'Got to be kidding': Angry MAGA host pounces on GOP's McConnell cover

U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) speaks to reporters outside the Senate Chamber after he returned to Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., U.S., September 14, 2026. REUTERS/Evan Vucci

MAGA entertainer and Blaze TV podcast host Pat Gray has no sympathy whatsoever for the wagons he says Democrats circled around former president Joe Biden when Biden’s mental competence began to fade. Now he accuses Republicans of being no better.

When his mental fitness was questioned, Gray said Democrats brushed questions aside with assurances that the former president was better than ever — that is until the infamous 2024 debate between Trump and Biden, when Gray said Biden’s deterioration was undeniable before millions of viewers. This moment put egg on the face of Democrats and Biden’s handlers, and it made the party look like a legion of hucksters with something to hide.

It’s a damning burden that haunts the party to this day. But now, Gray said Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) is running the same cover for the missing Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who has remained out of the public eye ever since he was rushed to the hospital June 14 amid rumors of his death.

“I ran into Mitch. The difference between the Biden situation and the Mitch situation is, I’ve had conversations with Mitch. That man’s brain is as sharp as it ever is,” Tillis claimed in an interview on MS NOW, adding “His body’s failing him because he’s had a lifelong struggle with polio.”

“You’ve got to be kidding,” BlazeTV host Pat Gray said. “I love how these childhood diseases come back up as a convenient excuse for what’s going on now. … Like it did with Biden stuttering.”

Gray pointed out that Tillis went on to claim that he met McConnell “a couple of weeks ago” and described the aging senator’s mind as vigorous.

“… [H]e immediately jumped to, ‘What are we going to do to help Ukraine? What are we going to do to save the Senate and keep the filibuster?’” claimed Tollis. “… Does that sound like a man who’s not prepared to actually finish out his term?”

But Gray was having none of it, and he blasted Tillis and the GOP for following the old Biden script.

“Thom Tillis is doing the exact same thing Democrats did with Biden,” Gray ranted. “That’s amazing.”

"Missing" Mitch fliers popped up around Washington, D.C., taped to lampposts and other places around Capitol Hill weeks after his disappearance. And for weeks, during the more than 80 days of his absence, critics complained that the senator’s staff were making decisions on behalf of Kentucky voters, rather than an elected official.

For weeks, speculation raged that the senator was dead, and that Republicans in control of Congress were fighting to preserve their razor-thin majority by pretending McConnell lived on. Author and pollster John Zogby told the Guardian that the situation resembled the touchy state of things in fascist Spain just a few decades ago.

“This in some ways reminds me of Generalissimo Franco in the 1970s, who was reported to be unawake but still alive, and no one believed it after about six weeks, because they hadn’t figured out a transition yet in Spain,” Zogby said.

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