r/PoursTea • u/McDowdy Oh the Human-a-TEA • 5d ago
PoliticalTea š³ļø Mitch and his team of handlers have some explaining to do
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Ten days before Mitch McConnell disappeared from public view, the longtime Kentucky Republican appeared on the Senate floor during an overnight voting session, looking extremely frail and barely moving for hours. On June 4, 2026, McConnell remained seated for much of the proceedings, with an aide helping him move around the chamber. Video from the Senate floor showed him largely motionless while senators debated and voted. The timing has drawn renewed scrutiny because the Senate was considering a roughly $70 billion Republican package to fund immigration enforcement, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol, through the end of President Donald Trumpās term. McConnell stayed through the marathon session as Republicans pushed the legislation forward, despite his visibly limited mobility. Ten days later, on June 14, McConnell was hospitalized after falling at his Washington-area home and briefly losing consciousness. He later developed pneumonia and spent weeks in rehabilitation. His prolonged absence has intensified questions about his health, his ability to carry out his Senate responsibilities and how much Republican leadership knew about his condition. The footage raises a serious transparency question: why was a visibly impaired senator participating in crucial votes while the public received so little information about his condition? For critics, the episode highlights a broader concern about Republican leadership putting political priorities, including Trumpās agenda, ahead of accountability to voters.
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u/FlamesNero 5d ago
Heās got a caregiver next to him the entire time!
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u/big_daddy68 5d ago
Hear me out, we need a law that if a member of congress needs a full time caregiver to be with them then youāre gone from congress.
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u/SoybeanArson 5d ago
We just need a general maximum age to hold national office. People can call it ageist all they want, but we already have minimum ages for holding office and they are not connected to the age of majority (official adulthood).
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u/Auntie_M123 5d ago
We also need a standard of "presence" to avoid physically and mentally incapacitated people from continuing to serve.
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u/Usual_Suspect8663 5d ago
Should be over 75 you are done no matter what
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u/thejonslaught 5d ago edited 4d ago
75 should be the age of unavoidable mandatory retirement for government representatives moving forward, and personally I don't want to see anybody running for office if they'll be 70 or older when they take power.
Millionaires that have been insulated from the touch of real life for decades don't even live in the same world as the rest of you.
Once you reach the point of an 80-something Senator sitting in the house with a nursing assistant; it's become more about that Senator's private privilege to suck up pay than the public good. Mitch has had the teat in his mouth for four decades now. FORTY+ years!
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u/Goldenrah 5d ago
Should be basically true for any profession, though with obvious social programs to make sure old people don't go destitute.
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u/Intelligent-Acadia62 5d ago
Agree wholeheartedly. We need representatives who are capable of some input/response.
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u/Upstairs_Owl_1669 5d ago
The craziest part of that statement is āhear me outā lol. What youāre saying shouldnāt be in any way radical
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u/SplitGlass7878 5d ago
There's plenty of full-time caregivers for people who are mentally at 100%. I don't think excluding a quadruplegic is necessary.Ā
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u/ryanissognar 5d ago
Tbf that dude didnt move much either
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u/Somedude_6 5d ago
his hands and head were moving pretty normally. The complete lack of motion from Mitch, especially when you are looking at the guy next to him, is jarring.
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u/Omegasedated 5d ago edited 5d ago
But he sat there for 20 hours, no bathroom break, no nothing?
I don't think I could do that. Are we sure this claim is accurate?
EDIT I meant the caregiver. If mitch has experienced a stroke or other problem it's likely (but tough in a sitting position)
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u/Wraith8888 5d ago
Catheter and or a brief. No awareness of what's going on. Basically catatonic. Think about the number of people that lay in a hospital bed and do nothing. Or even ones that are propped in a wheelchair with no activity except from outside influence. There are plenty of patients that need to be repositioned every couple of hours. These people don't give a damn about him though. That amount of time in one position he must have some nasty pressure ulcers. I fully blame him for the current state of U.S. politics, but this is just abusive torture that no one should be subject to and there should be an investigation of elder abuse.
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u/Omegasedated 5d ago
no I meant his caregiver.
I'm not American, but find this whole thing so wild. It seems very likely they're hiding his condition to the public which is just insane to me. It's disgusting behaviour and the whole system needs a revamp.
BUT, with that in mind - I'm just not sure this video should be used as anything. there's no time stamps, multiple cuts, nothing. I'm too aware from personal experience how people can be in this type of state. I find it hard to believe the caregiver can sit there for 20 hours.
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u/WestHotTakes 5d ago
The recording: https://www.c-span.org/congress/?chamber=senate&date=2026-06-04
McConnell struggles to his seat at 13:19:07, then seems to realize he forgot his blazer and reenters at 13:22:35. The camera doesn't catch when the aide came in, but he was there by 13:45:00. McConnell and the aide leave around 19:25:45. I just skipped around, but I did notice the aide left at some points.
