2026-07-07T20:14:32.322Z / 美国有线电视新闻网（CNN）
2024年总统竞选结束后，美国社会曾就联邦官员——尤其是乔·拜登及其白宫团队——向公众隐瞒重要健康信息一事展开全国性反思。
但这种隐瞒行为并未停止。甚至可以说，情况似乎正在恶化。
越来越多知名度极高的公职人员似乎认定，选民和普通公众根本无权知晓他们长期缺勤的基本情况。而他们的幕僚也在纵容这种做法。
新泽西州共和党众议员汤姆·基恩此前因抑郁症缺勤超100天，期间未给出任何解释，直到近期才公开病因。如今，肯塔基州联邦参议员米奇·麦康奈尔同样神秘缺勤数周，引发了越来越多的质疑。
这位前参议院多数党领袖自6月14日住院以来便一直缺席参议院议事。但他的办公室多次拒绝透露其住院原因，包括周二CNN记者致电询问时亦是如此。
“麦康奈尔参议员感谢大家在他住院康复期间给予的支持，”他的办公室重申了上周首次发布的声明，“参议员病情持续好转，目前正与幕僚密切处理肯塔基州及参议院相关事务，而参议院目前处于休会期。”
除此之外，相关细节少之又少。一名独立记者曝光了6月14日麦康奈尔在华盛顿特区住所内被呼叫急救的音频，音频中提到有人失去意识。但麦康奈尔的办公室甚至未证实此次急救是否与这位曾在记者面前当众僵住、现年84岁的老人有关。
参议院多数党领袖约翰·图恩6月15日表示，他已与麦康奈尔通话，“希望他本周能返回参议院”。但三周过去了，麦康奈尔仍未现身，其办公室也未解释原因。
这一情况甚至引发了一些知名“让美国再次伟大”（MAGA）阵营人士的谴责，要求公开更多信息，另有一些人则传播阴谋论。
显然，麦康奈尔的部分同僚对此也毫不知情。周二早些时候，一名批评者质疑为何参议员们未就麦康奈尔的病情发声，犹他州共和党参议员迈克·李回应称，“因为我们对他的健康状况一无所知”。
图恩和参议院党鞭约翰·巴拉索周二分别通过发言人发表声明，称他们本周都已与这位肯塔基州参议员通了电话，进行了“实质性”且“长时间”的交谈。两人均未提及麦康奈尔的健康状况。
麦康奈尔的盟友、CNN资深政治评论员斯科特·詹宁斯周二在X平台上发文称，他当天也与麦康奈尔就多项议题进行了交谈，同样未提及对方的健康问题。
在基恩和麦康奈尔之前，佛罗里达州共和党众议员尼尔·邓恩也曾引发相关争议。
邓恩的缺勤时间不算很长，但当时有传言称他身患严重疾病。随后，特朗普在3月的一场白宫活动中表示，邓恩曾面临“绝症”，若不是总统出面协助他接受支架植入手术，他“可能撑不到6月就去世了”。
“好吧，这件事当时并未公开，”众议院议长迈克·约翰逊当时坐在特朗普身旁说道，“但确实，情况很严峻。”
邓恩承认得到了特朗普的帮助，但拒绝详细说明自己的病情。和麦康奈尔一样，他自6月中旬以来也一直缺席国会，其办公室拒绝向当地记者置评。
类似的案例还有：2024年12月我们才得知，时任得克萨斯州共和党众议员凯·格兰杰在退休前数月的缺勤，大多是在当地一家记忆障碍护理和辅助生活机构度过，她的儿子称其患有痴呆症——而格兰杰的办公室从未公开过这一情况。
在此数月之前，拜登隐瞒自己日益严重的健康问题并宣布竞选连任一事，彻底打乱了2024年总统竞选的节奏——这一情况已被CNN记者杰克·塔珀和阿克西斯新闻记者亚历克斯·汤普森在其合著的《原罪》一书中详细记录。
前第一夫人吉尔·拜登近日透露，她曾担心拜登在那场糟糕的辩论中中风，尽管她当时为丈夫进行了辩护。
在整个政治生涯中，现任总统唐纳德·特朗普一直对自己的健康状况讳莫如深：
- 他的医生经常发布夸张的信件，公然宣称他的健康状况“完美无瑕”，令人难以置信。（十年前曾撰写此类信件的一名医生表示，信件内容是特朗普口述的。）
- 他曾试图隐瞒自己使用脱发药物的事实。
- 去年，在民众注意到他腿部肿胀后，白宫才最终披露特朗普患有静脉疾病。
- 同年晚些时候，白宫在解释特朗普为何需要额外接受医学影像检查时动作异常迟缓，总统本人甚至一度表示，他都不清楚自己身体的哪个部位接受了扫描。
2023年底至2024年初，时任国防部长劳埃德·奥斯汀的不明原因缺勤——后被解释为接受前列腺癌治疗——据五角大楼监察长称，这给国家安全带来了额外风险。奥斯汀的缺勤情况甚至被隐瞒了数日，连白宫和顶级国家安全官员都不知情。
奥斯汀后来在国会作证时解释称，自己“是个相当注重隐私的人”，并表示他当时并未充分意识到需要让相关人员了解自己的健康状况。
“但我从这次经历中学到了教训，担任这类职务意味着要失去我们大多数人都享有的一些隐私，”他说，“美国民众有权知晓，他们的领导人是否面临可能影响其履职能力的健康挑战，哪怕只是暂时的。”
这恰恰点明了其中的矛盾所在。没人愿意将自己的健康信息公之于众。但担任公职意味着，能否胜任工作完全是公众的事务。毕竟，纳税人支付了公职人员的薪水，并且有权决定一个人是否配得上这份工作。
普通人无法正常履职时，通常需要向上司说明原因。而从技术层面上讲，政府官员的“上司”就是选民。
就在奥斯汀说出这番话，拜登政府处理奥斯汀不明原因缺勤引发的余波时，本届政府的最高领导人本身也在隐瞒自己的健康状况。他的做法给民主党带来了重大损失，甚至可能改写了美国历史。
但显然，这并未阻止其他人认定，自己的健康状况与公众无关。
Mitch McConnell, Joe Biden and the growing epidemic of politicians hiding health problems
2026-07-07T20:14:32.322Z / CNN
There was a national reckoning after the 2024 presidential campaign about federal officials — Joe Biden and his White House, specifically — hiding important health information from the public.
