Washington – I’ve never been part of a conspiracy theory. Now, video of my surprised facial expression has become Exhibit A in the latest unfounded speculation about Hillary Clinton.
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It starts with Clinton’s visit to a muffin shop in Washington on June 10, five days before the District of Columbia’s Democratic primary. The then-presumptive Democratic nominee popped in for a photo op with Mayor Muriel Bowser and other officials supporting her campaign.
As an Associated Press reporter who’s spent more than a year covering her candidacy, I was there for her appearance. After she ordered herself a “cold chai,” my colleagues and I shouted some questions, mostly about Clinton’s recent meeting with Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
Perhaps eager to avoid answering or maybe just taken aback by our volume, Clinton responded with an exaggerated motion, shaking her head vigorously for a few seconds. Video of the moment shows me holding out my recorder in front of her, laughing and stepping back in surprise. After the exchange, she took a few more photos, exited the shop and greeted supporters waiting outside.
Two months later, that innocuous exchange has become the fodder for one of some Trump supporters’ most popular conspiracy theories: her failing health. Where I saw evasiveness, they see seizures.
Stringing the footage together with shots of Clinton seeming to get help going up stairs, they pressed the case that Clinton has health issues serious enough to disqualify her from the presidency. The hashtag? #HillaryHealth.
“Wow! Did Hillary Clinton Just Suffer a Seizure on Camera?” asked Jim Hoft at Gateway Pundit on July 23, more than a month after that day at the muffin shop.
Much of such speculation about the state of Clinton’s health stems from a concussion she sustained in December 2012 after fainting, an episode her doctor has attributed to a stomach virus and dehydration. During the course of her treatment, she was found to have a blood clot in a vein in the space between the brain and the skull behind the right ear.
To recover, Clinton spent a few days in New York-Presbyterian Hospital and took a month-long absence from the State Department for treatment.
Republican strategist Karl Rove later called it a “serious health episode” that would be an issue if Clinton ran for president, fueling a theory the concussion posed a graver threat to her abilities than Clinton and her team let on.
A July 2015 letter released by Clinton’s campaign proclaimed her in “excellent physical condition and fit to serve as president of the United States,” according to Dr. Lisa Bardack, an internist and chairman of the Department of Medicine at the Mount Kisco Medical Group in New York.
Bardack also said testing in 2013 showed “complete resolution” of the concussion’s effects, including double vision, which Clinton wore glasses with special lenses to address — further fueling rumors.
Such medical records are routinely released by presidential candidates. Trump’s, released in December, proclaimed him to be in “extraordinary” health.
Clinton’s campaign didn’t comment on the latest round of speculation.
That hasn’t stopped plenty of people online. After the video appeared on cable news, my Twitter feed exploded. One commenter compared me to actress Shelley Duvall from the horror movie “The Shining.”
The conservative Fox News host Sean Hannity opened a 6-minute Thursday night segment titled “Hillary’s Health” by saying, “as speculation swirls about Hillary Clinton’s health,” citing a headline from the right-wing news site Drudge Report.
Hannity repeatedly played the muffin shop footage, describing what Clinton was doing as “this sort of twitching thing that she does in front of reporters that was really bad” and then as “a violent, violent, repetitive jerking of the head.”
Seemingly as “proof” that something was amiss with Clinton, Hannity exclaimed: “Watch the reporter, like, pull back as she — the reporter got scared. And she keeps doing it. What is that?”
Fox News never contacted me to ask that question. For the record, I wasn’t scared for a moment.
Your also not a reporter just a hillary bot dressed as a reporter to ask softball questions. And BTW, you looked pprreettyy scared
What an idiot reporter. If he is not a dr and if he never saw a previous seizure, how on earth can he determine that it wasn’t a seizure. Seizures present in many different ways
Whether or not she suffered a seizure (I believe she did), the Clinton campaign now knows the kind or shrill reporting the Trump campaign has been undergoing since before the Republican convention.
A pox on both your houses!
You gotta hand it to these Trumpees: they will never let the truth get in the way with whatever BS they’re pushing.
He could say what he wants (I remember that video he’s talking about) HOWEVER the FACT is that HilLIARy does need help getting around. She DOES need help up steps and sometimes just to stand up straight. She does get “startled” and ends up with a blank look on her face. We have videos like she’s lost or she’s just had a blank seizure. The videos taken at different locations show someone, a NON Secret Service member, with a syringe .
Something stinks here.
Of course the AP would report this story, where is the AP when reporting on Hillary unable to walk up a flight of stairs last week? No true you say? Google it for yourself.
I hope I can stop laughing long enough to type that, the next time there is a health issue in my family,… the heck with WebMD etc. I’m coming straight to VIN.
I am a physician. Clinton suffered a serious neurological injury from a clot in a blood vessel draining blood from her brain. She is now treated with coumadin to decrease the likelihood of recurrence. At the Congressional hearing she wore special eye glasses to treat double vision. This is all in the public record. Whether or not her medical condition disqualifies her for the US Presidency is for the voters to decide. Why the press seeks to minimize her illness is pretty obvious.
Reply to #9 :
New York Times!