Last updated on July 17th, 2023 at 09:04 pm
Rudy Giuliani tried to push the Trump conspiracy theory about Hillary Clinton’s health, but he was quickly squashed by the Clinton campaign.
Video:
https://youtu.be/o-UW_GqUoMs
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On Fox News Sunday, Rudy Giuliani pushed the Trump conspiracy theory about Hillary Clinton’s health:
GIULIANI: Well, what’s working for her is she has an entire — read Michael Goodwin’s column in The New York Post and you can figure out what her campaign is.
She doesn’t have to campaign. She has The New York Times. She has The Daily News. She has ABC. She has CBS. She has NBC.
She has an entire media empire that constantly demonizes Donald Trump and fails to point out that she hasn’t had a press conference in 300 days, 200 days, 100 days, I don’t know how long. Fails to point out several signs of illness by her. What you’ve got to do is go online. All you have to do —
(CROSSTALK)
BREAM: Which her campaign and other people defending her saying there’s nothing factual to the claims about her health and that that’s speculation at best.
GIULIANI: So, go online and put down Hillary Clinton illness, take a look at the videos for yourself.
The Clinton campaign’s response was a single crushing tweet from Press Secretary Brian Fallon:
Google Rudy and health and you can read about how he withdrew from '00 Senate race against Clinton https://t.co/vkFgjgDBkf
— Brian Fallon (@brianefallon) August 21, 2016
As The New York Times reported at the time, Giuliani withdrew from the Senate race because he wasn’t healthy enough to run, “Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani withdrew from the most celebrated Senate race in the nation yesterday, saying that his health and his still-undecided treatment for prostate cancer were more important to him than his campaign against Hillary Rodham Clinton.”
Rudy Giuliani wasn’t healthy enough to run for Senate sixteen years ago, so he is just about the last person on Earth who should be pushing conspiracy theories about the health of presidential candidates.
Giuliani was quickly put in his place by the Clinton campaign, but the Trump campaign’s attacks on Clinton’s health serve as a reminder of the dog-whistle sexism that Trump and his allies have injected into the presidential campaign. Trump is older than Hillary Clinton has yet to release a full medical history, so the attacks on Clinton aren’t about health.
Trump is using health as a disguise for a sexist attack. Trump and his surrogates are suggesting that Clinton isn’t strong enough to be president because she is a woman. Trump is playing into the gender stereotype that the presidency requires physical strength, so therefore only a man can be president.
None of this is true, but when Rudy Giuliani puts on his tin foil hat and starts ranting about Clinton’s health keep in mind what he is really up to, and why it is especially wise for the Hillary Clinton campaign not to let this sort of attack pass unanswered.
Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
