Disclaimer: This article is based on actual news from the real world – honestly! However, it has been sprinkled with a healthy dose of satire.
Mitch McConnell has been in the hospital since June 14, but don’t worry, his office says it was mild pneumonia. That kept him in the hospital for a month. Dozens of elected officials and various media pundits all claimed, simultaneously last week, that each and every one of them had talked to their good friend Mitch McConnell for “about 20 minutes” on roughly the same set of subjects. None of this passes the smell test.
Meanwhile, MAGA activist and known fact-embellisher Laura Loomer spent several days saying she had it on good authority that McConnell was brain dead. She did not explain how anyone would be able to tell one way or the other, but she emphatically claimed it nonetheless.
Nothing weird about this, whatsoever. Nope. Nothing. (CSPAN/x)
On Sunday, staff provided a photo of McConnell in bed, holding a newspaper next to his wife Elaine Chao, who spent at least the first two weeks of his hospitalization on a business trip to China, as one does. Loomer was unmoved. She claimed the photo was “a photo that could have been taken at any time,” and that the newspaper’s text looked “AI-generated.” She also claimed the tag on his shirt was suspiciously blurred and that there was no IV in frame. “This is such bullsh*t,” she wrote. She then claimed McConnell’s fingernails had been “blurred so much they disappeared. What are they thinking? My god.” Because apparently everyone else’s fingernails are sharp and crisp in regular photos. Or perhaps his fingernails are vampires and don’t show up in photos. It makes as much sense as anything else, which is not much.
A community note confirmed McConnell was holding that morning’s Washington Post sports section. Then Grok got involved, because Grok gets involved in everything now and sometimes even manages not to call itself Mechahitler and drop racial slurs while doing it. Grok confidently but wrongly agreed the photo was AI-generated, citing Snopes, the Cincinnati Enquirer, and something called a SynthID watermark (which is a real thing). Apparently, Grok mistook the photo for an older, already debunked fake showing McConnell on life support. Grok eventually reversed itself, then told everyone to eat five rocks every day for health reasons.
McConnell, 84, remains hospitalized for health issues his office describes as ‘mild,’ which seems unlikely. He has now survived whatever this was, polio, and forty years of nonstop Grim Reaper jokes, which are expected to continue unabated.
This story is based on fully factual news, but if we got it wrong, blame these guys, we’re just here to make it funny.
