It was widely reported last week that Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., was on his 40th day of convalescence after a fall at his home on June 14 that led to his being rushed to George Washington University Hospital in the nation's capital.

His office told reporters the onetime Senate Republican leader is in rehabilitation, that he will return to work shortly, and that he is keeping up with Senate business.

But social media outlets immediately questioned whether the senator — who is retiring this year after 42 years in office — would ever return to the Capitol and vote.

Kentucky's Democrat Gov. Andy Beshear, a potential 2028 presidential candidate, wrote McConnell's office to request "an update on his current health status" because it "provides him the opportunity to share the information in a transparent manner, direct from the source."

Even a photograph of a smiling McConnell with his wife, former Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, holding a dated issue of The Washington Post did not satisfy several social media "influencers," who promptly dismissed the photo as "AI-generated."

To many, this discourse over whether McConnell will return to work is something new and strange.

But some old hands on Capitol Hill, as well as seasoned reporters, have seen this movie before — only it played out without the public furor surrounding McConnell's hospitalization.

On Nov. 23, 1969, Sen. Karl Mundt, R-S.D., suffered a paralytic stroke at age 68 that hospitalized him and kept him from the Senate. This was particularly hard for him, as it came during the early presidency of Richard Nixon — Mundt's old friend and onetime colleague on the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

Both Mundt and Nixon believed Whittaker Chambers' accusation that onetime State Department official Alger Hiss committed espionage for the Soviet Union. The involvement of both Republicans in the first televised congressional hearings no doubt helped them win election to the Senate — Mundt from South Dakota in 1948 and Nixon from California in 1950.

As a teacher and superintendent of schools in Bryant, South Dakota, the erudite, pipe-smoking Mundt excelled in debate and extemporaneous speaking. His absence from the Senate in 1969 was particularly felt because it came just as Esquire featured him in an article on the Senate's finest orators.

Along with then-Senate Minority Leader Everett Dirksen, R-Ill., and Democrat Sen. Gale McGhee of Wyoming, the South Dakotan was highlighted for his ability to captivate the attention of colleagues and guests in the Senate Visitors Gallery.

Describing an address Mundt gave on the communist sympathies of anti-Vietnam War activist David Dellinger, Esquire noted, the senator held listeners spellbound by deliberately enunciating the name of his subject: "David DEL-lin-GER."

That elocutionary skill, along with Mundt's reliably conservative voting record, was missing in the 1969-70 session. According to GovTrack, he missed 422 roll-call votes out of 911 during the 91st Congress (1969-70).

Before the Senate vote in 1969 on the confirmation of South Carolina Judge G. Harrold Carswell to the Supreme Court, Sen. George Murphy, R-Calif., reached out to Mary Mundt about the possibility of her husband returning to the Senate briefly to support confirmation. She said no. Carswell lost 51 to 45, with four not voting.

In 1970, pressure on Mundt from Republicans in the Senate and in South Dakota to resign his seat increased — especially since Republican Gov. Frank Farrar lost reelection that year and would have left the appointment to fill a possible vacancy to Democrat Gov. Richard Kneip.

"After Mundt refused to yield to demands, his party took the unusual step of stripping him of committee seniority and temporarily released him from his committee assignments," Luke Nichter, professor at California's Chapman University and author of the critically acclaimed "The Year That Broke Politics: Collusion and Chaos in the Presidential Election of 1968," told Newsmax. "Ultimately, his condition improved enough to finish his term in January 1973 after declining to run for reelection in 1972."

Mundt died in August 1974 at age 74 and remains South Dakota's longest-serving senator.

If there are any major differences between the situations of an ailing Karl Mundt in 1969-73 and an ailing McConnell today, they are that the pressure on the South Dakotan to resign was quieter and very much an inside job by senators.

After only 40 days in the hospital, McConnell has faced daily calls from Kentucky and across the country to appear in public or resign.

And, of course, the internet, which was nonexistent in 1969-73, is ubiquitous today.

"There wasn't that much of a fuss about Mundt," said historian David Pietrusza, author of six books on presidential election years. "That's because one vote, one senator, or another at that time was not as crucial. [The Senate was split 57 Democrats to 43 Republicans from 1969-70 and 55 Democrats to 45 Republicans from 1971-72.] Now every vote, every roll call, is. Plus, McConnell is a much more famous and high-profile — and, quite frankly, hated — person than Karl Mundt ever was."

John Gizzi is chief political columnist and White House correspondent for Newsmax. For more of his reports, Go Here Now.