\n<\/p>\n
The US senator Mitch McConnell on Sunday revealed for the first time that a fall led to his hospitalization, breaking the silence about the Kentucky Republican\u2019s condition after weeks of mounting speculation about his health.<\/p>\n
McConnell, 84, said in a statement that he has undergone a battery of tests as doctors try to determine what led to his fall. He explained the long silence about his condition by saying that \u201cfolks of my generation often hesitate to share the vulnerability that comes with growing older\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven in the public eye, I feel that same instinct \u2013 I can\u2019t help it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
McConnell said he is now in a rehabilitation center and will not be returning to the Senate \u201cquite yet\u201d. He said he continues to work with his staff on Senate business in the meantime.<\/p>\n
The statement included a smiling picture of McConnell with his wife, Elaine Chao, a tacit response to speculation online that he had died or was incapacitated. McConnell held a copy of Sunday\u2019s Washington Post sports section<\/a> in his hand.<\/p>\n Sunday\u2019s statement came after his hospitalization on 14 June. McConnell\u2019s office for weeks provided little information, insisting only that he was \u201creceiving excellent care\u201d and recovering.<\/p>\n As his hospital stay grew longer, speculation mounted about his condition. It grew so intense that Kentucky\u2019s Democratic governor, Andy Beshear, took the extraordinary step of asking that McConnell update the public about his health in a \u201ctransparent manner\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve submitted to every test they can think of to help figure out what caused this incident,\u201d McConnell said in the new statement, without revealing any answer, only what had been ruled out. \u201cMy doctors have confirmed that I didn\u2019t break any bones or suffer a concussion. I didn\u2019t have a heart attack or a stroke. I don\u2019t have any tumors or hemorrhages. But I was briefly unconscious and was taken to the hospital,\u201d McConnell said. While hospitalized, he added, \u201cI\u2019ve also had to deal with a mild case of pneumonia.\u201d<\/p>\n McConnell\u2019s statement also came after the unexpected death of Lindsey Graham, his fellow Republican US senator, on Saturday evening. Graham\u2019s office on Sunday told reporters that the 71-year-old South Carolina senator died of an aortic dissection \u2013 a break in the main artery carrying blood from the heart, caused by arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease, which causes a gradual weakening and hardening of arteries.<\/p>\n Before McConnell\u2019s office released his statement, one of his colleagues, the Democratic senator Cory Booker, offered his \u201cthoughts and prayers\u201d to the former Republican majority leader, but added: \u201cThis is just unfortunately an issue of politics in general: people don\u2019t know when to gracefully step aside.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The US senator Mitch McConnell on Sunday revealed for the first time that a fall led to his hospitalization, breaking the silence about the Kentucky Republican\u2019s condition after weeks of mounting speculation about his health. McConnell, 84, said in a statement that he has undergone a battery of tests as doctors try to determine what 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NEWS<\/a>","rttpg_excerpt":"The US senator Mitch McConnell on Sunday revealed for the first time that a fall led to his hospitalization, breaking the silence about the Kentucky Republican\u2019s condition after weeks of mounting speculation about his health. McConnell, 84, said in a statement that he has undergone a battery of tests as doctors try to determine what…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35712","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35712"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35712\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35714,"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35712\/revisions\/35714"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/design-providers.com\/rise\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}