Hillary Clinton Overheated And Stumbles: Trump and Republicans Pounce
Earlier today in New York, Hillary Clinton overheated at an event and seemed to physically stumble as she was making her way into her car. Perhaps not surprisingly, every news media outlet in the country suddenly made Hillary Clinton getting overheated and dizzy the top story in the 24-hour news cycle. This, despite the fact that CNN is reporting that Clinton’s doctor has now diagnosed her with pneumonia and she was seen walking out of her daughter’s apartment building and waving a few hours later.
Video Shows Hillary Clinton Walking With Support as She Leaves 9/11 Ceremony https://t.co/xnVG25Fzgs
— NBC Politics (@NBCPolitics) September 11, 2016
This relatively minor incident largely superseded any attention that would normally have been given to the 15th anniversary of 9/11 and a memorial plan for the occasion. As might be expected, Republicans in general – and the Trump campaign in particular – are virtually salivating over the possibilities of Hillary Clinton being in an overheated and weakened state.
Certainly, conservative news outlets like Fox News are grabbing the story with both hands and running with it. In fact, at the time of this writing, the Fox News site had six stories at the top of its webpage focusing entirely on the fact that Hillary Clinton was overheated and was forced to leave the 9/11 memorial event a bit early.
As pointed out by NPR, ever since Trump’s own dizzying drop – in his case in the polls – the Trump campaign has been desperately looking for a way to slow down the Clinton campaign juggernaut, which has been overheated in a way the Republicans didn’t enjoy nearly as much. This is why – in recent weeks – they’ve been embracing an array of tinfoil hat conspiracy theories that suggest Clinton has Parkinson’s, Clinton is having strokes, Clinton is at death’s door and so on.
In many ways, discussing the “frailty” of Hillary Clinton – as opposed to the manly health and vigor of Donald Trump – is actually a surreptitious way for Republicans to attack Hillary Clinton for having the audacity to be a woman and still run for president. This argument might be slightly more effective if it weren’t for the fact that Hillary Clinton has actually released valid information about her medical history, while Trump seems to have written his doctor’s letter himself.
Given the strange circumstances of the Trump doctor’s letter, it’s quite odd that the national news media has paid so little attention to Trump’s blatant attempt to cover up the reality of his own poor health. Stragely, the same media quickly leaps on any opportunity to place Clinton’s health under a microscope.
More than this, doctors who have never seen Hillary Clinton in person and have never had a chance to examine her medical records have – over the last few weeks – been on every news outlet they can find to declare her virtually a walking corpse. Journalistic bias? Could be.
In point of fact, Republican pundits and talking heads are currently engaging in reality ignoring acrobatics by hinting that the diagnosis of pneumonia – as well as the Clinton’s campaign statement she was overheated – is nothing more than a cover up. Her “true” – albeit entirely imaginary – medical problems have to be much more serious than this.
Naturally, to embrace this narrative, Trump and his Republican cohorts have to totally ignore the fact that only a few days ago they were sending themselves into a tizzy pointing out a coughing fit that Clinton was having during a speech. Otherwise, they might have to admit that she just has pneumonia.
UPDATE: Clinton releases doctor's note saying she has pneumonia, got dehydrated. Conspiracy theorists not satisfied https://t.co/yIDzN6Om3U
— ThinkProgress (@thinkprogress) September 11, 2016
But such logical absurdities rarely ever trouble the thoughts of Donald Trump and his minions. From Donald Trump’s perspective, his campaign doesn’t have to make sense – it just has to make sufficient noise to get the attention of the media.
(AP Photo/Craig Ruttle)
