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, and he said he would soon release detailed information about his health.
Asked by Fox News about the health of the candidates, 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.”
Trump, 70, has been suggesting for weeks that Clinton lacks the energy needed to be president. He has raised questions about her stamina, mirroring a strategy used during the Republican primary campaign when he derided rival Jeb Bush as a “low energy” candidate.
Clinton’s bout of pneumonia, which her campaign did not reveal for days until she nearly collapsed on Sunday, has raised uncertainty about her health as campaigning for the Nov. 8 election gathers pace and renewed concerns about the former first lady’s perceived penchant for secrecy.
The Clinton campaign disclosed on Sunday that the 68-year-old Democratic presidential nominee had in fact been diagnosed with pneumonia on Friday after she complained of allergies and was seen coughing repeatedly in recent days.
Her campaign had said Clinton had become “overheated” to explain why, knees buckling and unsteady, she was rushed from a ceremony marking the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in New York to her daughter Chelsea’s apartment.
The health problem was the latest blow for Clinton at a time when Trump has erased most of her lead in national opinion polls and is competitive again in many battleground states where the election is likely to be decided.
Clinton’s dismissal of half of Trump’s supporters as a basket of deplorables” of racist, homophobic people on Friday triggered a firestorm of criticism and she later said she regretted the comment.
Trump said the remark was “the single biggest mistake of the political season,” which he compared to a much criticized comment by 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney that 47 percent of the electorate were dependent on government. REUTERS
