By Sean Davis
Monday, September 12, 2016
Hillary Clinton’s campaign has a problem. A truth
problem, to be specific. No, not the problem of being completely incapable of
ever telling the truth, although that is a problem. The truth problem I’m
talking about is the Clinton campaign’s inability to tell believable lies.
“But why not just ask the Clinton campaign to tell the
truth?” you might ask. “Wouldn’t that be easier?”
Maybe. But these are the Clintons. If you’re a Clinton,
you lie. It’s what you do. Expecting them to not lie is a fool’s errand. But
given the amount of time the Clintons have spent in politics lying to the
public–somewhere in the neighborhood of three decades–they really ought to be
better at it by now.
For those who’ve been living under a rock, people have
been asking questions about the aging Democratic nominee’s health ever since a
potentially life-threatening blood clot near her brain was discovered after the
former Secretary of State suffered a serious concussion that sidelined her for
several weeks. According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Clinton blamed
that concussion for her alleged inability to recall details about her lawless
e-mail server scheme.
Here are a few headlines that captured the rough tenor of
coverage of Hillary’s health woes over the past few weeks:
CNN (Aug. 24, 2016): Clinton’s health is fine, but what
about Trump?
New York Post (Sept. 4, 2016): Dr. Drew loses show after
discussing Hillary’s health
Washington Post (Sept. 6, 2016): Can we just stop talking
about Hillary Clinton’s health now?
Sarah Silverman (Sept. 8, 2016): “I think anyone bringing
up her health is a f***ing a**hole”
The wheels officially came off the bus on Sunday when
Hillary Clinton seized up and passed out on camera. Suddenly, asking questions
about her health no longer indicted you as an un-person who should be sent off
to the re-education camps.
Clinton’s bout of unconsciousness was the catalyst for a
whole host of lies from her campaign about her health. Unfortunately, the lies
didn’t really make any sense to those with the neural capacity to recall the
old lies that were issued right before all the new lies.
Let’s take a look at all the different, and
contradictory, explanations we’ve had for Hillary Clinton’s health problems
over the last week, going back to her nearly unwatchable coughing attack on
September 5:
1) She’s fine.
2) Okay, maybe she coughed a little, but it’s just
allergies.
3) Calm down, she just tripped at that 9/11 memorial
event.
4) Okay, maybe she didn’t exactly trip, but she
overheated because it was so hot outside.
5) Okay, maybe it was only 79 degrees and she was in the
shade, but she was totally dehydrated and stuff.
6) On second thought, she has a really bad case of
pneumonia.
7) Actually, she’s “feeling great” now and not contagious
so we’re going to make a spectacle of her hugging a kid in the street.
8) Yeah, about that not contagious thing: the whole
campaign pretty much caught the plague from Hillary.
9) Hillary Clinton feels so great right now that her
campaign just canceled two days of events.
10) She’s fine.
Not only do these explanations not jibe with each other,
they don’t jibe with the video of Hillary seizing up and getting thrown into a
van, either. When your lies contradict each other and reality, that’s a pretty
good sign that you’re a really bad liar.
Was Hillary’s coughing attack caused by allergies or by a
crippling bout of pneumonia? Did she just kind of stumble, or did she
completely freeze up? Did she get overheated in the shade at 9:30 in the
morning when it was 79 degrees outside, or not? Was she really ill and
incapable of walking, or was she totally fine an hour or two later? Was she so
healthy that she could head over to the home of her newborn granddaughter and
hug a random child on the street, or was she ill enough to require the
cancellation of numerous campaign events? Was she not at all contagious, or had
her entire campaign team come down with the same strain of the Black Death that
required her to be dumped into a van “like she was a side of beef?”
See, those can’t all be simultaneously true. The thing
about a good lie is that it doesn’t contradict your old lie. A good lie doesn’t
crap all over the lie you just told five seconds ago. A good lie doesn’t saw
off the limb that your idiot supporters just climbed up. Pro-tip: if you’re
going to claim your candidate has a highly contagious infection that caused her
to pass out (after exhausting a bunch of other absurd excuses), don’t send her
to the home of her vulnerable newborn granddaughter, then have her hug all over
a little kid on the street while declaring how great she feels, then suddenly
cancel a bunch of her events because she’s so ill. I know politics in 2016 are
insane, but is it too much to ask that our politicians at least try to peddle
some internally consistent lies?
Hillary has a history of serious, ongoing medical
problems, including deep vein thrombosis. Because of her condition, she is
required to take a powerful blood thinner with serious side effects. These
facts are inarguable. By her own admission, her health problems impacted her
ability to remember key details about her work as Secretary of State. They
sidelined her for several weeks. These are demonstrable facts.
Something is wrong with Hillary Clinton’s health, and her
campaign is not being honest about it. And the longer her team lies about
what’s happening and stonewalls simple questions that deserve answers about the
condition of a major presidential candidate, the rumors and the speculation are
only going to get worse. Right now, the only completely ludicrous conspiracy
theory about Hillary Clinton’s health is that there’s nothing wrong with it.
In a nutshell, the narrative her team has chosen for her
is the only narrative that’s not even remotely supported by the evidence.
Something is wrong with Hillary Clinton’s health, and everyone knows it. If
Hillary Clinton’s campaign doesn’t want to tell the truth about what’s really
happening with her health, the least it could do is come up with some more
believable lies.
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