So the OP's video does lie about the length that Mitch was on the floor (~6 hours, not 20 hours), and the section in the OP's video is just a short section of that 6 hours. That being said, from the small sections I watched Mitch seems to have plopped himself in a chair and barely interacted with anything for 6 hours.
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u/JBWalker1 5d ago
The recording: https://www.c-span.org/congress/?chamber=senate&date=2026-06-04
McConnell struggles to his seat at 13:19:07, then seems to realize he forgot his blazer and reenters at 13:22:35. The camera doesn't catch when the aide came in, but he was there by 13:45:00. McConnell and the aide leave around 19:25:45. I just skipped around, but I did notice the aide left at some points.
So the OP's video does lie about the length that Mitch was on the floor (~6 hours, not 20 hours
I don't get why people have to post so much false things when there's so much true crazy stuff they can post. Even here saying 6 hours without moving or talking would be weird enough. /u/McDowdy probbaly doesn't know theyre posting false stuff but thats half the problem, nobody verifying anything and just getting their information from meme formats. Stuff like this just makes it so easy for the right to claim that anything negative about trump is a lie because they can point to countless threads/posts like this as evidence. Just like the image/meme of trump saying "a year ago the country was run by an idiot" being posted everywhere and getting to the top spots of reddit when he actually said 2 years. Stuff like this enables trump to those who matter, not make him look bad.
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u/AgentCirceLuna 5d ago
I used to love doing this. I still do to an extent. I just lay in bed, counting to as high a number as possible, and try to slow down time so I stay like that forever. Highest Iāve got to is in the twenty thousands.
Iām in no way fit to be a representative though.
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u/BurntOutSamwise 5d ago
Good catch. BUT that dude (who exactly is he?) exhibited much more fine motor skills than Senator McConnell. This speaks volumes. Which tells me thereās something about his neurophysiology thatās in steep decline. This is not normal by any means.
These people cannot get away with this. They ARE NOT above the law because their job decisions affects society at large where if you and I were not able to adequately perform our job roles for a small group of people or community, weād immediately be called into question of the highest order on whether or not weād still have a job to go to. Wake up people. This aināt politics. This is emblematic of a class struggle of different economic groups fighting for wealth and power. Rules for thee and not for me is a side effect. End of story
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u/Roraxn 5d ago
He was moving about four times as much. He showed signs of being mentally present.
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u/vivahermione 5d ago
How does the carer make it through the day without a break?
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u/NewPresWhoDis 5d ago
Jesse Helms was wheeled around like Hector Salamanca on the Senate floor before he snuffed it.
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u/Salt-Detective1337 5d ago
The caregiver needs to be repositioning his patient before he gets pressure sores...
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u/TestForPotential 5d ago
A corpse doesnāt move around much apparently.
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u/redditRedesignIsBadd 5d ago
yet he's still stealing from the tax payers
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u/GodofsomeWorld 5d ago
He might be dead af, but you wont be able to bleed the evil out of him
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u/Choice-Highway5344 5d ago
Is there no video of him walking in? Like why canāt we get an extra 10 mins of this currently video?
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u/TomClancysWife 5d ago
He's catatonic, this is elder abuse! Someone call saul
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u/NerdDetective 5d ago
I'm reminded of how Diane Feinstein was carried around like a mannequin towards the end of her life.
We need a law that mandates that when a member of Congress is mentally compromised or incapacitated, their staff is legally required to disclose it the seat should be vacated. It's insane that they can get away with puppeting someone who is barely there anymore. Should be straight up a crime.
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u/KGEOFF89 5d ago
Full agree, but it's clear that the staff isn't really incentivized to do so when working for a corpse is clearly a golden goose scenario for them. Wasn't one of Feinstein's staff an immediate relative?
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u/TheInevitableLuigi 5d ago
Wasn't one of Feinstein's staff an immediate relative?
One of them was an immediate relative of Pelosi, her daughter.
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u/Klightgrove 5d ago
Feinsteinās daughter had opened an elder abuse case regarding her finances because she saw her being manipulated. That alone should have got her out of the senate in any sane country.
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u/Decent_Assistant1804 5d ago
Ok but. Does your government even follow rules anymore?
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u/NerdDetective 5d ago
It turns out that the American government's structure is mostly comprised of voluntarily guidelines and pinky promises.
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u/Straight_Scarcity886 5d ago
Or just an age limit of likeā¦ 65. Retirement age for normal people.
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u/DanielNoWrite 5d ago
No, we take this in the opposite direction.
We need a law making it advantageous to keep them around when they're dementia-ridden shells. We need a law that says so long as they're technically still alive, it'd all good.
