Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said on Monday that health is an issue in the election campaign after his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, revealed she had pneumonia.
He said he would soon release detailed health information.
“I just hope she gets well and gets back on the trail, and we’ll be seeing her at the debate,” Mr Trump said in a phone interview with Fox News.
Mrs Clinton cancelled a campaign trip to California because of her diagnosis of pneumonia, a campaign official said on Sunday.
The cancellation followed Mrs Clinton’s abrupt departure from a 9/11 commemoration service after, her doctor said, she became overheated and dehydrated.
She had planned to be in California on Monday and Tuesday to fundraise and to make an appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show.
Asked if the health of the candidates was an issue, Mr Trump said: “I think it’s an issue. In fact ... this last week I took a physical and .... when the numbers come in I’ll be releasing very, very specific numbers.”
Mrs Clinton’s bout of pneumonia, kept secret until she nearly collapsed on Sunday, has raised uncertainty about her health going into the final weeks of presidential campaigning.
The Clinton campaign finally disclosed on Sunday that the 68-year-old Democratic presidential nominee had been diagnosed with pneumonia on Friday after she complained of allergies and was seen coughing repeatedly in recent days.
The disclosure was made public hours after her campaign said she had become “overheated” to explain why, knees buckling and unsteady, she was rushed from a ceremony marking the 9/11 attacks in New York to her daughter Chelsea’s apartment. Mr Trump (70) has been suggesting for weeks that Mrs Clinton lacks the energy needed to be president. During the Republican primary campaign, Mr Trump dispatched rival Jeb Bush by deriding him as a “low energy” candidate.
His efforts to raise questions about Mrs Clinton’s stamina mirror that strategy.
Trump’s health
Mr Trump is expected to discuss his own health regimen in an interview to air on Thursday with celebrity physician Dr Mehmet Oz.
Mr Trump, a New York businessman, has made no secret of his affinity for fast food, sometimes sharing photos of himself on his campaign jet or at Trump Tower enjoying fried chicken, hamburgers and a taco bowl. But he has made less information available about his health than Mrs Clinton has.
Last December, he released a statement from his doctor, Harold Bornstein, that described him in excellent health with “extraordinary” strength and stamina. The statement did not mention what medicine Mr Trump might be taking or other details typically included in such disclosures.
“If elected, Mr Trump, I can state unequivocally, will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency,” Dr Bornstein wrote.
The Manhattan physician said in August he wrote the letter in five minutes as a Mr Trump limo waited to pick it up.
Mrs Clinton released a two-page letter outlining her medical condition in July 2015 that sought to reassure Americans about her health after she fell and suffered a concussion at home in 2012 near the end of her tenure at the State Department. Mrs Clinton’s campaign is likely to be pressed on why she did not make her pneumonia diagnosis public until late Sunday afternoon despite receiving it two days earlier. “I think it’s exceedingly important that Hillary Clinton be transparent about what’s going on,” said presidential historian Douglas Brinkley.
“If she gets a report of pneumonia on Friday, they should try to tell the public in real time. The danger for a candidate is if they seem to be hiding their health history.”
Concerns
The pneumonia incident brought up some familiar concerns about Mrs Clinton’s penchant for secrecy which has fuelled a debate about her use of a private email server while she was president Barack Obama’s secretary of state from 2009 to 2013.
“You’ve got Donald Trump promoting health conspiracy theories to begin with, so any time something even lends an air of credence to that conspiracy, it needs to be debunked right away,” Democratic strategist Bud Jackson said.
Democratic donor and fundraiser Bill Bartmann fielded calls from about half a dozen Democrats worried about how Mrs Clinton’s health episode would look. The callers, he said, decided to wait and see how everything plays out.
The health problem was the latest blow for Mrs Clinton at a time when Mr Trump has erased most of her lead in national opinion polls and is competitive again in many battleground states where the November 8th election is likely to be decided.
Her dismissal of half of Mr Trump’s supporters as a “basket of deplorables” of racist, homophobic people on Friday triggered a firestorm of criticism and prompted her to roll back the comment.
The issue also put pressure on both Mrs Clinton and Mr Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, to reassure American voters about their health, given the rigours of the presidential campaign, in which the food is often unhealthy, sleep is elusive and the packed schedule and extensive travel is stressful.
Reuters