Republicans ‘swiftboat’ Hillary on her health

“Swiftboating” entered the American language when the Bush campaign or its associates went out and told outrageous lies about John Kerry’s Vietnam service. It refers to “a harsh attack by a political opponent that is dishonest, personal, and unfair.” Hillary Clinton has been under an even worse attack, dating from well before she nearly fainted from pneumonia at a 9/11 memorial event.

I Googled and came up with some stuff ostensibly Wikileaks, but covered with soft porn click bait. Apart from that there was Infowars claiming secret service leaks, and even worse from Natural News:

    Literally Unfit For the Presidency! Can’t Walk, Needs Assistance, Can’t Think, Often Confused, Can’t See, Has Double Vision, Wears Long Coats to Hide Her Adult Diapers, Has Multiple Seizures On Camera, Left in Middle of Debate For Unexplained Reason, Called Donald Trump Her Husband, Massive Coughing Fits During Speeches…

The first link dates from August 15, the second from August 08, well before the September 11 event. My attention was drawn to all this when on local ABC radio the staffer doing a social media update said that Twitter had gone viral with the notion that Hillary Clinton has a body double, and that it was the double who appeared on the street outside daughter Chelsea’s flat looking bright and breezy a couple of hours after collapsing. The ABC staffer was inclined to believe it, because the security heavies were nowhere to be seen. Probably they’d been given an early mark.

But it’s all over the MSM.

Some say she died, and the body double was necessary because her death would interfere with the New World Order.

Then I heard an item on Radio National about an article in The Age citing the stuff in the blockquote above.

Salon says it’s all rubbish, a new low in swiftboating:

    The right-wing smear machine is working at warp speed to convince the nation that Hillary Clinton has brain damage. That is not hyperbole or some kind of a joke. They are literally claiming that she is hiding a physical and mental disability that renders her unfit for office. And they are, as usual, being helped by members of the mainstream media who are simply unable to resist “reporting” such a juicy tale even knowing that it is absurd. And so it becomes part of the narrative, true or not, that will color the rest of the campaign and Clinton’s presidency should she win.

It actually started back in 2012 with Karl Rove who:

    first crudely suggested that Clinton had a serious brain disorder when she fell and suffered a concussion a few years ago which required her to wear her thick prism glasses instead of contacts to correct temporary double vision.

The story was resurrected last month by Fox News. And by someone called Matt Drudge who on August 07 linked to a picture of Clinton tripping on some porch steps and being steadied by a couple of aides. Yes, it did happen, in February, and she just tripped. No big deal.

Parton goes through the whole sequence:

    This confluence of activity didn’t happen by chance. It was planned and executed from InfoWars to Youtube to Drudge to Hannity to The Daily Mail to MSNBC and finally the NBC Nightly News and The New York Times. And regardless of what the fact checks say, a whole lot of people in this country now believe that Hillary Clinton, a woman of great intelligence and impressive endurance, is a brain-damaged invalid. Swiftboat mission accomplished.

That article was published back on August 19. The scene was set, however, for what happened on 9/11. A few days later Parton reports essentially that the MSM went bezerk and talked of nothing else.

    the media organizations could have taken Clinton’s doctor at her word that she is being treated and will recover nicely. Instead, they settled on their tedious narrative of righteous indignation about Clinton’s supposed pathological secretiveness in failing to inform them of her diagnosis the minute she received it.

Her physician says she’s fit and healthy, and Jeff Zeleny of CNN said that he’d covered five presidential campaign and never seen a more brutal schedule than Clinton’s. They could have praised her for her grit and endurance.

Trump, of course has been saying all along that Clinton doesn’t have the “strength or the stamina” to be president, and a few days after the latest event he was at it again.

Actuarial company Bragg Associates did the maths and Trump has a 1 in 12 (8.43%) chance of dying in office, compared to a 1 in 17 chance (5.89%) for Clinton by the end of a two-term presidency.

The firm took into account known specifics, but not diet. Both are overweight and Trump is known to prefer fast food, while Clinton has a healthy, varied diet. I believe Trump has had a heart condition and takes cholesterol lowering drugs.