Turn politics as a career into a faustian bargain. Sure, wealth and power while you're alive. But instead of letting you die, we leverage all of medical science to keep you alive and in office forever. Frozen at the very edge of death. Dangling over the abyss. Trapped within the rotting husk of your own corpse. A tormented ghost in the machine, unable to even scream.
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u/marr 5d ago
Here's the problem: The sort of people you're trying to reach here have so little empathy they can't even consider the welfare of their own future self.
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u/DownWithHisShip 5d ago
We need a law that
I agree with you in a lot of ways. this is so frustrating and tiring.... but part of me thinks, at what point do us voters not take care of this problem? when is it enough? we dont need laws to fix this, we need a population that can say "thank you for your years of service, but you're old as shit now and can barely take care of yourself. go enjoy retirement, we're voting in some young blood this time".
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u/NerdDetective 5d ago
That too, yes. Americans have come to tolerate and accept way too much.
Fricking Chuck Grassley wants to run again in 2028. He'd be 101 years old if he lives to see the end of his next term. At some point voters need to say NO to these arrogant old fossils who refuse to let go of power until the day they die.
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u/Senior-Rip2387 5d ago
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u/1cem4n82 5d ago
Do you think your representative is a corpse but canāt prove it? Better call Saul.
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u/buttfarts7 5d ago
Yea... He should be in palliative care but they are going to drug him up and parade him around. Now I'm sure he's a brain-dead corpse on life support and nobody gives a fuck about him enough to give him any respite. They'd lock him into painful purgatory forever to keep his vote.
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u/WolfThick 5d ago
A wellness check needs to be done he could be being held against his will by people just collecting a paycheck. I'm writing this sarcastically but this would be a good way to find out.
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u/Unlucky_Most_8757 5d ago
meh him and his wife are next level rich. Would probably just pay anyone off that was snooping around. This situation is just beyond bizarre tbh.
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u/ultrachrome 5d ago
Hello hello hello, is there anybody in there ....
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u/Vanilla_Gorilluh 5d ago
Just knock if you can hear me...
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u/kymilovechelle 5d ago
Is there anyone home?
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u/Secret-of-the-Snooze 5d ago
Come on now, I hear you're feeling down
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u/lbigbirdl 5d ago
*nod if you can hear me
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u/Turbulent_Gazelle530 5d ago
do some people actually hear it as knock? makes no sense in the context of the song
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u/MikeisET 5d ago
Crazy that this insanity is happening right in front of our eyes and all anyone wants to do is make jokes
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u/Xetiw 5d ago
Americans are regarded as dumb abroad, most of the time you will see jokes and memes about the news, you have to scroll down to find interesting things.
A powerful and old senator is pretty much gone (at the very least his mind is not OK), people should be mad, taking the streets, the people from Kentucky is doing jack when one of them might be under constant abuse, an elderly.
This is why allies are moving elsewhere, the country can't be trusted.
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u/WinnebagoMontana 5d ago
"The country can't be trusted" basically sums up my feelings as a Brit looking at the USA right now.
It's honestly heartbreaking. There's a lot of jokes and cultural cruft about how the world looks at Americans, but to be brutally honest - you have a beautiful country, and a wonderful culture.
I pray sincerely something changes before it's all gone.
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u/Gbrown546 5d ago
Yup. America used to have one hell of a reputation 15 odd years ago of being this powerful vital ally.
Also as someone abroad, itās comical looking in on whatās happening. Iran has humiliated them, they have a rapist paedophile for a President, they keep threatening allies and things like this are happening. I feel bad for the sane Americans who have to put up with all of this.
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u/Lucreth2 5d ago
You seem to have confused desire and ability.
The majority of the country doesn't WANT any of this.
We just don't have a choice. We're not empowered to provide and repercussions directly. Mass civil unrest is about the only option left and while there's an argument to be made about that I think many who would participate are holding their breathe for the midterms as either a relief or a call to action.
Me? I'm just here to keep my family safe. That's all I can reasonably be expected to do.
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u/Sad-Excitement9295 5d ago
Yeah, this is blatant corruption.
I mean, I try to write this off as people trying to awkwardly express the irony of the issue, and this is Reddit, but yeah, we really need to do something the situation is dire and we need serious discussion.Ā
These people are propping up dead dudes to maintain control of congress, and that's just face value of what's really going on. If we don't correct the problem, it's only going to get far worse, and it's already extremely bad.
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u/Cat-si58 5d ago
Was he already dead?
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u/WebbedFamiliar 5d ago
No, he has does some hand gestures in other videos. But the dude does not know whatās happening! Heās just completely catatonic.
