Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was escorted away from the cameras during a news conference yesterday after he froze and appeared unable to continue speaking.

It looks to me like he had a mini-stroke.

Robert Reich, writing in his Substack, has a different take.

Thirty-five years ago I was giving a luncheon speech about the economy to members of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington.

In the middle of my speech, the person who had introduced me asked if I was okay and offered me a glass of water. I was puzzled by his question, which seemed to come from out of nowhere. I declined the water and continued with my speech.

That night, I received a phone call from someone who said he had attended my speech. He explained that he was a physician, and asked if I knew that I had had a petite mal seizure in the middle of the speech.

“You froze for about 30 seconds,” he said. “Your eyes fluttered. You were offered a glass of water. Do you remember?”

I was flabbergasted. “No,” I said. I told him that I recalled being offered the water, but had no memory of any interruption in my speech.

“That’s what I thought. That’s why I called you. You may want to have it checked out.”

I thanked him and got off the phone, deeply shaken.

The very idea that my brain had skidded — that I had frozen for thirty seconds and not been aware of it, let alone that it had occurred in front of several hundred people — shocked me to the core.

…

The neurologist I saw some days later explained that epilepsy affects over 1 percent of the population, and a larger percent experience one or two seizures during their lifetimes. The cause? He shrugged. “We know as much about the brain as we do the dark side of the moon.” (I assume some progress has been made over the last thirty-five years, but most of it remains a mystery.)

Again, I can’t presume to say what caused McConnell to freeze. He is 81 years old. Yesterday’s incident took place about four months after he fell and suffered a concussion and a broken rib at a private dinner at a Washington.

But I commiserate with what McConnell may be going through. For someone in public life whose every movement and utterance is consequential, it must be terrifying.

I find much of what Mitch McConnell has done as leader of the Senate Republicans repugnant.

Yet on another level, he and I — and all of you reading this — share the same terrifying fragilities of being human. I wish him well.

I would not shed a tear if something untoward happened to him.