Questions swirl after Louisiana Republican Senator John Kennedy appeared to freeze up mid-sentence during a Fox Business interview.
The 73-year-old appeared on “Kudlow” Tuesday night when he began stuttering and froze while responding to host Larry Kudlow. Some social media users have blamed his age and speculated that he was having a Mitch McConnell-esque freezing spell.
In a statement to The Independent, the senator said there was a “malfunction in his earpiece” that caused him to suddenly stop.
The clip, which aired Tuesday, captures Kennedy starting to respond to Kudlow, before trailing off, and then abruptly stopping altogether: “I’m sure Jesus loves them, but everybody else thinks…everybody else…” The senator then stared off to the side with his mouth still open for seven seconds.
As the septuagenarian was at a standstill, the network cut away. Kudlow apologized for what appeared to be “technical problems” that the show had also experienced with Senator Rand Paul earlier in the day.
Some social media users used the incident to call for term limits.
“Senator John Kennedy just pulled a McConnell,” one X user remarked.
Another wondered: “73 year old Senator John Kennedy freezes mid-sentence on national TV. Is it time for term limits?”
Yet another said: “Sen. John Kennedy’s freeze on live TV is a stark reminder of the urgent need for term limits and younger, more dynamic leadership to address critical issues like immigration reform effectively.”
Another still called it “jarring” and noted that Kennedy froze up while repeating a line he’s used many times before: “Jesus loves him, but everyone else thinks he’s an idiot.”
Kennedy maintained that he experienced a glitch with his earpiece during the interview. “Yesterday, during my interview with Larry Kudlow on Fox Business, there was a malfunction in my earpiece. I heard a loud screeching noise with a lot of static. It sounded like a 747 taking off,” he told The Independent in a statement. “The same thing happened with Rand Paul, who was interviewed before me. I stopped talking until the interference cleared up, and thought we were off the air. Once I could hear Kudlow, I started talking again.”
The moment resembles Kentucky Republican Senator Mitch McConnell’s freezing spells in 2023.
In one incident, a reporter asked McConnell, then the 81-year-old Senate minority leader, about his thoughts about running for re-election in three years. The Kentucky Senator asked the reporter to repeat the question before freezing up and staring off into the distance. One of his aides then joined him at the podium and asked directly if he had heard the question. Still not responsive, the aide said they would “need a minute.”
McConnell’s spokesperson later said he felt “momentarily lightheaded and paused during his press conference.”
Just weeks earlier, a similar scene transpired, with McConnell freezing for 20 seconds when fielding questions.
The incidents sparked “alarm” among his Congressional colleagues and renewed calls for term limits.
At the time, then-Rep. Dean Phillips, a Minnesota Democrat, said it’s “time for term limits” in a social media post. “For goodness sake, the family, friends, and staff of Senators Feinstein and McConnell are doing them and our country a tremendous disservice. It’s time for term limits for Congress and the Supreme Court, and some basic human decency,” he wrote on X in August 2023.
In February, McConnell said he will not seek re-election at the end of his term.
Similar concerns around age arose when Dianne Feinstein missed 10 weeks of work at age 89. In May 2023, the California Democrat, then longest-serving woman in the Senate, had been recovering from shingles. As some of her colleagues called for Feinstein to resign, Iowa Republican Senator Chuck Grassley, who was also 89, told The Independent at the time: “That’s very anti-woman, it’s very anti-aging and they should just let her leave her alone.”
The 2024 presidential race also resurfaced age-old questions about whether an upper age limit should exist. Joe Biden and Donald Trump were the two oldest candidates to ever run for a major party.
Biden mumbled and stumbled through his first debate performance last summer, shocking the world. Since then, a book by CNN host Jake Tapper and Axios journalist Alex Thompson has gone so far as to claim the “cover-up” of Biden’s cognitive decline was worse than Watergate.
President Donald Trump even ordered an investigation into “who ran the United States while President Biden was in office.” Meanwhile, some have questioned Trump’s mental fitness, citing his rambling speeches.
