Massie says McConnell’s calls with Republicans should be public

House Massie says McConnell’s calls with Republicans should be public Comments: by Tara Suter - 07/14/26 10:36 AM ET Comments: Link copied by Tara Suter - 07/14/26 10:36 AM ET Comments: Link copied

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Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) pressed for Sen. Mitch McConnell’s (R-Ky.) calls with other Republicans to be made public, as the GOP senator from Kentucky faces questions around his health.

When asked by journalist Pablo Manríquez about a photo recently released of McConnell, Massie joked that he “had a 20-minute conversation, nearly 20 minutes with Sen. McConnell.”

“And he said we should stop spying on Americans, quit bankrupting the country, and stop starting these new wars. And he expressed, you know, his sadness that I lost my primary. And — but it appears that a lot of people had [these] 20-minute conversations,” Massie added, in a clip posted to the social platform X on Monday.

“Everybody’s having 20-minute conversations with McConnell all of a sudden,” Manríquez replied.

“We just need to start having them publicly,” Massie said.

On Sunday, McConnell, 84, said he would not go back to the Capitol for votes “quite yet” as lawmakers prepped to come back from recess.

The release featured a photo of McConnell with a copy of The Washington Post in hand while seated on a hospital chair next to his wife. He has been hospitalized and absent from the upper chamber for multiple weeks after a medical emergency at his Washington, D.C., home in mid-June, and he has not cast a vote since June 11.

“As much as it frustrates me, this process takes time. And on the advice of my doctors, I won’t be able to return to the Senate floor to vote quite yet. But rest assured that, in the meantime, I’m not taking a break from the Senate business that matters to you,” McConnell said in a Sunday statement.

Earlier this month, conservative pundit Scott Jennings said in a post on X that he had talked “to my old friend Mitch McConnell this morning, the senior Senator from Kentucky.”

“He’s still recovering in the hospital. We talked for just shy of 20 minutes … about IRAN, UKRAINE, the unfolding situation in MAINE, my visit to the [Theodore Roosevelt] Presidential Library, and even a little bit of Senate history. I told him we want to see him back at work as soon as possible,” Jennings added.

A spokesperson for Senate Republican Whip John Barrasso (Wyo.) said last week that McConnell and Barrasso “had a lengthy conversation” for “roughly 20 minutes.”

“They caught up about the latest news impacting Senate races, the Graham Platner scandal, and the recent Supreme Court ruling on coordinated spending limits,” the spokesperson added.

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