Eighty-four-year-old Senator Mitch McConnell attempted to wrap up a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense hearing this week while multiple senators were still waiting to ask questions — and it took a staffer physically leaning in and whispering in his ear to remind him the hearing wasn't actually over.
The incident happened during a subcommittee session where Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Dan Caine were testifying about Iran and the Pentagon budget. McConnell, who chairs the subcommittee, apparently decided the hearing was done. Small problem — Sen. Tammy Baldwin, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, and Sen. John Kennedy still had questions. You know, the entire reason they were sitting there.
That's when clerk Robert Karem leaned over and reminded McConnell that several attendees — including members of his own party — hadn't gotten their turn yet. The clip went viral instantly, and honestly, it's worse than the freezing episodes. At least when McConnell locked up at press conferences, you could squint and pretend he was deep in thought. This was just a man who forgot where he was and what he was doing.
Pat Gray, on his show "Pat Gray Unleashed," didn't mince words. He roasted McConnell's latest cognitive malfunction with the kind of bluntness that gets you in trouble at Thanksgiving but makes you a hero on talk radio. The Depends joke landed because everyone watching the clip was already thinking it.
“That kid is the senator,” quipped Pat's co-host. He meant that the lowly staffer advising McConnell that the hearing in fact wasn't over is the one who's really running things behind the scenes, not McConnell.
“Yes, that's right,” says Pat. “That's what happens when you got 85-, 90-, 95-, 100-year-old representatives who are running this country.”
McConnell looked out of it. The staffer's crime was doing his job. If your boss tries to close the restaurant while customers are still eating, and you tap him on the shoulder to say "hey, table six hasn't gotten their entrées yet," that's not grandstanding. That's keeping the place from getting sued.
The real issue isn't the staffer helping McConnell. The real issue is that an 84-year-old man who can't remember whether a hearing is still in progress is chairing one of the most powerful defense subcommittees in the United States Senate. This is the committee that oversees the Pentagon budget. Iran. Military readiness. And the guy running it needs a whisper buddy to remind him other people are in the room.
This is why term limits aren't a policy debate anymore. They're a public health conversation.
We watched Dianne Feinstein get wheeled around the Senate like a weekend at Bernie's for her final year. We watched Joe Biden negotiate with world leaders while struggling to find the exit at press conferences. And now we're watching Mitch McConnell chair defense hearings like a man who wandered into the wrong conference room at a Marriott.
Pat Gray called it what it is. No diplomatic language, no "concerns about cognitive fitness" hedging. Just a guy watching another guy completely forget what's happening and reacting the way normal Americans react — with a joke about adult diapers.
The Senate isn't an assisted living facility. It's not supposed to be, anyway. But when your subcommittee chairman needs a handler to remind him the meeting isn't over, maybe it's time to admit that whatever McConnell was — and he was a lot of things, not all of them popular with our crowd — that version of Mitch McConnell left the building a while ago.
What's sitting in that chair now is a reason to support term limits, age limits, or at minimum, a basic competency test that includes "do you know what room you're in and why."
Retire, Mitch. Before the next staffer has to remind you which building the Senate is in.