Hillary Clinton’s White House bid stumbled Monday as a bout of pneumonia gave her rival Donald Trump a new opening to question her fitness for office, while pledging to release details on his own health soon.
In his first public comments since the Democrat Clinton was taken ill at a 9/11 ceremony in New York Sunday, an unusually subdued Trump offered her his wishes for a rapid recovery but also suggested that the former secretary of state’s health issues were of longer standing than admitted.
“Something is going on but I just hope she gets well and gets back on the trail, and we’ll be seeing her at the debate,” the Republican candidate said in a phone interview with Fox News. The unexpected turn of events barely eight weeks before the November 8 elections has turned a conservative angle of attack into a serious line of questioning about the 68-year-old Clinton’s health, why it took two days to reveal the pneumonia diagnosis, and what would happen if she were forced to quit the race.
“Antibiotics can take care of pneumonia. What’s the cure for an unhealthy penchant for privacy that repeatedly creates unnecessary problems?” asked the former White House aide David Axelrod on Twitter.