Trump says health will be an election issue after Clinton falls ill at 9/11 memorial

Donald Trump says health will be a campaign issue since it was announced that presidential rival Hillary Clinton has pneumonia. The Republican nominee wished Clinton a quick recovery, while promising to soon release details about his own health.

“I just hope she gets well and gets back on the trail, and we’ll be seeing her at the debate,” Trump said in a phone interview with Fox News. 

When he was asked if health was an issue for presidential 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.” 

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Meanwhile, in a phone conversation with CNBC, Trump said “I hope she gets well soon,” while also calling the incident “quite sad.”

“It’s interesting because they say pneumonia, but she was coughing very, very badly a week ago,” the billionaire said. “It’s very interesting to see what’s going on.” 

According to a statement from her campaign spokesperson, Clinton had to seek rest at her daughter’s apartment on Sunday after feeling “overheated” during a 9/11 commemoration event. Her personal doctor released a statement later in the day saying that the Democratic presidential candidate had been diagnosed with pneumonia on Friday, two days earlier. 

Clinton subsequently canceled a campaign fundraising trip to California in order to get some rest. However, Trump questioned whether she would be able to cope with the “grueling” schedule in the long run. 

“It is a very tough schedule. You go from one city, you go to Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Florida, you know, all over,” Trump said. “It’s grueling work. There’s no question about it.” 

With Hillary’s health problems, both confirmed and perceived, one of Trump’s recurrent arguments as to why his rival is “unfit and incapable” of being the next US president, it took only a matter of hours for things to get “pretty aggressive on the campaign trail,” RT America’s host and political commentator Ed Schultz noted. 

“The question begs had she not had the fainting spell today in New York, when was she going to tell the country that she had pneumonia, if she was going to tell the country,” Schultz explains, noting that Clinton will come under “an enormous amount of scrutiny” during the final stretch of the campaign. 

This disclosure problem has even become the focus of some major US media outlets that had previously dismissed the Hillary health-talk as un-newsworthy conspiracy theories.

“Mainstream media hasn’t liked discussing this topic… Now, suddenly, this is a national debate, whereas before it was more done by the ‘fringe’ people associated with supporters of Donald Trump,” Dr. Max Abrahms, an assistant professor of political science at Northeastern University, told RT.