US Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is being treated for a concussion and is expected to remain hospitalized for the next several days, a Thursday statement from the politician's office has confirmed.
"Leader McConnell tripped at a dinner event Wednesday evening and has been admitted to the hospital and is being treated for a concussion," McConnell's Communications Director David Popp said in a release, adding that McConnell "is grateful to the medical professionals for their care and to his colleagues for their warm wishes."
Popp detailed that the 81-year-old McConnell will remain in the hospital for observation and appropriate treatment. It wasn't immediately clear which hospital he was taken to for care.
McConnell’s colleagues earlier told US media they don't know much about the Kentucky lawmaker's current condition.
"We just really don’t know much at this point," said Sen. John Thune, who attended a pre-dinner reception for the Senate Leadership Fund but left the event before the mishap took place. "Evidently this happened later in the evening, and I was at a different dinner by then."
McConnell, who was elected to the Senate for the seventh time since his first election in 1984, served as Senate majority leader until early 2021 - when control of the upper chamber flipped to the Democrats. He also set the record for longest tenure as party leader in the US Senate in January 2023, as he has led Republicans in that chamber for 16 years, since 2007.
In August 2019, McConnell tripped on the patio of his Kentucky home and broke his shoulder; however, at that time, he worked from home for a while.