US Senator Mitch McConnel was about to give a speech, when he suddenly just... froze.
But before you watch the clip,
make sure you notice the actions of the woman in green who gets close to him:
Hello and welcome back, my Body Language Buddies! my name is Jesús Enrique Rosas,
I'm the Body Language Guy,
And you'll agree with me that this was an unnatural occurrence. Some have said
that this was some kind of stroke, others that this was planned as a distraction,
and others have pointed out more... sinister details that I will cover later in this video.
But in any body language analysis,
one of the most important observations is how one event is connected to another, or,
in this case, how one reaction at least looks like it was triggered by an action.
That's why I always suggest that the most relevant moments to pay
attention to people's body language is right after something happens,
such as a question, or someone arrives, or a loud noise. That's when you can spot
the spontaneous reactions of people to be able to define if they are genuine or not.
And the first thing I noticed is that McConnell stopped talking immediately after this woman
reached out to him and touched his arm. By the way, this woman is Senator Shelley Moore Capito.
And maybe you missed it, but she not only touches his arm, but also speaks some words to him.
Now, one factor that you should always measure to assess if one reaction is connected to a trigger,
is intention. If the person, in this case Moore Capito had planned this action in advance.
And that is the thing. That's what stroke me as suspicious.
Because McConnell is just starting to speak, he hasn't even said ten words,
and she is visibly rushing between the men around him to get closer.
In other words, it's not like she was next to him and then touched him, maybe to remind him
of something. No, there was a clear intention, that she was not close to him and quickly went
to where he was, right as he was starting to speak, to touch his arm and say something.
So, this is not a casual action. There is a clear intention behind that rushing to him. Now,
those who affirm that McConnell could be suffering some kind of stroke, maybe they have some medical
background, maybe they have already experienced such an event with a family member, but I'm
sure that what really caught their attentios was that McConnell did not actually react.
I mean, she reaches out to him, touches his arm, says the words,
but he doesn't acknowledge her at all. He doesn't move, his posture doesn't change,
and more important, his eyes never turn in her direction.
This is not normal human behavior. If we already saw her rushing between these
gentlemen to get to McConnell, is because she had some urgency in talking to him. Maybe she
had a last minute tip or observation that was important. So, you would imagine that such a
last second tip would create some kind of body language reaction in McConnell.
And the most common reaction would be turning in her direction. It doesn't have to be a complete
turn. Maybe he doesn't even need to break eye contact with the press. But you will notice
at least a slight turn so he confirms he got the message. But instead of that... we get... nothing.
And nothing is the word. He becomes completely mute for several seconds. But,
could it be that he just forgot what he was going to say? but there is one very important
nonverbal clue that I mention all the time and reveals, in this case, that something was wrong.
And that is blinking. I always recommend that you keep an eye on blinking,
because people can lie with their words, lie with their hands, sometimes even lie with their faces,
but blinking is something much more spontaneous and hard to control.
In this case, is not only that McConnell did not say a word. But the fact that he spent
30 seconds without blinking... not
even once! that tells you that something could be wrong neurologically. That is certainly not
normal. Regular blink rate is around every five or six seconds. It can go faster,
up to two blinks per second, when the person is under heavy stress,
or it can go slower, when they are trying to make sense of what's going on.
Blinks not only help moist our eyeballs,
they also help as neurological clues when someone is understanding what we are saying,
or they are accessing memories, or they connect one idea to another. So,
making sure you pay attention to blinks is extremely useful for a number of reasons.
So, not blinking for 30 seconds is far from normal, and one of the strongest
signals that something was wrong with McConnell. It was not until
this man grabbed his arm tightly that he finally reacted turning towards him,
but his eyes were still lost. He turned to him, but he was not looking into his eyes.
Now, there are also signals that we might need to discard because they are part of his body language
baseline, or his usual body language expression and they are not 'special' in that regard. And I'm
talking about the way he had his lips tightly pressed, to the point they went almost blue.
And while freezing in place is not a normal reaction for anyone,
the lip pressing could be just part of his usual nonverbal expression. And one quick
google search helps us notice that there are enough instances in which
he is talking or giving speeches and he presses his lips just like this.
So, that's when you see that a signal is part of their body language baseline, or something that
they do all the time, then you can discard them as irrelevant to make sense of events like this.
But it's not only the clues of the person that can tell you something is wrong. It's
always useful to take a look at the reactions of those around him. And I found this guy at
the back's expression really helpful into confirming this was not a natural
occurrence. It's a great way of studying how he looks confident and even smiling at first,
enjoying his day, and it progressively changes to seriousness and finally concern.
Maybe that doesn't give us MORE information but it's a good example for future analyses,
in the sense that we need to keep an eye of everyone in a given circumstance.
But McConnell later addressed what happened, and this is what he said:
“The president called to check on me. I told him I got sandbagged,”
Now, there is something I should mention in regards of image and video quality when you're
making any sort of analysis and compare two clips from different sources. If I ask you what's the
main difference between these two images, you'll say that in the first one he looks pale and gray,
and in the second one he's got much better face color. He looks much better in the second one.
But this is faulty thinking. Or more like faulty perception. Because the color palette,
or the video quality in both instances is different. The second is just more saturated,
the colors are more vibrant. And the way to spot this difference in terms of skin color,
to check if something has really changed in the person from one instance to another,
is look for references that you know are not going to change.
In this case, it would be his tie. The color intensity of his tie gives away
the difference between both clips, so that's how you can tell that we cannot
say his skin looks different, because it's the video itself.
I did a color correction on both clips to make them closer in terms of color levels,
and you can see that... there is really not that much difference in his skin,
and we could attribute that in the first one he was under white led lights and in the second
there is more sunlight, which is warmer, so we can discard the skin tone difference as well.
So, what's your take about this? what do you think triggered McConnell's mute
response? make sure to share your insights in the comments.
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