Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell suffered a concussion after a fall and is being treated at a Washington-area hospital, his office said Thursday.
(Bloomberg) — Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell suffered a concussion after a fall and is being treated at a Washington-area hospital, his office said Thursday.
In a statement, his communications director, David Popp, said the senator, who turned 81 last month, would remain in the hospital for “a few days of observation and treatment” after tripping at a dinner event. Popp did not name the hospital.
“The Leader is grateful to the medical professionals for their care and to his colleagues for their warm wishes,” he said.
John Thune, the Senate’s No. 2 Republican, said earlier the fall happened at an event for the Senate Leadership Fund, a political action committee run by McConnell’s allies.
Thune was not present when McConnell fell, but said he was there when McConnell spoke to attendees at a reception earlier in the evening and he was in good spirits at the time.
“We don’t know much at this point,” Thune told reporters. “I haven’t spoken to him.”
Vito Maggiolo, a spokesman for the District of Columbia Fire and Emergency Medical Services said that an ambulance was dispatched to the Waldorf Astoria Hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue at 9:17 p.m. on a report that someone had been injured in a fall.
He said the injured person had been taken to an area hospital, but declined further comment.
McConnell was first elected to the Senate in 1984. He is the longest serving party leader in Senate history. Before his political career, he worked on Capitol Hill and was an assistant attorney general in the Ford administration.
In a Senate career extending more than three decades, McConnell rose to become a leading appropriator, chair of Senate Republicans’ campaign committee and, eventually, Republican leader, beginning in 2007. He was majority leader from 2015 until 2021.
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