Hillary Clinton has said she is feeling “so much better” after a pneumonia diagnosis temporarily forced her off her presidential campaign trail.
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Her campaign acknowledged on Monday it may have been too slow disclosing her pneumonia diagnosis after she almost fainted at a NY memorial ceremony for the September 11, 2001, attacks.
Questions about the incident reinforced the perception of Clinton as secretive, a view fueled by the controversy surrounding her use of a private email server while serving as President Barack Obama’s secretary of state from 2009 to 2013. And the campaign acknowledged, just as Clinton was tweeting, that she will not attend her scheduled campaign event Wednesday in Nevada – with Bill Clinton due to stump there on her behalf according to an aide to the former president.
The offer to release more Clinton’s medical details came after weeks of blunt refusal to do so and was the latest step for the campaign to quell long-time speculation about Clinton’s health that climaxed on Sunday after Clinton was videotaped being helped into a van while her feet appeared to be dragging on the ground.
When asked if the incident and her campaign’s handling of it confirmed suspicions about lack of transparency or trustworthiness on her part, Clinton said, “Oh, my goodness, Anderson”. “That’s what they told me on Friday, and I didn’t follow that very wise advice”.
Clinton said on CNN on Monday that her doctor advised her on Friday to rest for five days. But like a lot of people I just thought I could keep going forward and power through it. What happened on Monday was that I just was incredibly committed to being at the memorial – as a senator on 9/11, this is incredibly personal to me. I felt overheated; I decided that I did need to leave.
In an interview on PBS that also will be aired Tuesday on “CBS This Morning”, Bill Clinton said his wife often works “like a demon” and neglects to keep herself hydrated.
“She’s doing fine, she was even better last night before she went to sleep”.
There’s no other undisclosed condition.
“Very quickly, I felt better”, Clinton said. “It is something that has occurred a few times over the course of my life and I’m aware of it and can usually avoid what happened”.
All Monday members of Clinton’s campaign, including running mate Tim Kaine, were in damage control mode.
The unexpected turn of events has turned a conservative angle of attack into a serious line of questioning about Clinton’s health and why it took two days to reveal the pneumonia diagnosis.
“We’re going to be releasing more information, and I think it’s fair to say we’ve already met the standard of disclosure of past presidential candidates like Mitt Romney and President Obama”, Clinton said from her home in Chappaqua. “So, if we weren’t fast enough, you know, I’ve talked to my staff, we, you know, take responsibility for that, but the information is out there. you can’t say the same thing about Donald Trump”.
With Mrs. Clinton sidelined by health issues, Mr. Trump is projecting an image of endurance – stacking up campaign events, vowing to release results from a recent physical and delivering an aggressive defense of his supporters.
Clinton pushed back against that idea Monday night, telling CNN that “people know more about me than nearly anyone in public life”.
“I was deeply shocked and alarmed to hear my opponent attack, slander, smear, demean these wonderful, unbelievable people who are supporting our campaign by the millions”, Trump told a conference of National Guard members in Baltimore.
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“Donald Trump’s doctor said he’d be the healthiest president in history”.
