Today, with all these questions about Mitch McConnell's health, is he capable of leading

the Senate Republicans?

Well, he sure going to try and Mitch McConnell is a man of the Senate.

He brought in this one of these rare, modern American senators who never had an appetite

to run for president.

He always looked in the mirror and saw a future Senate leader, not a future commander in

the chief.

And so it is extraordinarily difficult for somebody like that to walk away from the pinnacle

of their career in public life.

And that's a long way of saying unless he's forced out by his Republican colleagues, I

don't see it.

And there's no sign of that right now.

All right, that's Jonathan Martin, senior political columnist and politics bureau chief

for Politico.

He's also a resident fellow this semester at Harvard's Institute of Politics.

He's coming to us today from Cambridge, Massachusetts.

And I'm Brian Stelter.

And let me welcome you to Vanity Fair's Inside the Hive.

This week, we're going inside the gerontocracy talking about, yes, Mitch McConnell, the Senate

minority leader, his age is health issues.

Him recently freezing up repeatedly on camera in a very scary way.

But the story of Mitch McConnell, as Jonathan just said, is about so much more than that.

...