MAGA Host Melts Down at Scott Jennings Over McConnell Claim

Newsmax host Rob Finnerty opened his show by mocking a MAGA rival’s claim that he had a lengthy conversation with Sen. Mitch McConnell.

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The 84-year-old Kentucky senator has been hospitalized since suffering an apparent heart attack at his home in D.C. on June 14.

“I told him we want to see him back at work as soon as possible,” Jennings wrote on X.

Given Jennings’ history with McConnell, some were skeptical about his claim, including Finnerty, who found the timing of the call suspicious.

“Nobody heard from Mitch McConnell for three weeks, and today, you talked to him about Iran and the history of the vice presidency and the history of the Senate? What?” Finnerty said as he opened his show on Tuesday night.

“I’m sorry, I don’t buy that at all,” he added. He also called Jennings’ refusal to discuss McConnell’s condition “bizarre,” noting that the CNN pundit had “no problem” speculating about President Joe Biden’s health for four years, but “suddenly he doesn’t want to comment on Mitch McConnell’s health because he’s not a medical expert?”

“I don’t buy it. Something is not right. Something is going on. That was so weird,” Finnerty continued.

The 44-year-old host noted that nobody had spoken to McConnell for three weeks following his hospitalization and his aides remained tight-lipped. Then, in just one day, Jennings, as well as Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming all had lengthy phone calls with McConnell.

Finnerty also discussed Jennings’ claim with his guests later in the show—independent journalist Desirée Townsend, who first reported on the 911 call made from McConnell’s home, and Kentucky-based podcaster Andrew Cooperrider.

Townsend noted that the phone calls with McConnell came soon after McConnell’s wife, Trump’s former Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao, returned from a trip to China to be with her husband.

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“What has happened today seems like a narrative shift. They’re trying to shift the narrative that somehow he’s healthy now, we don’t need to look any further. But none of this is adding up,” Townsend said, highlighting that McConnell’s team declined to address the EMS call for three weeks.

“Now we’re expected to believe that he somehow beat the less-than-5-percent chance of recovery after 30 days after an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest event?” she added.

Cooperrider, who argued that Jennings owes his entire career to McConnell, claimed that the commentator was being used to launder the idea in the media that McConnell was healthy.

“We still haven’t seen a photo of Mitch McConnell,” Finnerty noted. “I don’t think it’s a conspiracy theory to ask for a photo of a United States senator, anything to prove this guy’s doing OK.”

Jennings’ fellow CNN panelists also took him to task for his attempts to excuse the secrecy surrounding the senator’s condition, with host Kasie Hunt asking him, “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?”

Panelist Sabrina Singh, who served as deputy Pentagon press secretary under the Biden administration, then pointed out Jennings’ hypocrisy, reminding him that he had repeatedly decried the 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.

“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.”

Jennings tried to argue that the situations were different, noting that McConnell is “not the head of the United States Armed Forces who apparently went AWOL while he was secretary of defense.”

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