Stricken with polio in 1944, 2-year-old Mitch McConnell spent his days confined to bed or undergoing a strict physical therapy regimen to rehabilitate his left leg at an age when most toddlers cannot sit still.
His earliest memory, recalled in public speeches and in books, is of stopping at a shoe store on his way home from Warm Springs, Georgia, where Franklin D. Roosevelt — who had also been diagnosed with the paralyzing disease — established a polio treatment center. Two years after contracting polio, and roughly a decade before the nation’s first polio vaccination campaign, the boy who would become one of the most powerful U.S. senators had finally been cleared to walk.
The Kentucky Republican’s childhood bout with the once-deadly disease that ravaged America has informed his ardent support for vaccines, even amid increasing skepticism of the lifesaving shots within the party he led for nearly two decades, according to interviews with several people who have worked with him, his 2016 memoir, a biography released last fall by journalist Michael Tackett and his public statements.
“It’s fair to say it was one of the most defining moments of his life,” said Antonia Ferrier, who worked as a communications adviser for McConnell from 2015 to 2018.
But McConnell’s life-altering experience is on a collision course with efforts to confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the founder of a prominent anti-vaccine group, to lead the nation’s health department in President Donald Trump’s second administration. Although Kennedy recently expressed support for the polio vaccine, he had previously repeated statements that researchers say are not backed by science.
The New York Times last year reported that a key ally of Kennedy had petitioned the government in 2022 to reconsider its approval of Sanofi’s stand-alone polio vaccine. That ally’s law firm declined comment Wednesday. In response to the story, McConnell warned, without naming Kennedy, that anyone seeking Senate confirmation should “steer clear of even the appearance” of associating with any efforts to weaken trust in polio vaccines.
“I have never flinched from confronting specious disinformation that threatens the advance of lifesaving medical progress, and I will not today,” McConnell said in a Dec. 13 statement. “Efforts to undermine public confidence in proven cures are not just uninformed — they’re dangerous.”
For the first time since 2007, McConnell, now 82, is no longer the top Senate Republican, affording him more freedom to decide whether to support Trump’s nominees. If every Democrat decides to vote against Kennedy, then he can afford only three GOP defections in the closely divided Senate — and losing McConnell, a famously deliberate senator, would indicate bipartisan concern about Kennedy and his allies’ views on vaccines.
In recent months, Kennedy has insisted he would not take away vaccines, saying instead that he wants to study the data. The Trump administration did not respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson for Kennedy did not respond to detailed questions, but Kennedy has previously denied being anti-vaccine.
“I support the measles vaccine. I support the polio vaccine,” Kennedy told senators at a hearing on his confirmation Wednesday. “I will do nothing as HHS secretary that makes it difficult or discourages people from taking either of those vaccines.”
While McConnell has already delivered a public warning shot to Kennedy, there are other indications that he has reservations about the nominee.
The former Republican leader has not sat down for a private meeting with Kennedy, unlike many members of his party and some Democrats. McConnell has posed in photos and blasted out news of one-on-one meetings with other Trump Cabinet picks, including attorney general nominee Pam Bondi and U.N. ambassador nominee Elise Stefanik. But McConnell has notably skipped the ritual with Kennedy and a handful of Trump’s more controversial picks — including newly confirmed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and the nominee for director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard.
On Friday, McConnell showed he is willing to buck Trump on nominees he views as unfit to serve, joining every Senate Democrat and independent — and just two other Republicans — to vote against Hegseth.
Several Republican senators have said Kennedy, a former Democrat, must explain his stances on vaccines and support of abortion rights — and he was quizzed on both at a Senate Finance Committee hearing Wednesday and will appear before a second panel of lawmakers Thursday. Many Democrats have not said how they would vote but have cited deep concerns with Kennedy’s previous statements on vaccines, such as promoting long debunked claims about vaccines’ link to autism. McConnell does not sit on the committees overseeing the nation’s health policy, so he will not publicly question Kennedy. His office declined an interview request and did not comment for this story.
While roaming the Capitol last week, Kennedy declined to comment to a Washington Post reporter on whether he planned to meet with McConnell or has concerns about his path forward. “I’m not talking to the press,” Kennedy said.
“Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will be confirmed as our next secretary of health and human services,” Katie Miller, a Kennedy spokeswoman, wrote in a text message this month.
Bonding with Bill Gates
The first polio vaccine was pronounced “safe, effective and potent” more than a decade after McConnell’s encounter with the disease — and at a time when polio killed or paralyzed more than half a million people globally each year. The scientific achievement garnered a “palpable, audible sigh all across America,” McConnell said at a 2018 event hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank.
