Bill puts his foot in it on Hillary’s health scare
She’s had other episodes like 9/11 collapse reveals former President
HILLARY Clinton’s hopes of taking the spotlight off her health problems were torpedoed yesterday when her husband let slip that she ‘frequently’ suffers medical issues.
Bill Clinton said his wife had become weak and nearly fainted ‘on more than one occasion’ during her decades in public life.
Mr Clinton rapidly tried to correct the blunder as he realised he had revealed more than he intended about his wife, the Democratic presidential candidate.
Mrs Clinton tried to play down what is turning out to be the worst week of her campaign by saying she did not think her pneumonia diagnosis ‘would be a big deal’. The 68-year-old said she kept it secret for two days because she thought she could ‘power through’ it.
However, she also hinted her health problems were a recurring issue and said they were something she ‘usually can avoid’.
On Sunday Mrs Clinton’s decision to ignore the advice of her doctors to rest backfired when she nearly fainted at the 9/11 Memorial in New York after becoming overheated while battling pneumonia.
A disturbing video shot by an onlooker showed her looking wobbly and stumbling off a kerb as she got into a waiting van with the help of two Secret Service agents. Mrs Clinton is now in
‘You try telling her she has to drink water’
damage control mode and has promised to release more details from her medical files this week. But the incident has played into the hands of the American Right who have been speculating for months – without evidence until now – that Mrs Clinton is hiding an illness.
In her first interview since the event, she strongly rebuffed the suggestion she was being secretive. Mrs Clinton, who would be the second oldest president in history if she wins November’s election, told CNN said that she ignored the ‘very wise advice’ of her doctors.
She said: ‘I’m feeling so much better, and obviously, I should have gotten some rest sooner.
‘I probably would have been better off if I pulled my schedule Friday, but like a lot of people, I thought I could keep going and power through it, and that didn’t go so well.’
Pressed by host Anderson Cooper how often this kind of thing had happened in the past, Mrs Clinton said that it was ‘really only twice that I can recall’. She said: ‘It is something that has occurred a few times over the course of my life. I’m aware of it and usually can avoid it.’
In a separate interview with US network PBS, Mr Clinton made his apparent gaffe when he said Mrs Clinton’s illness was a ‘mystery to me and all of her doctors’. He said: ‘Frequently – well not frequently, rarely – but on more than one occasion, over the last many, many years, the same sort of thing happened to her when she got severely dehydrated.’
According to an inside account of Sunday’s events by Politico, a US politics website, the reason Mrs Clinton became dehydrated was her stubbornness.
A source said Mrs Clinton will not obey orders to drink water, an issue which had caused friction with her aides. The source said: ‘She won’t drink water, and you try telling Hil- lary Clinton she has to.’ After her near collapse on Sunday, Mrs Clinton was taken to her daughter Chelsea’s apartment 15 minutes away in the Gramercy neighbourhood.
The New York Post reported this was a breach of protocol for the Secret Service, which should have taken Mrs Clinton to hospital – she supposedly refused because of how it would look. Speaking to CNN, Mrs Clinton said she wanted to be at Ground Zero on Sunday despite the 82F temperatures and intense humidity because it was ‘incredibly personal to me’ to be there for the 15th anniversary of 9/11.
She denied having fainted and said that ‘felt dizzy and I did lose my balance for a minute, but once I got in (the van), once I could sit down, once I could cool off, once I had some water, I immediately started feeling better’.
Mrs Clinton added that she will be back campaigning in the ‘next couple of days’.
The row has been damaging to Mrs Clinton because it has fed into a perception that she is secretive.
The New York Times reported Mrs Clinton did not even tell most of her campaign team of her diag- nosis and only informed close aides and family, fearing her opponents might exploit it.
Asked about this by Mr Cooper, Mrs Clinton shot back: ‘Oh my goodness ... compare everything you know about me with my opponent (Donald Trump).
‘I think it’s time he met the same level of disclosure that I have for years.’