McConnell’s Aide Has To Scream Reporter’s Question Into His Ear: ‘My Hearing Is Not What It Used To Be’

An absurd scene unfolded on Tuesday as an aide to Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) leaned over and shouted a question into his ear after he failed to hear what a reporter had asked him.

“My hearing is not what it used to be,” shrugged the 83-year-old lawmaker before the female aide reminded him to talk about tariffs.

“Oh yes. I’m not a fan of tariffs,” exclaimed McConnell, offering up another rebuke of President Donald Trump’s ongoing trade war with China, Mexico, Canada, and other nations. “Um, I hope it works!”

Since announcing he would retire when his term expires in 2027, the former majority leader has become easy fodder for President Trump and his MAGA base, both of whom revile Washington, D.C., business-as-usual characters in both parties. McConnell has served in the Senate since 1985 and, in 2018, became the longest-serving party leader in the body’s history.

His ailing health has been the subject of palace intrigue about whether McConnell would survive, or at least stay lucid, until the end of his seventh six-year term. In 2023, he took a nasty spill on the stairs of the city’s Waldorf Astoria Hotel and underwent extensive physical therapy.

On several occasions, McConnell has frozen up while speaking in public, forcing aides to scramble and shut down his public appearances while they whisked him away. The incidents have caught the attention of Kentucky residents who jeered him with calls to resign before he announced he would not seek reelection.

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In his place rose Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD), a pupil of McConnell’s who has largely won plaudits from the caucus’s more conservative corners. He shuttled through nearly all of President Trump’s cabinet nominees and recently outmaneuvered Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) — himself an elderly lawmaker facing intra-party calls for his removal — to pass a favorable extension of government funding without any concessions to Democrats.

Despite falling out of favor with today’s GOP base, McConnell has left an indelible impression on the country over nearly five decades in office. His fingerprints are on six of the nine sitting U.S. Supreme Court justices, and a majority of judges in the U.S. Courts of Appeal are Republican-appointed.

“There’s no question that he is single-handedly responsible for the constitution of the Supreme Court right now,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, told Roll Call last month. “I don’t think you could overstate just what an impact he has as an individual. More than anybody who has walked around D.C. over the last 10 years that I’ve been here.”