NEW YORK, Sept. 13 (UPI) — In the wake of Hillary Clinton‘s much publicized pneumonia diagnosis that caused a dizzy spell at a Sept. 11 memorial service Sunday, both she and Donald Trump have pledged to release more detailed information about their personal health.
Clinton’s campaign promised she would release additional information from her primary physician in the wake of Sunday’s incident, which was captured on video as the candidate stumbled, requiring the help of aides to get into an SUV. She has since taken a break from her campaign schedule to recover.
Clinton’s team rebutted press reports the candidate had fainted and initially wrote the matter off as dehydration and overheating before announcing she had been diagnosed with pneumonia by her doctor on Friday and had ignored advice to pare down her campaign schedule in order to recover.
The health scare comes after weeks of innuendo — which Clinton dubbed a Trump “fever dream” — that she is concealing a major health problem. Clinton adversaries have pointed to video snippets and unflattering photos that appear to show her in various states of physical duress.
While Clinton’s campaign has dismissed those criticisms as conspiracy theories, there was no mistaking her clear difficulties Sunday when she conspicuously left early from a memorial service in Manhattan that was being covered by hundreds of media outlets. The video of the candidate left her campaign in an awkward place after weeks of denying the health-related rumors.
In response, Clinton, 68, admitted ignoring her doctor’s suggestion to take time off the campaign trail to get over the illness.
“I’m now taking my doctor’s advice, which was given to me on Friday, that I ignored, to just take some time to get over pneumonia completely,” she told CNN.
“I just didn’t think it was going to be that big of a deal,” she said later in the telephone interview.
Clinton’s staff also admitted they handled the issue poorly by initially concealing the pneumonia diagnosis, then leaving her traveling press corps behind for 90 minutes with no information after the dizzy spell. It wasn’t until midday Sunday that Clinton was back before reporters when she emerged from daughter Chelsea Clinton‘s apartment to make a brief statement before leaving for her own home in upstate New York.
Clinton previously released a broad overview of her medical records from her primary physician. It included reference to various medical issues from her past, including deep-vein thrombosis in 1998 and 2009, a fractured elbow in 2009 and a well-documented concussion in 2012, which she sustained after fainting in her home while sick with a severe respiratory infection. It was unclear what additional records Clinton would release in the wake of Sunday’s incident and pledges from her campaign for more information to be made public.
For his part, Trump shelved weeks of vague references to Clinton lacking the “stamina” to be president and wished her a speedy recovery on Monday.
He also pledged to release a more detailed health report of his own after having received a physical from his doctor last week. Previously, Trump had released a four paragraph statement from his doctor that his detractors ridiculed for its hyperbole.
“If elected, Mr. Trump, I can state unequivocally, will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency,” Trump’s doctor wrote in December, the only disclosure on the candidate’s health the campaign has made.
Trump, 70, told CNBC on Monday he would release the results of his most recent physical.
“People are vying for the highest office in the land,” he said. “People have a right to know.”
