Mitch McConnell ‘Clearly Had Some Kind of Neurological Event’ at Podium, Concludes CNN’s Sanjay Gupta: ‘He Needs to Get Checked Out’

CNN chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta warned that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) “clearly had some kind of neurological event” during his freezing incident on Wednesday and that he should be “checked out” by doctors as soon as possible.

Following the incident — which saw McConnell frozen and speechless for more than 30 seconds, before he was aided away from the podium — Gupta told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, “It was definitely concerning to watch. I mean, I think his doctors will be looking at that tape and sort of, you know, trying to figure out what happened there. He needs to get checked out, I think that’s really the bottom line.”

Noting that McConnell had claimed he was fine less than 30 minutes after the incident, Gupta said:

He seemed to have recovered from it, but something clearly happened. It could be something more simple: dehydration, a little infection, medication interaction, but I think given his history, that fall back in March, his age, you’ve got to make sure you’re also addressing and ruling out other things. A mini stroke, a mini seizure, things like that. A mini seizure could have been related even to that fall that he had back in March, so, again, common things common, but you’ve got to rule out the bad things as well.

Gupta went on to speculate that McConnell could have suffered a mini stroke and that he should be seen by a doctor as soon as possible:

I really think he needs to be seen. I mean, you know, one thing about things like a TIA, which is a transient ischemic attack, also known as a mini stroke, is that untreated it could lead to more mini strokes and even lead to a more significant stroke. The key is to actually get that checked out in time. If there’s one thing that people know about strokes, it’s that time is really important. Again, this is speculative, but he clearly had some sort of neurological event there. I think, again, that video is something that his doctors would probably be examining as well.

Watch above via CNN.

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