Mitch McConnell’s wife has raised fresh questions after sharing, deleting, and then resharing a bizarre post as the Kentucky senator has returned to public view.
Elaine Chao, 73, had been off the grid as her ailing husband suddenly reemerged in the nation’s capital this week after falling off the face of the earth for 92 days.
She was nowhere to be seen as McConnell, 84, was wheeled out of his house on Monday, and she did not address her husband’s three-month absence from public appearances or his unexplained medical ailment, either on social media or in response to inquiries from the Daily Beast.
But on Wednesday, Chao shared a post on X that ignored her husband altogether—only to delete it minutes later.
“Celebrating opening night at Ford’s Theatre of ‘Come From Away,’ the story of 7,000 grounded, stranded airline passengers in the small town of Gander, Newfoundland, following the attacks of 9/11,” wrote Chao, who sits on the commemorative committee underwriting the production of Come From Away, a musical that opens in the D.C. theater on Wednesday evening. Chao served as Labor Secretary under President George W Bush and as Secretary of Transportation in Donald Trump’s first presidential administration.
She linked to a New York Times article titled, “The Most Enduring Piece of 9/11 Art? A Musical Set in Canada,” and added, “Don’t miss this wonderful tale of kindness, compassion and hope. @wecomefromaway #NeverForget #911Rememberance #ComeFromAway.”
Chao’s post appeared to indicate that she was in Ford’s Theatre, which is best-known as the site of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination in 1865 and is about a 10-minute drive from McConnell’s townhouse in the Capitol Hill neighborhood.
The post vanished just minutes after she shared it, but an identical version reappeared on her X account an hour and a half later.
Chao did not immediately respond to the Daily Beast’s questions when contacted at the email address listed on her website.
Before Wednesday, Chao’s most recent post came on Saturday, when she praised her own work as labor secretary in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.
Chao has addressed McConnell’s three-month vanishing act only once, after it emerged that she was in China when her husband was hospitalized on June 14, and remained there for at least another three days. Emergency responders had been dispatched to McConnell’s home for a reported cardiac arrest and had given him CPR.
At the time, her spokesperson told the Daily Beast that McConnell’s condition “did not warrant an immediate return to the U.S.”
Chao’s apparent attempt to downplay McConnell’s condition and her refusal to address what happened to her husband are even more striking given the state he has been revealed to be in since resurfacing.
The senator, who has been using a wheelchair, appears to be extremely frail and thin—more so than in the two “proof-of-life” photos his office released in July—and speaks so softly that his colleagues constantly have to lean in to hear him.
On Wednesday, McConnell returned to the Senate to advance a farm bill that had stalled in the Agriculture Committee during his absence, but he had to be instructed by his Republican colleagues to say “aye” in a jaw-dropping moment.
His hoarse “aye” vote is the only audible word from the senator captured on camera in months.
The senator and his office, led by chief of staff Terry Carmack, who makes more than $226,000 annually, have still not provided a clear medical diagnosis, any medical documentation, or a statement from his medical team, other than to say that he suffered a “bad fall.”
