Clinton
campaign admits 'we could have done better' handling pneumonia news
Campaign
regrets not telling the truth after initially claiming 9/11 incident
was due to ‘overheating’ as both Clinton and Trump vow to release
medical records
Dan Roberts and
Sabrina Siddiqui in Washington and Ben Jacobs in Baltimore
Monday 12 September
2016 18.35 BST
Hillary Clinton’s
campaign has acknowledged mishandling news of her pneumonia, as
Donald Trump sought to capitalize on growing questions over his
opponent’s trustworthiness at a critical moment in their race for
the White House.
“We could have
done better yesterday,” wrote Clinton communications director
Jennifer Palmieri on Monday, after some Democrats began questioning
whether the campaign had been fully transparent in its weekend
accounts of her health.
On Monday evening,
the Democratic presidential candidate phoned in to CNN, telling host
Anderson Cooper that she hadn’t initially thought her pneumonia
“was a big deal”. She also tweeted her thanks to well-wishers and
added:
Like anyone
who’s ever been home sick from work, I’m just anxious to get back
out there. See you on the trail soon. -H
She went on to issue
two tweets attacking Trump.
Clinton was filmed
losing her footing and being assisted into a waiting van after
leaving early from a memorial for 9/11 victims in New York on Sunday.
Initially, campaign
aides said she had “overheated”, though Clinton later insisted
“I’m feeling great, it’s a beautiful day in New York,” after
she left her daughter’s apartment, where she was taken to rest.
But once the video
footage emerged – which appeared to support eyewitness accounts of
a more serious incident – the campaign issued a short statement
from a doctor revealing she was being treated for pneumonia.
Clinton had been
diagnosed on Friday but the condition went undisclosed despite the
campaign chastising reporters who had questioned bouts of coughing at
recent public events.
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“In retrospect, we
could have handled it better in providing more information. That’s
on us. We regret that,” said press secretary Brian Fallon.
The campaign now
says Clinton will release “additional medical information” from
her doctor in the next few days “to further put to rest any
lingering concerns”, but insists there are “no other underlying
conditions, the pneumonia is the extent of it”.
“I expect by the
middle or back end of the week she will be back out there on the
campaign trail,” Fallon told MSNBC. “If it was up to her she
would be travelling to California today but it was her doctor’s
advice [to rest at home].”
Clinton added in a
Monday night phone interview withCNN’s Anderson Cooper that she
didn’t initially reveal the pneumonia diagnosis because she “didn’t
think it was a big deal”. However after the incident on Sunday,
where she insisted that she did not faint, the former secretary of
state was now following her initial doctor’s advice to take five
days of rest in order to fully recover.
However, even if
Clinton does bounce back quickly, the incident is raising fresh
questions over trust which could cause more lingering political
complications.
“Antibiotics can
take care of pneumonia. What’s the cure for an unhealthy penchant
for privacy that repeatedly creates unnecessary problems?” wrote
Barack Obama’s former adviser David Axelrod.
His tweet prompted
Palmieri’s first acknowledgement of regret, in which she added:
“But it is a fact that [the] public knows more about HRC than any
nominee in history.”
Their public
exchange was seized on by the Trump campaign, which said it
demonstrated a familiar pattern of secrecy by the Clintons.
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“It’s incredibly
important to be forthcoming,” said the Republican’s campaign
manager Kellyanne Conway. “If you have a diagnosis of pneumonia,
just be honest about it when you’re saying you’re overheating.
Just say, ‘by the way, I’m on antibiotics’.”
Trump claimed he
would soon be releasing the results of a recent physical examination
of his own, telling interviewers: “It’s interesting because they
say pneumonia, but she was coughing very, very badly a week ago …
It’s very interesting to see what’s going on.”
Clinton’s campaign
and its backers nonetheless pushed back against criticism regarding
transparency. Trump, they pointed out, had thus far declined to
release his tax returns and refused to offer policy specifics on
issues ranging from immigration to the fight against Islamic State.
As Clinton herself argued on Monday, “We know the least about
Donald Trump than any candidate in recent American history.”
The state of Trump’s
own health was also unclear, with a brief statement from his personal
doctor of 25 years in December providing few medical details and
serving as the only record offered by his campaign.
The doctor’s
statement described the Republican nominee in the sort of hyperbolic
language typically associated with Trump, declaring him “the
healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency” if successful
in his pursuit of the White House. Trump’s physician, Dr Harold
Bornstein, said last month he put the document together in five
minutes while awaiting a limo sent by Trump to collect the letter.
Clinton described this letter in her CNN interview as “not even
serious”.
Despite repeatedly
criticizing Clinton’s “stamina” in recent weeks, Trump was
cautious on the topic of the former secretary of state’s health on
Monday, saying in an interview: “I hope she gets well soon.”
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The Republican
nominee instead focused his fire on Clinton’s comments on Friday
about half of Trump’s voters being in “the basket of
deplorables”. Although she has since expressed regret for being
“grossly generalistic” in saying “half”, she still stood by
her characterization of some Trump supporters. Clinton has continued
to reiterate: “Trump has built his campaign largely on prejudice
and paranoia and given a national platform to hateful views and
voices.”
The Trump campaign
has seized on these remarks and is now airing a television ad
highlighting them in several swing states. The ad includes footage of
Clinton grouping “the racists, sexists, homophobic, xenophobic,
Islamophobic, you name it” into the basket of deplorables.
The stumbles for
Clinton come as polls appear to show Trump reducing a previously
large gap, to an average of three points.
Even as her campaign
sought to rein in any political damage from the past few days,
several Democrats argued that the focus on Clinton’s health had
been overblown by the media.
“Every candidate I
have ever worked for has gotten sick on the trail and worked through
it because you can’t take days off in a close race,” wrote Dan
Pfeiffer, a former senior adviser to Obama.
Bill Burton, who
served as Obama’s national press secretary in 2008, said campaign
aides would have been “understandably skittish about making
announcements about secretary Clinton’s health” while Trump was
pushing conspiracy theories about her wellbeing.
“Will it feed a
narrative? Sure,” he said in an interview. “But only because the
media gets led around by the nose by Donald Trump.”
And while the media
was quick to cast the incident as problematic for Clinton, Burton
said it could in fact provide her with a small boost in the polls.
“People respond
when they think someone’s being treated unfairly,” he said.
“For Hillary
Clinton to have pneumonia and even still give a press conference,
convene a national security meeting, attend a memorial service in the
hot sun for an hour and a half, and then take criticism for having
pneumonia all the while … I don’t think the American people are
going to punish her for actually performing quite well in the face of
what’s an exhausting illness.”
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