Republican Sen. Thom Tillis offered a ridiculous excuse for Sen. Mitch McConnell after he vanished from the Senate for three months.
The North Carolina senator was confronted on Wednesday about his close relationship with the frail 84-year-old Kentucky Republican and whether he should have stepped down amid his health crisis.
But Tillis, who has blasted the Trump administration ahead of his retirement from the Senate, dismissed McConnell’s three-month absence by pointing at another person: Joe Biden.
His McConnell defense came during an appearance on MS NOW, as part of his promotional tour for his new book.
After the former Senate majority leader was absent from Capitol Hill for three months with almost no updates on his health, he dramatically returned to the Senate in mid-September, wheeled around by his aides in a wheelchair.
But he remains largely out of public view. When he is spotted being wheeled about the U.S. Capitol and outside his D.C. home, he has remained quiet, instead smiling and giving a thumbs-up or peace sign when asked any questions.
“Why wouldn’t his constituents be better served if Mitch McConnell stepped down and let someone else serve out these waining few months of his term?” MS NOW anchor Peter Alexander asked Tillis, 66.
“I think it’s the same question people ask of Biden,” Tillis responded.
“Understood, but Biden, he is no longer the president,” Alexander pointed out. “Mitch McConnell still serves.”
“Why not lead by example then?” the anchor pressed. “You can say, ‘You know what, you were right, Biden should have. I think McConnell should have too.’”
“Guess what? We’re following the bad advice of people who masked the fact that President Biden was not prepared to serve a second term,” Tillis responded.
While questions about the former president’s health raised serious questions in the final months of his term, and the fallout from his abysmal debate performance forced him out of the 2024 presidential race, Biden did not vanish from public view for more than 90 days.
Tillis did not respond directly when grilled on whether he would tell McConnell he should step down as someone close to the ailing senator.
“Mitch McConnell is retiring this year,” Tillis said.
“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. His body’s failing him because he’s had a lifelong struggle with polio,” he added.
Tillis repeated his claim that he met with McConnell a couple of weeks ago and asked him how he was doing.
“He spent probably less than 30 seconds talking about that, and he 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?’ Does that sound like a man who’s not prepared to actually finish out his term?” Tillis said forcefully.
While Republicans have repeatedly claimed they’ve had conversations with McConnell, he has not done a single interview or taken any questions from the press since his disappearance June 14.
“The flip side of it was we had people rationalizing, ‘No, nothing to see here; President Biden’s fine. Whoopsie, we’re going to have a different president,’” Tillis argued about Biden.
