CNN Duped By Phony GOP Congressman Claiming to Have Spoken to Mitch McConnell

CNN This Morning got tricked by a parody social media account Wednesday, sharing a tweet from the @RepJackKimble account along with posts from actual members of Congress.

The topic of the segment in question was Sen. Mitch McConnell’s (R-KY) absence from the Senate.

The 84-year-old senior senator from Kentucky is retiring, having announced in February 2025 that he would not be running for re-election. He has served in the Senate since 1985 and is currently in his seventh term, making him Kentucky’s longest-serving Senator. McConnell spent years as both Senate Majority and Minority Leader as the Republicans’ electoral fortunes waxed and waned. In 2024, he stepped down from his party leadership role and was replaced by Sen. John Thune (R-SD).

McConnell has been hospitalized for several weeks and while his office has released a statement saying he “continues to improve, and is working closely with his staff on Kentucky and Senate matters while the Senate is out of session,” he has not been seen since he went to the hospital in mid-June.

Speculation, rumors, and conspiracy theories have flourished online as McConnell has remained out of the public eye. Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear (D) issued a statement Wednesday requesting that McConnell “fully update Kentuckians regarding the current status of your health.”

“Allowing speculation to continue in the media is not fair to the Senator or to Kentuckians, and my hope is that this provides him the opportunity to share the information in a transparent manner, direct from the source,” Beshear added.

CNN conservative commentator Scott Jennings has said he had a phone call with McConnell that was “just shy of 20 minutes,” and several other GOP members of Congress came forward with similar stories of calls with their hospitalized colleague, including Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) and Senate Whip John Barrasso (R-WY).

Not on that list? Representative Jack Kimble (R-CA).

That’s because he does not exist.

While his @RepJackKimble account is not labeled satire or parody, there are multiple clues this is not a real congressman.

Besides the odd photographs that show clear signs of editing, he claims to represent California’s 54th congressional district. California is the most populous state in the country but has only 52 congressional districts. The most the state has ever had is 53. The 52nd district includes part of San Diego and several surrounding towns, extending south to the border with Mexico; it is currently represented by Rep. Juan Vargas (D-CA).

Kimble’s bio also declares himself to be the “co-sponsor of Poe’s Law.” Poe’s Law is an online adage first coined by Nathan Poe in 2005 and says that unless you include a “winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is utterly impossible to parody” any views, especially those that are rigidly extreme, dogmatic, or doctrinaire, “in such a way that someone won’t mistake for the genuine article.” The website TV Tropes has a helpful explanation with an encyclopedic list of examples.

Scrolling through Kimble’s feed, there are numerous posts that should immediately set off internal alarm bells in the reader’s brain that this is not how normal politicians speak, even in this Trumpian era.

Kimble’s post claiming he “spoke to my old friend Mitch McConnell” started off sounding a lot like what Jennings, Thune, and Barrasso had said about their conversations with the Kentucky senator, but went off the rails as it went on.

“I spoke to my old friend Mitch McConnell this morning, the senior Senator from Kentucky,” he wrote. “He’s still recovering in the hospital. We talked for just shy of 45 minutes. He’s so sharp. Just like always he let me do all of the talking. He’s a great listener. After that we prayed silently for awhile and had a staring contest. Just like always, he beat me. I told him we want to see him back at work as soon as possible.”

Claiming he “had a staring contest” with McConnell and he won and McConnell “let me do all of the talking” seems to imply McConnell was nonverbal, unconscious, or otherwise too ill or week to communicate. Not the message the other actual GOP members of Congress have been sharing.

And yet, the post slipped past CNN’s producers and ended up on screen.

Anchor Audie Cornish mentioned that there were “a lot of Senate Republicans coming out” to talk about their conversations with McConnell.

“We’re going to just show some on screen,” she said, “all saying, I talked to him, I talked to him, I talked to him for 20 minutes, I talked to him for 45 minutes.”

Displayed on screen were quotes from Jennings, spokespeople for Thune and Barrasso — and the @RepJackKimble tweet.

As reported by Snopes last year when a Kimble tweet about the One Big Beautiful Bill went viral and fooled people, the person behind the account has also written a book under the alias and has said the account is “the brain child of a Chicago school teacher” on the his bio page on Amazon. That listing is directly explicit about the satirical nature of the account:

Jack Kimble is the Congressman from California’s faux 54th District. In reality he is the brainchild of a Chicago school teacher. Kimble began making a name for himself on both Twitter and the blogosphere in 2009 with his unique brand of political satire. By 2010 he had gained acclaim for duping both The Huffington Post and the Washington Post within a single month. Admirers of Jack Kimble include members of Congress, comedians, liberals, and even discerning conservatives, who appreciate Jack’s humor that often takes right wing talking points to a hilarious conclusion.

Add CNN to that list.

The Kimble account had some fun with CNN’s gaffe, posting a few tweets feigning outrage.

UPDATE Thursday, July 9: CNN aired a correction and apology Thursday morning.

Cornish said:

Yesterday on the show, we displayed quotes from a Republican — some Republicans, about Senator Mitch McConnell’s stay in the hospital. One of them was mistakenly taken from a parody account on Twitter. Now, obviously, we should not have done that, and we regret the error.

Watch the clip above via CNN.

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