The question of Hillary Clinton’s health has dogged her campaign for president well before she quickly left a ceremony in New York on Sept. 11 that honored the 15th anniversary of the World Trade Center attacks. Republican candidate Donald Trump has tweeted consistently that Clinton lacks the strength and stamina to be president and has tried to make it a campaign issue.
Before the 9/11 Ceremony
Before Sunday’s incident—which was captured on video and shows the Democratic nominee nearly collapsing as she was being assisted into a vehicle—the Clinton team's messaging strategy about her health was defined by debunking and pivoting.
The debunking: On July 31 the campaign released a letter from Dr. Lisa Bardack, Clinton’s personal physician since 2001, which served to debunk claims that the candidate is medically unfit for office. Many of the rumors about her health were predicated on an incident in 2012 in which Clinton fainted while suffering from a stomach virus in the days leading up to her testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Committee about the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya. During a follow-up appointment with physicians for the concussion she incurred from the fall, doctors found and treated a blood clot in a vein between the brain and the skull behind her right ear. Dr. Bardack’s letter referenced Clinton’s full recovery from this incident and gave her a clean bill of health.
The pivoting: When critics continued to call the candidate’s health into question, the Clinton camp used Dr. Bardack’s letter as an example of the candidate's honesty, and to criticize Trump’s refusal to reveal his tax documents. A statement by the campaign also went after Trump for his own, much less specific, medical records released by his gastroenterologist.
Hillary Clinton herself considered the questions about her health so inconsequential that she laughed them off on "Jimmy Kimmel Live" and opened a can of pickles as a tongue-in-cheek verification that she’s physically fit.
After the 9/11 Ceremony
While her health was still a subject of some speculation shortly before the 9/11 ceremony, there’s been a marked shift in the way her health has been discussed by her campaign following her near collapse. Debunking and pivoting have been sidelined, for obvious reasons. The messaging now is about her recovery from the rigors of the campaign trail and her intention to rest so she can bounce back.
Clinton’s campaign spokesman Nick Merrill told the Washington Post that “during the ceremony, she felt overheated, so [she] departed to go to her daughter’s apartment and is feeling much better.”
Dr. Bardack also released a statement about Clinton’s health, in which she revealed that the candidate was diagnosed with pneumonia on Sept. 9.
Statement from Clinton's longtime physician, Dr. Lisa Bardack, M.D.: Clinton has pneumonia, has been advised to rest pic.twitter.com/HIPcAnhRbY
— Ruby Cramer (@rubycramer) September 11, 2016
On Sept. 12 the Clinton campaign announced that it’s canceling her scheduled trip to California after doctors advised rest to help combat the pneumonia.
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