On Monday’s Good Morning America, anchors George Stephanopoulos and Robin Roberts tried to defend Clinton against her critics while interviewing correspondents Martha Raddatz and Jonathan Karl about Hillary Clinton’s health. After being caught on camera stumbling and practically being carried into her car by aides on Sunday, the Clinton camp finally acknowledging through a doctor’s note that she had pneumonia. But not before claiming her only problem was being "overheated.” White House correspondent Jonathan Karl criticized the Clinton camp for repeatedly denying she was ill and called out their excuses as “borderline deception.”
The show led with the topic of Clinton’s health, with correspondent Cecilia Vega making a dig at the right, for bringing up Clinton’s health before. What was once “the subject of right-wing blogs and conspiracy theories” was now, “a central issue in this campaign,” Vega acknowledged. (So maybe it wasn’t a conspiracy theory after all?)
Stephanopoulos then turned to Martha Raddatz to get her input, since she covered Clinton in the 2012 election, framing it as another example of Clinton’s lack of transparency with voters.
STEPHANOPOULOS: And Martha, this gets to the topic of disclosure as well. She was diagnosed on Friday. That statement comes out, early in the day, says she was overheated, but doesn’t disclose the pneumonia.
He then asked Raddatz how this current issue echoed the same types of responses the Clinton camp gave to questions about her health in the 2012 election:
RADDATZ: When she was Secretary of State, as Cecilia mentioned, very early in December, December 9th it was, she basically called in sick to the state department. They said she's under the weather. What we didn't really know for about four or five days was that she had fallen. They kept saying she was not feeling well. They canceled a trip. They gave no details. She actually was diagnosed with a concussion on a Thursday of that week. Didn't come out until Saturday, tell us about the concussion. Then she had that blood clot later in the month. They basically said she wants to get back to work. She's making good progress. A month later, we see her with those glasses. And they did not disclose those glasses were for double vision. Somebody caught it by looking at the photograph.
But Stephanopoulos had to try to defend Clinton saying,“They made a big point at the time that she wasn't hospitalized.”
But Raddatz did not let that weak defense slide, saying, “Yes, they said she wasn’t hospitalized, but what happens is they bring the hospital to her. They do tests there. They had 24-hour nursing care. But they never, ever said what exactly was going on.”
Afterwards in a discussion with White House Correspondent Jon Karl, Stephanopoulos brought up the low trustworthy numbers for both candidates, which Karl called Clinton’s “biggest vulnerability as a presidential candidate.” He argued that the way the Clinton camp responded to concerns about Clinton’s health was “borderline deception” and “not a good day on the transparency front:”
KARL: [I] mean this is her biggest vulnerability as a presidential candidate. That voters simply do not trust her. Those are remarkable numbers for both candidates. You have roughly a third saying they trust her. Two-thirds suggesting not. If you can't trust her about how she feels, what can you trust her about? This was not simply a lack of transparency yesterday, this was borderline deception. They said simply that she was overheated. They said that she was feeling fine. Then you find out she had been diagnosed with pneumonia. Not a good day on the transparency front.
Stephanopoulos then cut in to bring up Clinton supporters' claim that she was being held “to a double standard” because Trump hadn’t released his medical records or tax returns. After acknowledging that Trump had only released a “joke of a letter” from his doctor, Karl reiterated to Stephanopoulos, the former Clinton White House staffer, that this wasn’t about Trump. “This is about her. What happened yesterday is about her,” he stressed.
