CNN anchors Brianna Keilar and Boris Sanchez were dumbstruck when President Donald Trump questioned whether Sen. Mitch McConnell ever really had polio during an Oval Office press gaggle Thursday.
Keilar introduced fact-checker Daniel Dale, asking, “Where would you like to start?”
“Well, Mitch McConnell had polio,” Dale stated. “I’ve never heard anyone question that until President Trump did today. Like, is that a conspiracy theory that even existed before today? I don’t know. That was something,” Dale said.
“Before you go on, Daniel, let’s provide some context for our viewers,” Boris Sanchez said, rolling tape of Trump’s bizarre assertion as he talked about McConnell voting against Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s nomination for Health and Human Services secretary. Thursday’s vote, in which Kennedy was confirmed, marked the third time McConnell voted against a Trump nominee.
“I was the one that got him to drop out of the leadership position,” Trump said of McConnell. “So, he can’t love me. But he’s not voting against Bobby; he’s voting against me. But that’s all right. He endorsed me. You know that Mitch endorsed me, right? Do you think that was easy?”
CNN correspondent Kaitlyn Collins interjected, “He had polio, obviously,” alluding to the fact that McConnell spoke out against RFK Jr. due to his anti-vaccine stance.
“I don’t know anything about ‘he had polio.’ He had polio,” Trump repeated.
“Are you doubting that he had polio?” Collins asked.
“I have no idea if he had polio. All I can tell you about him is that he shouldn’t have been leader. He knows that. He voted against Bobby. He votes against almost everything now. He’s a, you know, very bitter guy.”
When Keilar came back on screen, she confirmed that Trump did, in fact, appear to “cast doubts” on whether McConnell ever had polio.
“He did!” she exclaimed about the validity of McConnell’s illness, before tossing back to Dale, who concluded, “Yeah, he did. He talked about it for decades.”
