Mitch McConnell hospitalized after falling in DC hotel
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky), who turned 81 on February 20, has been hospitalized after falling in a Washington, D.C. hotel, according to BNO News and others.
McConnell, BNO reports, was attending a "private dinner" at the Waldorf Astoria D.C. hotel when he tripped and fell. The severity of his injuries, according to BNO, was "not immediately known."
Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), in an official statement, said he was "praying for Leader McConnell’s speedy recovery" and looked forward to "seeing him back in the Capitol soon."
Journalists Andrew Solender and Rebecca Falconer, reporting on McConnell's hospitalization for Axios early Thursday morning, March 9, noted that he "was hospitalized in 2019 after a fall at his Louisville, Kentucky, home that led to surgery for a fractured shoulder."
McConnell was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 1984 and won a seventh term in 2020 when he defeated Democratic challenger Amy McGrath. As the Senate's GOP leader, McConnell has made a concerted effort to push the United States' federal courts more and more to the right. In 2016, McConnell infuriated Democrats when he blocked President Barack Obama's U.S. Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland — now U.S. attorney general under President Joe Biden — but when Donald Trump was president, he did everything he could to get all three of Trump’s Supreme Court nominees confirmed: Justice Brett Kavanaugh, Justice Neil Gorsuch and Justice Amy Coney Barrett.
During the Biden era, however, there has been considerable animosity between Trump and McConnell, who blames Trump for the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol Building. Trump often rails against McConnell on his social media platform Truth Social, and McConnell has said that Trump should not be the GOP's 2024 presidential nominee.
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