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Focus Turns to Hillary Clinton’s Health After Disclosure of Pneumonia Diagnosis Hillary Clinton’s Campaign to Release More Information on Her Health
(about 9 hours later)
The topic of Hillary Clinton’s health, about which her opponent, Donald J. Trump, and his supporters have raised questions for months, was thrust into the center of the campaign on Sunday, after the Democratic nominee abruptly left a Sept. 11 memorial ceremony feeling ill. Her aides, who said when she left that she was “overheated,” later provided a doctor’s note saying that she received a diagnosis of pneumonia days earlier and had become dehydrated. Hillary Clinton’s campaign, responding to enormous political pressure after she had to be helped into a van on Sunday — and after waiting hours before explaining that she was suffering from pneumonia — said Monday that it would release more medical information about her this week.
Mrs. Clinton canceled a trip to California late Sunday night, and it remains to be seen how long she will be off the campaign trail. A spokesman, Brian Fallon, said on MSNBC that the campaign was working with Mrs. Clinton’s doctor on a fuller release of medical information, and that those records would show she had “no other undisclosed condition.”
But Mrs. Clinton, 68, and Mr. Trump, 70, are likely to face calls for far more detailed medical records than they have provided. In Mr. Trump’s case, the extent of his release so far has been a widely mocked doctor’s note consisting of a few lines and praise for his “strength and stamina.” Mr. Trump is also set to appear on an episode of “The Dr. Oz Show” this week to discuss his health. The campaign’s shift — it has until now resisted requests for the more comprehensive discussion of her medical history that is traditional for presidential nominees — came after Mrs. Clinton was videotaped being helped into a van by Secret Service agents on Sunday, her feet dragging on the ground, while departing early from the Sept. 11 anniversary ceremony in Lower Manhattan.
Mrs. Clinton, who sustained a concussion in December 2012 after becoming dehydrated, fainting and hitting her head on a toilet, learned she had pneumonia on Friday, according to the note from her doctor. She attended a fund-raiser later that night and went ahead with plans to attend the ground zero ceremony on Sunday. But she left earlier than planned, and aides said she was overheated. After videos emerged on Twitter of Mrs. Clinton leaning against a post to stand upright and nearly collapsing as she entered her van, her aides released the doctor’s note. The manner in which Mrs. Clinton’s illness became public revived concerns among supporters and criticism among her detractors about her seemingly reflexive tendency to hunker down and hoard information, often citing a “zone of privacy,” when she senses a possible political threat.
Many of Mrs. Clinton’s supporters said privately that they believed she would have been criticized whatever path she chose. If she had skipped the ceremony, she risked feeding conspiracies about her health that Mr. Trump has helped fan. But by attending, she risked getting sicker. Pneumonia, particularly in people older than 65, can be challenging to recuperate from, and Mrs. Clinton continued to campaign despite her illness over the course of several days. Mrs. Clinton had actually been given a diagnosis of pneumonia on Friday morning. But she said nothing about it late Friday, when she eagerly told reporters about her plans to defeat the Islamic State, called for a rethinking of the Obama administration’s approach to North Korea and ridiculed Donald J. Trump’s praise for the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin.
Even Sunday morning, when reporters learned that Mrs. Clinton had departed early from the ceremony for the 15th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, a campaign aide explained only that Mrs. Clinton had been “overheated.”
It took until more than five hours after the startling video surfaced online — shot by an onlooker, showing an ailing Mrs. Clinton being helped into a van — before her campaign released a statement from her physician, Dr. Lisa R. Bardack, saying Mrs. Clinton had been told that she had pneumonia and put on antibiotics on Friday. The statement said Mrs. Clinton had become dehydrated and overheated at ground zero.
The sequence of events quickly intensified pressure on both Mrs. Clinton, 68, and Mr. Trump, 70, to be more forthcoming with information about their health and medical histories. But it has also reinforced a central vulnerability for Mrs. Clinton that has nothing to do with physical stamina.
Allies and critics alike drew parallels between her handling of her illness and, among other things, her decision to use a private email server for official business when she was secretary of state.
“Antibiotics can take care of pneumonia. What’s the cure for an unhealthy penchant for privacy that repeatedly creates unnecessary problems?” David Axelrod, a former adviser to President Obama, wrote on Twitter.
Matthew Dowd, a former strategist for George W. Bush, advised “a miracle drug called transparency.”
On Monday, Mrs. Clinton’s campaign acknowledged that it had come up short in providing information about her illness, though it insisted that she was still a model of transparency.
