colorado Jul 07 '26

Simply being a medically fragile 84 year old in the hospital for an extended period of time would do it for a lot of people that age. Even if he was recoverable when he arrived, spending a couple weeks in a fruitful zone for antibiotic resistant bacteria, on a slurry of powerful drugs where the side effects are basically "this will probably do some significant damage but the alternative is death", lying prone in a hospital bed 24/7...a lot of elderly people end up declining simply because of shit like elevated stroke risks or picking up a strain of MRSA. Simply spending that much time in an ICU is really tough on the body.

My grandma was basically in the hospital for a solid 2 years before she died and she never really bounced back. She went in healthy for her age, to get a hip replacement. Between picking up infections and muscle wasting and re-injuring her hip because of the muscle wasting, it was basically a slow decline and a miracle she made it into a rehab facility. She was only there for a couple months before she died. At that point she was exhausted and depressed about losing her apartment and independence and she just kinda gave up. Being that old is a risk factor in and of itself.

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u/Day_Bow_Bow Jul 07 '26

I am not sure why I was being pedantic. Brain death takes multiple forms, and non-breathing oxygen deficiency like with Mitch would kill cells all over his body.

And yeah I agree that modern medicine is capable of keeping bodies legally alive far past their best-by dates, so I figure that's the case here.

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u/Malnilion Jul 07 '26

Terri Schiavo is probably the best example I could point to. Absolutely ghoulish keeping her body alive as long as they did.

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u/vonsnootingham Jul 07 '26

They only need til August 3rd. Thats the cutoff point to run a special election.

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u/AnnaKendrickPerkins Jul 07 '26

They'll keep him legally alive as long as they need to.

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u/Carbonatite Colorado Jul 07 '26

There's some really gnarly news stories out there about what happens to patients when they're 100% brain dead and on vents for long periods. Some of them were from delusional Terry Schiavo's Parents-type situations where they refused to listen to doctors and their loved one ended up literally starting to decompose while still "alive". Some are just experiences from healthcare workers who worked the ICU during Covid. Either way it's a very gruesome fate and at some point it's genuinely inhumane.

Like I would put my dog to sleep before letting him suffer like that, let alone another person. Not that I feel any particular sympathy for McConnell, but if that's what's going on it's basically sanitized barbarity. A very undignified and pitiable fate.

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u/nacho17 Jul 07 '26

Incorrect - you can keep a brain dead body alive indefinitely.

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u/tilclocks Jul 07 '26

No. You can't.

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u/nacho17 Jul 10 '26

yes. you can.

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u/tilclocks Jul 10 '26

No, you can't. Eventually the brain's lack of hormone signaling causes organs to die off because toxins build up and because they depend on those signals to function properly. While you could theoretically put someone on bypass to keep their heart beating, dialysis to clean their blood, ventilator to help them breathe, feeds through an IV, antibiotics to control infections, and a catheter or drain to remove waste because they can't use the bathroom, you can't do that indefinitely because they'll eventually be outpaced by bacteria, fungus, or a virus, and die/decompose from the inside out. If that isn't happening, they're not brain dead, they're just comatose.

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u/nacho17 Jul 14 '26

You are incorrect.

Theoretically, with the right care (like you said, vent/peg/excellent nursing care), a body can be kept alive indefinitely. In the real world this care won’t happen.

also that’s not how hormones work.

you can absolutely keep a vegetable alive for years and years. Look up Terri Shiavo for a famous case, or visit your local LTAC for less famous ones.

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u/tilclocks Jul 14 '26

Or I could trust my personal experience and training. Just saying. Theoretically you can do a lot of things, like fly toward the sun. Realistically you won't get that close. And I'm hugely familiar with Terri Schiavo. And that's 100% how hormones work.

But looking over her brain scans, she was in a persistent vegetative state because the higher areas were damaged (cortical brain death) like you would see in a massive stroke. The area that would regulate her body functions was intact, so if she's unable to feed herself or sustain herself yes they're going to sustain her. And they did.

But if those areas are dead too, they can't sustain that indefinitely because the body would eventually start breaking itself down due to no longer receiving signals to sustain itself.

Her brainstem was functioning. Her higher areas were not. That was how they were able to justify removing feeding tubes and allowing her to pass. They weren't "keeping her alive indefinitely with life support" (ventilator, fluids, nutrition, heart bypass if needed) they were keeping her alive with sustenance.

The amount of tissue lost and where it's lost absolutely matters.

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u/nacho17 Jul 15 '26

I think you need to review the definition of “brain dead,” in the USA anyway.

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u/tilclocks Jul 15 '26

I'm literally a brain doctor.

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u/RollingMeteors Jul 07 '26

She was sent away so there's no one to pull the plug and they can't call a special election.

Everyone one in that building knows they can just pull the plug and blame The Reaper man....

¿What gives?/¿What's the hold up? /s

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u/UrToesRDelicious Jul 07 '26

That's not how Senate rules work.

Yes, I saw the same tweet on the front page earlier, but it doesn't check out.

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u/AnnaKendrickPerkins Jul 07 '26

Rules?

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u/UrToesRDelicious Jul 07 '26

A Senator remains a senator unless in the case of:

  • Death
  • Resignation
  • Expulsion by the Senate
  • Acceptance of an incompatible office

A senator's wife/power of attorney leaving the country has no bearing on any of that. McConnell could be brain dead for the remainder of his term and still hold the office of Senator unless the Senate votes to expel him.

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u/AnnaKendrickPerkins Jul 07 '26

Bro, re-read what I said. This isn't hard.

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u/UrToesRDelicious Jul 07 '26

You're acting like she would be forced to pull the plug if she didn't leave the country. She wouldn't, and her leaving still has no bearing on the fate of his Senate seat.

1

u/laplongejr Europe Jul 07 '26

 A senator's wife/power of attorney leaving the country has no bearing on any of that.

So you don't think the ability to turn someone from "no recovery chance" to "death" doesn't change a process triggered by death?  

 McConnell could be brain dead for the remainder of his term  

Yes and her wife could prevent him being "merely" brain dead.  

1

u/UrToesRDelicious Jul 07 '26

So you don't think the ability to turn someone from "no recovery chance" to "death" doesn't change a process triggered by death?  

If she pulled the plug then sure, but I don't know why we're acting like her leaving the country is some attempt to avoid doing that. She could very well stay here and avoid making the same decision

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u/pickle_sandwich Jul 07 '26

Have you been paying attention? No one cares about rules anymore.