U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) meets with reporters following the weekly Senate caucus luncheons on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., September 24, 2024. REUTERS/Piroschka van de Wouw
"Missing" fliers are popping up around Washington, D.C., but instead of a missing pet, it's a city-wide search for former Senate Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).
The fliers that have been taped to lampposts and other places around Capitol Hill show the first photo of McConnell in the hospital while he's wearing a red-and-white checkered shirt.
The posters read: "Sen. Mitch McConnell 84 years old | 5'9" feet tall | Turtle-like. Last seen: June 11, 2026. Known for: Blocking something in the Senate. Distinguishing Features: Tortoise-like appearance."
At the bottom, the posters are branded with the "Save America Movement," an anti-Donald Trump political organization and political action committee co-founded by ex-Republicans like Steve Schmidt and executive director Mary Corcoran, both of whom left the GOP in the Trump era of the GOP.
“We put those flyers up because this has gotten absurd,” wrote a spokesperson for SAM, in a Substack post, the Daily Beast cited. “For more than a month now, the senior senator from Kentucky has not cast a vote, has not appeared for the work of the chamber, and has not, in any provable or functional sense, represented the four and a half million people who sent him there.”
A local Kentucky reporter told CNN this week that he believes McConnell is messing with people because he's "cranky."
They explained in the Substack that there's another larger question about there being no clear end date to McConnell's missing-in-action.
"With all due respect, this is not a private health matter," said the post. "There is a public office, of which there are only 100 in the entire nation, sitting empty while the Senate does some of the most consequential business in a generation."
In another proof-of-life photo released this week, McConnell also released a statement saying he's not ready to return to work yet. There's a deadline of Aug. 3 for a special election if McConnell were to pass away. Conspiracy theorists believe that he's already gone and it's part of a plot by the GOP to stop a special election where a Democrat could possibly win. Whether or not that's true, McConnell's absence is causing problems for the GOP.
There is currently a razor-thin majority in the U.S. Senate between the two parties and two Republicans lost their primary elections to pro-Trump challengers. They, along with a retiring senator, give an opening for those lawmakers to vote the way they want, rather than feeling pressure from the GOP or the president. McConnell's absence only adds to the narrow majority.
At the same time, McConnell serves on the critical Senate Appropriations Committee, which needs to pass budget bills. The 2027 fiscal budget bill, for example, is frozen over deadlocks and McConnell could break the tie.
One of the fliers was put on a post across from Georgetown University Hospital, where McConnell is reportedly working on physical rehabilitation.
Missing person poster for Mitch McConnell outside the Senate. "Please keep any information to yourself. He would."
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— Save America Movement (@saveamericamvmt.bsky.social) July 29, 2026 at 11:27 AM