Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump to release more medical records
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Credit: Getty Images (2)
Presidential hopefuls Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton said Monday that they plan to release additional medical records outlining their state of health.
The pledges come as Clinton recovers from a bout of pneumonia made public on Sunday after she abruptly left a 9/11 memorial service at Ground Zero.
Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon, in an interview with MSNBC on Monday, said the campaign will “be releasing additional medical information” about the Democratic presidential nominee “to put to rest any lingering concerns” about her health after amateur video footage captured Clinton’s knees buckling as she tried to enter a van parked outside of the ceremony.
In an interview with CNN, Clinton said Monday she didn’t disclose the pneumonia diagnosis immediately because she didn’t “think it was going to be that big a deal”
And earlier on her Twitter account, Clinton announced she was “feeling fine and getting better.”
“Like anyone who’s ever been home sick from work, I’m just anxious to get back out there,” Clinton wrote. “See you on the trail soon.”
The former secretary of state was diagnosed with pneumonia on Friday by her physician Dr. Lisa R. Bardack, but the respiratory infection, generally treated with antibiotics, was not revealed until Sunday as reporters pressed the campaign for updates. Her campaign aides initially said she left the outdoor event because of heat exhaustion.
“I think in retrospect, we could have handled it better,” Fallon told MSNBC about the campaign’s delay in updating the public on Clinton’s diagnosis.
Clinton continued to recover at her home in Chappaqua on Monday, and canceled a two-day campaign trip to California. She still plans to teleconference into a Tuesday fundraiser, and was expected to be back on the campaign trail by midweek, Fallon said.
Meanwhile, Trump, in a Monday morning interview on “Fox and Friends,” said he hoped Clinton “gets well and gets back on the trail and we’ll be seeing her at the debate,” referring to the Sept. 26 showdown at Hofstra University.
The Republican nominee said he underwent a physical exam last week, and expects to release the findings this week.
“I think they’re going to be good,” Trump said. “I feel great.”
Clinton, 68, and Trump, 70, have both faced questions about their health and ability to meet the grueling demands of serving as commander-in-chief.
Trump came under scrutiny from medical experts last month after his longtime physician, Dr. Harold Bornstein, wrote a letter vouching for Trump’s health as “astonishingly excellent,” and asserted the GOP candidate “will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency.”
Bornstein, in subsequent media interviews, said he wrote the 2015 assessment in five minutes as a limo sent by Trump waited to retrieve the letter.
Clinton, who suffered a concussion and blood clot in 2012 after falling in her home, has faced mounting questions and accusations about her fitness in the past few months from Trump’s surrogates and conservative news outlets.
Her doctors have said she completely recovered from the 2012 incident, but Trump has frequently attacked Clinton on the campaign trail as having “no stamina.”
Kenneth Sherrill, a professor emeritus of political science at Hunter College, said Clinton could take a polling hit from the health episode, noting that “it will fit into the narrative that Trump wants, that he is strong and tough,” even as Clinton “kept working” through her illness.
“What it does is, once again, takes the campaign away from her area of strength, which is policy, which is issues, and it centers the campaign more and more on his area of strength, which is personality,” Sherrill said. “They’re arguing about who is more healthy, and they’re not arguing about how health care should be delivered to millions of Americans without health-care coverage.”
Laura Figueroa Hernandez is the White House correspondent and previously covered New York City politics and government. She joined Newsday in 2012 after covering state and local politics for The Miami Herald.
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