Over the weekend one trending topic was Hillary Clinton’s precarious health. See the commentary by my RedState colleagues Brandon Morse and Susan Wright for more. It was fueled by this Drudgereport.com featured story

This story has the left wing media in full-throated defenses mode because, just like Hillary Clinton’s clinical inability to tell the truth, this imagery strikes directly at one of Hillary Clinton’s weaknesses.

In fact, this image has so unnerved the Democrats that they’ve had to call on the services of the Washington Post to knock down the story. From the story titled Armed with junk science and old photos, critics question #HillarysHealth

At the same time, the Drudge Report, WorldNetDaily and a small army of would-be Twitter sleuths tried to build the case that the Democratic nominee for president has serious health issues and only they had noticed. Clinton’s age and health had been subject to parody by some conservative media, but the new speculation was completely serious.

None of the evidence, often shared (or sent to reporters) with the hashtag #HillarysHealth, held up. In every case, a Clinton moment that had been captured by the media was reinterpreted and wrenched out of context. The highest-profile #HillarysHealth discovery came at the American Mirror, an obscure conservative news site with what it packaged as a scoop — “SHOCK PHOTO” — but had been aggregated from Twitter.

“The questionable health condition of Hillary Clinton should be a major issue of the 2016 campaign,” wrote the site’s editor, Kyle Olson. “The latest evidence comes in the form of Clinton being helped up a set of stairs by multiple individuals outside what appears to be a home. The photos, published by Reuters and Getty, show the 68-year-old candidate with aides holding her arms as she ascends the stairs.”

Olson shared two photos of Clinton, shot from behind, being helped as she unsteadily ascended the stairs. He left out the context: The photos were from February. As CNN’s Brian Stelter first noticed, Getty Images had published the photos during Clinton’s South Carolina primary campaign. The photo agency noted, in its caption, that Clinton had been steadied after slipping on the stairs.
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Indeed, for other websites critical of Clinton, the “stairs” photo was just one part of a #HillarysHealth mosaic. It gave WorldNetDaily a hook to resurrect “a July 21 video posted on YouTube [which] shows Clinton’s head suddenly turning and shaking vigorously for several seconds.” That video, titled “Hillary Clinton has seizure/convulsions – tries to play it off making fun of seizures,” was also robbed of its context. Two clips of Clinton bobbing her head had been looped and slowed down, as ominous music and voice-overs played behind them — a combination that helped the clip score 1.4 million views.

The clip wasn’t from July 21, and (as the scrum of media should have indicated) it wasn’t rescued from pro-Clinton censors. It was from June 10, when Clinton, fresh off a series of wins that effectively locked up the Democratic nomination, held a few events ahead of the District of Columbia’s primary. Beat reporters followed Clinton to a coffee shop in the Shaw neighborhood; CNN’s Dan Merica, to her left, asked her about the breaking news of President Obama’s official endorsement. Then, to her right, the Associated Press’s Lisa Lerer asked a question about Elizabeth Warren, whom Clinton had met with as vice presidential speculation swirled.

And he goes on to make fun of people who tried to diagnose Hillary’s medical condition via the Internet.

What is really incredible is this assertion:

The reporters, who had covered Clinton for a year, interpreted her exaggerated head-bobbing as a joke at how she’d been suddenly surrounded — and as a successful attempt at ending the scrum. It did not occur to them that it would become seen as evidence of a “seizure,” as people suffering from seizures do not typically laugh and continue to hold cups of coffee.

So reporters who have become inured to Clinton’s innate Asperger-like weirdness didn’t think there was anything strange about her behavior. Their failure to remark on it is more easily explained by the fact that her press pool is composed on left wing Democrat women who would be very unlikely to report anything negative about their idol. And getting used to weird behavior doesn’t mean the behavior isn’t weird, it only means you’ve gotten used to it. The article also proclaims that “people suffering from seizures do not typically laugh and continue to hold cups of coffee.” I don’t even know what this means as there is a wide spectrum of symptoms for seizures,  the Epilepsy Foundation lists 15 types that are associated with that affliction, and some of those would actually cause a person to laugh spontaneously while simultaneously holding a cup of coffee. (NOTE: I am not saying she has epilepsy only that seizures come with a wide variety of manifestations, some of which aren’t even perceivable by an casual observer.)

Let’s look at this objectively.

Hillary’s poor health has been known for a while. In acting like this was created from whole cloth, a normally responsible Dave Weigel takes a side trip into deception. Hillary has a history of falling on her fat butt. In 2009, she fell and broke her elbow. In 2011, she fell while boarding an aircraft and not under sniper fire. In 2012, she fell at home and bounced off the floor and furniture hard enough to get a blood clot. Last year, I posted on this subject:

We know that Hillary Clinton has suffered from fainting spells since at least 2005. In that year she passed out, presumably sober, while giving a speech. In 2012, she passed out yet again and suffered a concussion. Radar Online has reported that sources close to Hillary Clinton say she has suffered minor strokes and may have multiple sclerosis. The book on Hillary by Ed Klein says that she suffers from depression and migraines.

In Hillary Clinton’s emails we have lots of direct evidence that she is physically not up to the job of being president. For instance:

“She’s often confused.”

And check the date/time stamp on the email. It is 4:59 pm and Hillary was taking a nap.

We know that she overslept a 10am briefing on Benghazi. Yes. That freakin Benghazi.

So much for the 3am phone calls.

Now in all fairness, the image was apparently taken back in February and the story gives the impression that it is current. Likewise the video clips are from June. Having said that, on the other side of the ledger is the fact that, the picture is only six months old and it is an factual one, that is, it is not PhotoShopped. And the video is not doctored. In neither case could the imagery be called “old” in any recognizable use of the word. Both come from the current campaign season.

When you watch Hillary Clinton there is no doubt what you are looking at: a doddering old crone. She is overweight and, given her advanced age and sedentary lifestyle throughout her life, it would be little short of miraculous if she were not hypertensive. In fact, the very fact that her “official” medical record does not indicate even borderline hypertension is a major flare for calling its accuracy and completeness into question. The image shown on Drudge doesn’t show a woman being helped to her feet, it shows Hillary and her rather substantial posterior being hauled up the steps.

Hillary has “released” her medical records but, considering the North Korea level of secrecy inside Hillary’s campaign, there is little reason to trust those records as accurate. Hillary Clinton has proven that she will cheerfully lie to the American public about anything (like “Benghazi was caused by a video” and “I didn’t send or receive classified material on my hillbilly server”) that she perceives as damaging.

On the positive side, if she does drop dead it will prevent the country from having to suffer her nagging, hectoring presence for four long years and Tim Kaine seems unlikely to do a lot of collateral damage to the Republic.