BTW John McCain was 72 in 2008 and had a 1 in 4 chance of dying. He’s still alive and is running again for the senate.

Crosby/Textor talk about the ‘dead cat’ strategy. If you throw a smelly dead cat on the table, that’s what everyone will talk about.

Meanwhile Vox takes a look at how panicked the Democrats should be with Trump’s current surge in the polls.

It seems young voters are leaving to go to third-party candidates, and Republicans are coming back to Trump. He may not need 50% of the vote.

10 thoughts on “Republicans ‘swiftboat’ Hillary on her health”

  1. The most telling comment I have heard about Hillary is that she is a lousy campaigner but does a very good job when she gets the job. My guess is that she will be an outstanding president who really will get things done.
    .

  2. Actuarial company Bragg Associates did the maths and Trump has a 1 in 12 (8.43%) chance of dying in office, compared to a 1 in 17 chance (5.89%) for Clinton by the end of a two-term presidency.

    Only because the patriarchy is suppressing women into living longer. Bastards!!

  3. Jumpy: If it is any comfort I saw somewhere that women who are doing similar jobs with similar hours to men are living shorter lives than women who stay with more traditional roles.

  4. Back on topic, Amanda Vanstone on Counterpoint talked to one of her regular commentators from the US, who by definition would not be Clinton friendly.

    He felt that Clinton needed to have an independent health assessment, as he says McCain did, setting the standard, to put all this to rest.

    I think it is offensive to demand this from Clinton and not from Trump.

    He also said she bombed out by calling half Trump’s supporters a “basket of deplorables”. He said this was a scripted comment, a big mistake, and a window to Hillary’s heart, also showing the elitism of her and the Democratic campaign.

    Certainly it was a mistake. Irrespective of whether its true or not, you don’t pay out on the voters.

    I agree with John that HC would make a good president. I’ve always thought she was vulnerable as a candidate and expected things to get rough, but not this ugly.

  5. A wide variety of commentators have said HC is better on policy and governance than campaigning. Somewhat hesitantly, may I suggest that may be similar to the Australian politician MT, who I thought was a very poor campaigner in his recent outing.

    Several journalists have opined he was a lazy campaigner: a couple of morning events then knock off at (late) lunchtime.

    OTOH, recent Parliamentary successes may suggest MT could get things moving and his lads will negotiate effectively with Senators.

    Matthias Schwarzenegger has found recent praise; who woulda thunkit?

    Agree with Brian the “deplorables” comment was a shocker. I hope it doesn’t turn out to be HC’s Mark-Latham-threatening-handshake-with-John-Howard-at-close-quarters moment.

  6. [ahem] one of the journalists telling on MT was referred to in

    # item 2, of Brian’s Saturday Salon 17/9

  7. OTOH, recent Parliamentary successes may suggest MT could get things moving and his lads will negotiate effectively with Senators

    .

    With respect, Ambigulous, I have a different view. What we saw was the easy stuff, where Labor was pretty much aligned, and MT’s main problem was to sort thhings out within the Coalition. It’s going to get harder from here on in.

    Meanwhile Trump is maxing out on immigration and controlling the borders. Something about a woman who took a snake in as a pet. Immigration scares seem to be working everywhere politically.

  8. The Atlantic has a story The Death of ‘He Said, She Said’ Journalism and how the press gets to amplify the outrageous lies told by Trump.

    For example, the simply report the Trump now accepts that Obama was born in the US. Then he goes on to blame Hillary Clinton for starting the ‘birther’ myth. I saw him on the ABC saying, “Hillary started it. I finished it.”

    The real story is that Trump is telling yet another outrageous lie, and that’s the story that should head up the reporting and be reflected in the headline.

    Here are a couple of examples of what happened:

    “Trump finally says Obama born in U.S., blames Clinton for controversy,” declared USA Today’s headline. The AP headline announced, “Reversing course, Trump admits Obama was born in the US.”

    NYT had a different approach:

    “Trump Gives Up a Lie But Refuses to Repent.”

    Almost there!

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