th<\/sup>, 2026<\/i><\/p>\nI won\u2019t miss Lindsey Graham. It wasn\u2019t just because he became a blind, pitiful Trump supporter. It was because he assumed that role even though he knew better. In 2016, he was saying things like \u201cThere\u2019s only one way to make America great again. Tell Donald Trump to go to hell.\u201d He called Trump \u201ccrazy,\u201d \u201ca jackass,\u201d and \u201ca race-baiting, xenophobic religious bigot\u201d who \u201cshouldn\u2019t be commander-in-chief.\u201d<\/p>\n
He was right, of course. And then he pissed it all away in a cringing desire to cling to power.<\/p>\n
When the inevitable collapse of America\u2019s nasty little experiment in fascism comes, many Republicans will find themselves having to answer for their actions, and Graham would have been one of the prime examples of the perfidy, hypocrisy and viciousness of the sick converts to Trumpism. Basically, he\u2019s lucky he\u2019s dead.<\/p>\n
Of course, there\u2019s all sorts of conspiracy theories floating around, and most come from Trump\u2019s orbit, whether psychotically (Laura Loomer blaming the Russians) or from spotlight-grabbing incompetence (Kash Patel talking about a federal investigation). Occam\u2019s Razor doesn\u2019t need whetting for this one: he was a guy with a heart condition who was getting on (71 years old) and he had just taken a long flight from Kiev to New York. Air travel, because of the varying cabin pressure and oxygen levels, is an elevated risk for people with cardiac or breathing problems. That\u2019s what killed James Gandolfini and Carrie Fisher.<\/p>\n
But this is an administration and government of secrets and lies, one that has resurrected the old Cold War tradition of Kremlinology needed to unravel the paranoid psychosis of a government running on paranoia and fear. Trump himself wasted no time taking Graham\u2019s death and using it to promote one of his pet projects, and told us that immediately before his death, Graham called Trump to aver his support for the SAVE project, Trump\u2019s ploy to disenfranchise millions of American voters, and promised to help herd it through the Senate. Only Trump Toadies will believe that, of course, and I\u2019ll bet long odds there was no such phone call, and that Graham looked at the Senate, with 45 Democratic votes, 6 Republicans who were retiring and no longer needed to play up to Trump, and a Mitch McConnell gone MIA and possibly KIA, and knew the SAVE Act was dead. Graham had many faults, but stupidity wasn\u2019t one of them. Doubtless exhausted from his long trip, he wasn\u2019t going to call Trump, a man he did not respect, to spout chipper bullshit about one of Trump\u2019s more treasonous fantasies.<\/p>\n
That brings us to Mitch McConnell. Is he dead? When I first heard the rumors two weeks ago, I dismissed it as the sort of paranoid bullshit that infests the web (Cyclospora, which causes explosive diarrhea, is a plot by Big Med to scare everyone into getting vaccines, or Tallerico is a transgender vegan).<\/p>\n
But this is a government of secrets and lies, and pretending to be alive when you\u2019re actually dead in order to subvert democracy is about the most Mitch McConnell thing you can imagine. This, after all, is the same shameless manipulator who refused to entertain a supreme court nomination because it was less than six months until an election, but who turned around and made a supreme court nomination three years and five months later, a month before an election.<\/p>\n
You\u2019ve probably heard the more salient elements of the \u201cMitch is dead\u201d story. His wife, Elaine Chao, was traveling in China for a long-planned sortie when her husband had a heart attack on June 14, 2026. She returned to the US on July 7. Her spokesperson said, \u201cThe Senator’s health did not warrant an immediate return to the US.\u201d<\/p>\n
OK, so maybe she isn\u2019t the real dutiful and caring sort. Or maybe it was just indigestion, and they\u2019ve been holding him incommunicado in the ICU until they\u2019re sure the Pepto-Bismol has kicked in. No sensible wife is going to hurry all the way back for a minor four-week hospitalization for an upset tummy. After thirty-three years of marriage, a wife learns to tune out the drama.<\/p>\n
Then there\u2019s the video of Mitch being loaded onto the ambulance. Usually, when the patient is having a heart attack, there is an understandable atmosphere of urgency in getting the patient under oxygen and if possible, stabilized. These guys were doing the Meat Wagon Saunter. It\u2019s end of shift. Maybe they\u2019ll stop for a burger and beer on the way back. Oh, wait, they\u2019re professionals. Make that a burger and soda.<\/p>\n
While McConnell\u2019s staffers have been maintaining that he is alive and pursuing his duties as a US Senator, nobody from his family has spoken out, which seems odd. He has three adult children from a previous marriage, any of whom might normally be willing to say whether the old man is alive or not. The only person outside of McConnell\u2019s party apparatus willing to claim the Senator was, to his immediate knowledge, alive was CNN\u2019s Trump flag waver Scott Jennings, who claimed, \u201c[McConnell\u2019s] still recovering in the hospital. We talked for just shy of 20 minutes \u2026 about Iran, Ukraine, the unfolding situation in Maine, my visit to the TR Presidential Library, and even a little bit of Senate history…I told him we want to see him back at work as soon as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n
That story was so widely disbelieved that Jason Miciak at RawStory speculated that Jennings\u2019 whopper of a story might amount to \u2018professional suicide.\u2019 He expanded on what Jennings said of the call, quoting him as saying \u201cI wasn’t really expecting him to call this morning to be honest, so when the phone rang and I was able to talk to him, I was frankly pretty grateful. All the rumors about him being dead or brain dead or, you know… That’s obviously not true because he picked up the phone and called me.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\nFour weeks in the hospital and that was the only person McConnell has called, apparently.<\/em><\/p>\nWell, that\u2019s why America has a new cottage industry in Kremlinology. This is a paranoid, dying regime, a government of secrets and lies. Don\u2019t expect clarity, or even common sense any time soon.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dead Men Balking Secrets and lies don\u2019t create transparency or honesty Bryan Zepp Jamieson July 12th, 2026 I won\u2019t miss Lindsey Graham. It wasn\u2019t just because he became a blind, pitiful Trump supporter. It was because he assumed that role even though he knew better. In 2016, he was saying things like \u201cThere\u2019s only one … <\/p>\n
Continue reading “Dead Men Balking — Secrets and lies don\u2019t create transparency or honesty”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,2330,617,2,60,2165],"tags":[2540,2538,197,2542,2543,2545,795,2537,2536,2546,2539,2544,2541],"class_list":["post-1939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-american-psyche","category-corruption","category-history","category-humor","category-politics","category-trump-second-term","tag-cospiracy-theories","tag-deaths","tag-donald-trump","tag-elaine-chao","tag-hospitalization","tag-jason-miciak","tag-lies","tag-lindsey-graham","tag-mitch-mcconnel","tag-raw-story","tag-rumors","tag-scott-jennings","tag-secrets"],"yoast_head":"\nDead Men Balking -- Secrets and lies don\u2019t create transparency or honesty · Zepp's Commentaries<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/zeppscommentaries.online\/?p=1939\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Dead Men Balking -- Secrets and lies don\u2019t create transparency or honesty · Zepp's Commentaries\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Dead Men Balking Secrets and lies don\u2019t create transparency or honesty Bryan Zepp Jamieson July 12th, 2026 I won\u2019t miss Lindsey Graham. 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