Scott Jennings Shamed to His Face Over Blatant McConnell Double Standard

Scott Jennings was confronted on air for excusing the secrecy around Mitch McConnell’s health despite previously demanding transparency from the Biden administration over a top official’s medical issues.

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Jennings claimed he spoke to McConnell at length on Tuesday, making him one of the few people to have heard directly from the 84-year-old Kentucky senator since he was found unconscious at his home and hospitalized on June 14.

Jennings, who once served as an aide to McConnell and says he’s known the senator since he was 16, claimed that despite the phone call, he knew nothing more about the senator’s condition than the scant details his team had publicly released.

“It was a personal, private call, but I didn‘t probe him too deeply for his medical records,” he said.

“Would you encourage him or anyone in his position to be more transparent with his voters about his health than he’s been so far?” Hunt asked.

Jennings pushed back by chalking McConnell’s silence up to “men of that age” being “a little private.”

“That’s a fair thing to say, but, on the other hand, umm, you know, my, my impression of men of the, of that age is that they‘re a little private when it comes to their health,” the MAGA pundit said, adding, “Now, he’s in public office, and that carries a different responsibility.”

That’s when Sabrina Singh, who served as deputy Pentagon press secretary under the Biden administration, called out Jennings’s hypocrisy, reminding him that he had repeatedly complained of secrecy surrounding then-Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s hospitalizations in 2023 and 2024.

“Can I just jump in here because we have been on multiple shows together where you have brought up Secretary Austin’s hospitalization when I was in the administration… and you were incredibly critical of him not being transparent with the American people and the public about his condition,” Singh said.

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She continued, “And I find it just so interesting that you’re not being critical of a sitting senator who represents the state of Kentucky, not being transparent with his constituents.”

“We are at almost a month and we have no idea why Mitch McConnell has been hospitalized, and you’re not being critical—you’re not concerned by that?” she asked.

Jennings, who hails from Kentucky himself, responded by saying that McConnell is “not the head of the United States Armed Forces who apparently went AWOL while he was secretary of defense.”

“There is no difference,” Singh said. “They are elected to public office.”

Singh noted that Austin later disclosed a prostate cancer diagnosis. The then-defense secretary also apologized for keeping his hospitalizations secret, saying he had wanted to keep his health matters private.

After McConnell’s office spent weeks dodging inquiries from the press about his health, an emergency personnel call revealed last week that the octogenarian had received CPR following an apparent heart attack on June 14.

His team then said that he has been recovering at a hospital, but there have been almost no updates since. McConnell’s staff is led by his longtime, camera-shy aide Terry Carmack, who is on track to earn more than $226,000 this year.

His office provided a statement on July 2 that he “is working closely with his staff,” but did not elaborate. His Communications Director Stephanie Penn told the Daily Beast on Monday that they would “be sure to keep you updated.”