“Throughout my career in politics, I found that enduring success only comes to those who have the patience to play the long game,” McConnell said. “I’m just lucky that my caregivers were willing to be patient and play the long game. Researchers were willing to play the long game. Today the polio eradication effort is proof of what it looks like to win the game, or [be] very close to winning the game.”
McConnell has a warm relationship with Bill Gates, the billionaire vilified by the far right and whom Kennedy has repeatedly attacked including in his 2021 book “The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health,” according to two people with knowledge of the situation who spoke on the condition of anonymity to be candid.
Gates’ nonprofit — the Gates Foundation — has poured substantial money into efforts to end polio globally and to stop outbreaks of new variants of the virus, and he has frequently stopped by McConnell’s office when visiting Capitol Hill. The two have bonded over Gates’s efforts to eradicate polio worldwide, according to one of the people, who is a former McConnell aide.
“They have a closer relationship than people know,” the aide said.
In contrast, Kennedy has allied himself with those who have criticized vaccines and has previously made misleading comments himself.
On a podcast in 2023, Kennedy said a polio vaccine contained a virus, known as simian virus 40, that was potentially behind an increased risk of soft-tissue cancers in his generation that have killed “many, many, many, many, many more people than polio ever did.” From 1955 to 1963, some polio vaccines were contaminated with SV40. But multiple studies commissioned to monitor the vaccine’s safety have found no evidence of an increase in cancer in those who were vaccinated.
“Kennedy believes the polio vaccine should be available to the public and thoroughly and properly studied,” Miller told The Post last month.
Trump has expressed his support for the polio vaccine even while receptive to the idea that other vaccines could be causing undetected harm. “I think everything should be looked at, but I’m a big believer in the polio vaccine,” Trump said in December.
Privately, McConnell has previously nudged other senators to put more money toward polio eradication efforts, according to a senior official at the Gates Foundation who spoke on the condition of anonymity to detail private conversations. When staff of the Gates Foundation checked on the status of polio funding, they were told that leaders of the Senate appropriations panel had heard directly from McConnell’s office about his interest in increased funding.
Congress has boosted funding for polio eradication in recent years, though it remained flat during the past year.
Gates said he discussed polio with Trump during a three-hour dinner before he was inaugurated, The Wall Street Journal reported. Gates said Trump was “fascinated to hear” what he could do to maximize the chance of eliminating polio globally over the next four years.
A ‘fierce believer’ in vaccines
Public health experts say challenges persist in the quest to eradicate polio worldwide. While the disease was eliminated in the United States more than 30 years ago, polio virus still exists in some of the most difficult environments including the humanitarian crises in Afghanistan and remote communities in Pakistan. Last summer, polio reemerged in the Gaza Strip after a boy contracted the first case of polio in 25 years in the Palestinian enclave.
Public health experts fear progress could be undercut. An order from Trump to temporarily stop foreign assistance could affect critical work to eradicate polio, former U.S. officials said, though the administration Tuesday sought to clarify that “humanitarian assistance” could continue.
In the United States, the first case of polio in nearly a decade was confirmed in an unvaccinated man in Rockland County, New York, in 2022. The patient had attended a large gathering about a week before his symptoms began, highlighting the danger of rare infections imported through travel or contact with someone who had received the oral polio vaccine in another country.
Polio is a highly contagious viral disease that can cause permanent paralysis. Most of the U.S. population has protection against the disease because they were vaccinated during childhood. But in areas with low vaccination coverage, such as the ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities in some parts of the United States and Israel, unvaccinated people are at high risk. No treatment exists for polio.
“The polio end game is a very precarious end game,” said J. Stephen Morrison, who directs the Global Health Policy Center at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “It’s already in a perilous position, and it could get much, much worse if we’re not really careful,” he said, citing fears of an erosion of trust in science and the spread of misinformation about vaccines.
McConnell has a strong track record of supporting other vaccines, including those targeting the coronavirus, as the share of parents who say they keep their children up-to-date on recommended vaccines has fallen. McConnell was among the first group of Americans to receive the coronavirus vaccine — a shot Kennedy once called the “deadliest vaccine ever made.”
In 2020, a major coronavirus relief bill — which put money toward the development of the shots — was written in McConnell’s office. The following year, radio ads that McConnell purchased with money from his reelection campaign urged Americans to get vaccinated. And as the fast-moving delta variant of the coronavirus spread across GOP-dominated states, McConnell blamed misinformation for low rates of coronavirus immunization and urged the public to ignore such “bad advice.”
“[McConnell’s] been pretty clear that he’s a fierce believer in the power of vaccines,” Morrison said.
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Caitlin Gilbert contributed to this report.