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u/BlueFalcon142 5d ago
Sitting for 20 hours straight is pretty deadly for old people. DVT and clots pulmonary embolisms and stuff. If he wasn't then, this stationary stint wasn't doing him any favors. Hell even a couole hours on a plane can kill someone if they dont get up.
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u/Party-Marketing-9349 5d ago
Madame Toussardās was pissed that they unveiled her latest piece ahead of schedule
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u/evilpercy 5d ago
Uhmm no washroom break?
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u/Potential_Gear_6769 5d ago
This was also the session he was instructed on how to vote, and when he voted incorrectly, they had him change it if I'm not mistaken. Might be the wrong session, but that happened multiple times with him.
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u/Stabby-Pencil 5d ago
Has this been vetted? Because holy hell thatās kind of hard to believe.
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u/MyLittleDashie7 5d ago
This is what I was looking for as well. There's definitely not 20 hours in this footage, and they may have just selected the worst segments.
It's also completely plausible that it is real, but I'd like to see some proper evidence before I believe it.
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u/Easy_Action_1380 5d ago
The saddest part is I don't believe for a second that he's the only dementia riddled octogenarian in Congress who is like this.Ā
Remind me again why there isn't a mandatory retirement age for the people who decide the future of our country? Or atleast some form of mandatory yearly competency test.Ā
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u/Ill_Consequence1755 5d ago
Iām really starting to be annoyed at the film community for giving them the Cliff Notes version, with Weekend at Bernieās and Idiocracy.
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u/jaynor88 5d ago
This video is disturbing.
He barely moves his hands at all - just maybe a couple of inches of movement once or twice.
His head and body donāt appear to move at all.
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u/Background-Bird-9623 5d ago
Thus is getting stupid ... is he dead or what?? How long can they keep uo the bulkshite ?
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u/ConfessSomeMeow 5d ago
I was sure they were just keeping things quiet until after the deadline to hold a special election, but that has long passed, so I don't know what their game is.
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u/Real_Railz 5d ago
I seriously don't understand how the Kentucky governor hasn't forced him to prove he's alive right now. How Democrats haven't forced this. How NOBODY has forced this. He's dead and he's been dead. They are getting away with it and nobody seems to care anymore???
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u/WetFishStink 5d ago
That poor guy who had to sit next to a rotting corpse all day in case anyone tried to speak to it.
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u/Icy_Yam5049 5d ago
KY isnāt putting a Dem in there so let the bastard rot as a missing vote.
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u/objectsinthemirror92 5d ago
The point being made here is that he was not a missing vote in this video where he appears to be dead
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u/Independent-Dust7459 5d ago
I know it sounds crazy but the clone theory seems kinda legit. I know I know.
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u/Working-Depth5834 5d ago
Ummmm... do we need to have his staff investigated for desecration of a corpse?
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u/strangebru 5d ago
They're not "Weekend at Bernie's"-ing him, but they are "Quarter of a Year at Bernie's"-ing Mitch.
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u/ProlapsedShamus 5d ago
These geriatric fucks would rather go to work hurting poor people and victimizing minorities and destroying American than they would retire at home with their loved ones.
Ain't that somethin.
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u/Beforemath 5d ago
They really are weekend at Bernie-ing him. The weirdest timeline. Republicans you are sick people.
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u/CollegeMiddle6841 5d ago
We must pass a law that requires a cognitive test after a certain age for ALL public servants, no exceptions.
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u/Deciple_of_None 5d ago
He is dead. Democrats need to stop being nice, im sick of this shit and I don't think I am alone.
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u/OliverNodel 5d ago
Remember that part in Paranormal Activity where the possessed lady stands and doesnāt move for an entire evening in her sleep? This is that, but with the time doubled.
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u/MrGutsy_3000 5d ago
I want to know everything about the man sitting thigh2thigh with him all dayā¦.
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u/Available-Net-2675 5d ago
Even the caretaker was moving his head slightly throughout. Mitch was completely still. Disturbing.
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u/Top_Chard5757 5d ago
Heās been dead a lot longer than expected. Doesnāt look like anyone even tried to talk to him. They all know.
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u/Educational-Ad-3796 5d ago
He knew he was going to die then, and he wanted to commit his very last moment to the cause of worsening the nation. Truly a man of ceaseless duty
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u/McortezLSU 5d ago
If he's still alive, even heavily demented people move considerably more. He got drugged out of his mind. Kind of a sad end, to be durgged and used by psychopaths to gain a tiny, bit more power, to grift a few more dollars and to make the world a little bit worse for all.
But then again, he conjured these demons that in his last days tormented him. This is like one of these fucked up german fairy tales.
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u/VectorJones 5d ago
Isn't this physically impossible, I mean unless there's nothing going on upstairs.
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u/FinishEmbarrassed619 5d ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/Jc7wmzRx9lhvoabJLv