“We could have done better yesterday, but it is a fact that public knows more about H.R.C. than any nominee in history,” Jennifer Palmieri, a campaign spokeswoman, wrote on Twitter in response to Mr. Axelrod’s criticism.
Many of Mrs. Clinton’s supporters said privately that they believed she would have been criticized whichever path she chose: Had she skipped the ceremony, she risked feeding doubts about her health. But by keeping her schedule, she risked getting sicker. Pneumonia, particularly in people older than 65, can be challenging to recuperate from.
But most of those supporters also acknowledged that by not revealing she had pneumonia immediately after the sick spell Sunday morning, she had fed the perception that her campaign was secretive.But most of those supporters also acknowledged that by not revealing she had pneumonia immediately after the sick spell Sunday morning, she had fed the perception that her campaign was secretive.
That perception has helped bring down Mrs. Clinton’s numbers in polling when voters are asked whether they see her as “honest and trustworthy.” The numbers began to sag in 2015 when her use of a private email server while she was the secretary of state became public. The announcement late Sunday that she had been put on antibiotics Friday morning also cast something of a new light on her demeanor and gaffe later that day.
Mr. Trump proved unusually restrained, lasting several hours without posting something referring to Mrs. Clinton’s illness on Twitter. It remains to be seen whether he can hold to that level of discipline as the week begins. In addition to not releasing his medical records, Mr. Trump, citing an audit he claims he is in the middle of, has declined to release his tax returns, and he has sought to avoid a number of other levels of scrutiny, a source of frustration for the Clinton campaign. She had sounded subdued, as if trying to preserve her voice, during her news conference late Friday afternoon, which followed a meeting with a bipartisan group of national security experts about combating the Islamic State.
And at a fund-raiser that night, Mrs. Clinton, better known for more carefully calibrated phrasings, loosely suggested that half of Mr. Trump’s supporters fell into what she called a “basket of deplorables” — bigots of one kind or another, essentially. (She apologized on Saturday for painting with such a broad brush, but on Monday Mr. Trump seized on the remark in a speech and a new ad suggesting Mrs. Clinton was “viciously demonizing hard-working people.”)
Clinton aides have ample reason to be careful on the subject of her health: Political opponents on the right have spread a variety of conspiracy theories insinuating that she is physically unfit for the presidency, and Mr. Trump has fanned those theories, repeatedly questioning her “stamina.”
After she had a coughing attack last week, Matt Drudge, editor of the Drudge Report, posted a spoof photo of Mrs. Clinton’s traveling press corps wearing surgical masks on her campaign plane.
Most voters have not been moved by this line of attack: 74 percent of registered voters said they were unconcerned about Mrs. Clinton being healthy enough to carry out the job of president, a Fox News poll last month found.
But trustworthiness is a glaring problem for Mrs. Clinton: Roughly six in 10 voters said they did not trust Mrs. Clinton, about the same as said they distrusted Mr. Trump, according to a Washington Post/ABC News poll released last week.
Mrs. Clinton, who sustained a concussion in December 2012 after becoming dehydrated, fainting and hitting her head on a toilet, had spoken publicly last week about her struggle with seasonal allergies.
After a lengthy coughing fit during a speech at a Labor Day rally in Cleveland, she casually told reporters on her campaign plane that she had increased her antihistamine load.
“It happens like twice a year, in the spring when the pollen comes and it happens in the fall,” she said. “It lasts a couple days and then it disappears.”
“There is a long video recording that someone is compiling right now, going back decades,” she added, jokingly.
And Mrs. Clinton’s aides initially ridiculed reporters who took note of her cough. “Get a life,” a Clinton spokesman, Nick Merrill, posted on Twitter to an NBC News reporter who wrote about it.
But Dr. Bardack’s statement said that Mrs. Clinton’s prolonged cough had developed into the pneumonia that led to her near-collapse on Sunday.
Mrs. Clinton canceled her scheduled trip Monday to San Francisco for a fund-raiser, but planned to call into the event. “H.R.C. continues to feel better, but intends to remain home today, following her doctor’s recommendation to rest,” Mr. Merrill told reporters on Monday.
Also postponed was a planned speech in Los Angeles on Tuesday about an “inclusive economy.”
“We’re going to be down the next two days,” Mr. Fallon, the Clinton campaign spokesman, said on MSNBC. “She’s going to take this opportunity to rest.”
Additional medical disclosure by Mrs. Clinton will add to the pressure on Mr. Trump to release more information about his health.
Until now he has provided only a widely mocked note from a doctor that contained little more than over-the-top praise for Mr. Trump’s “strength and stamina.”
On Thursday, Mr. Trump is expected to appear on an episode of the “Dr. Oz Show” to discuss his health.