But the hiding hasn’t stopped. If anything, it appears to be getting worse.
Increasingly, some very high-profile public officials seem to have concluded that constituents and the broader public simply aren’t entitled to basic information explaining lengthy absences from their jobs. And their staffs are enabling them.
Republican Rep. Tom Kean of New Jersey recently returned to the House after spending more than 100 days away with no explanation at the time, ultimately citing depression. Now, questions are building about the also-mysterious and now-weekslong absence of GOP Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.
The former Senate majority leader has been missing from the chamber since being hospitalized on June 14. But his office has repeatedly declined to say why he was hospitalized, including when reached by CNN on Tuesday.
“Senator McConnell appreciates the outpouring of support he’s receiving while he continues his recovery in the hospital,” his office said, reissuing the same statement it first shared last week. “The senator continues to improve and is working closely with his staff on Kentucky and Senate matters while the Senate is out of session.”
Beyond that, the details are slim. An independent reporter shared EMS audio of a “cardiac arrest” at McConnell’s Washington, DC, home on the day he was hospitalized. The audio cited someone being unconscious.
But McConnell’s office hasn’t even verified whether that call involved the 84-year-old, who has dealt with public health episodes including freezing in front of reporters.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune said on June 15 that he had spoken to McConnell and was “hopeful that he’ll be back this week.” But three weeks later, that still hasn’t happened, nor has McConnell’s office explained why.
That’s led even some prominent MAGA figures to cry foul and demand more disclosure, while others traffic in conspiracy theories.
Apparently some of McConnell’s colleagues are even in the dark. While responding early Tuesday to a critic who wondered why senators weren’t speaking out about what ailed McConnell, GOP Sen. Mike Lee of Utah said that was “because we know nothing about his condition.”
Thune and Senate Whip John Barrasso issued separate statements via spokespeople on Tuesday that they both spoke with the Kentuckian on the phone this week and had “substantive” and “lengthy” conversations. Neither addressed his health status.
And a McConnell ally, CNN senior political commentator Scott Jennings, posted on X on Tuesday that he also spoke with the senator that day about various topics. He didn’t say anything about McConnell’s health, either.
Before Kean and McConnell, there was the case of GOP Rep. Neal Dunn of Florida.
While Dunn hadn’t been absent long term, rumors circulated about a serious health condition. Then Trump at a March White House event said Dunn had faced a “terminal” condition and that he would have been “dead by June” before the president intervened to help him get a procedure involving stents.
“OK, that wasn’t public,” House Speaker Mike Johnson said at the time, sitting at Trump’s side. “But yeah, OK. It was grim.”
Dunn acknowledged receiving help from Trump but declined to elaborate on his condition. Like McConnell, he has now been missing from Congress since mid-June, with his office declining to comment to local reporters.
Similarly, we learned in December 2024 that then-Texas GOP Rep. Kay Granger’s monthslong absence before her retirement was largely spent at a local memory care and assisted-living home, dealing with what her son described as dementia — none of which Granger’s office disclosed.
Months before that, it was Biden’s decision to hide his increasing health problems and run for reelection — as documented extensively by CNN’s Jake Tapper and Axios’ Alex Thompson in their book “Original Sin” — that blew up the 2024 presidential race.
Former first lady Jill Biden recently said she worried he was having a stroke during his disastrous debate performance, even though she defended it at the time.
Throughout his time in politics, now-President Donald Trump has been opaque about his own health:
- His doctors often issue hyperbolic letters featuring frankly unbelievable claims about his supposedly pristine health. (The doctor who wrote one of them a decade ago has said the letter was dictated by Trump.)
- He at one point appeared to hide his use of a hair-loss drug.
- The White House last year ultimately disclosed Trump had a vein condition after people noticed his swollen legs.
- And later in the year, the White House was remarkably slow to explain why Trump had additional medical imaging, with the president at one point saying he didn’t even know what part of his body was scanned.
And in late 2023 and early 2024, then-Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s unexplained absences — which were later explained as undergoing treatments for prostate cancer — created increased risks to national security, per the Pentagon’s watchdog. Austin’s absences were even kept secret from White House and top national security officials for days.
Austin later explained in testimony to Congress that he was “a pretty private guy” and suggested he didn’t fully appreciate the need to keep people apprised of his health.
“But I’ve learned from this experience, taking this kind of job means losing some of the privacy that most of us expect,” he said. “The American people have a right to know if their leaders are facing health challenges that might affect their ability to perform their duties even temporarily.”
And that gets at the tension here. Nobody wants their health information to be publicly aired. But holding a government office means fitness for the job is very much the public’s business. The taxpayers pay that salary, after all, and are tasked with deciding whether a person deserves that job.
When people can’t perform their duties in a normal job, they usually need to tell their bosses why. And, technically speaking, a government official’s boss is the voters.
Even as Austin uttered those words and the Biden administration dealt with the fallout of his unexplained absences, of course, the head of the very same administration was hiding his own conditions. He did so at a significant cost to his party and in ways that might have rewritten American history.
But that apparently hasn’t dissuaded others from deciding their health status is none of the public’s business.
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