The inside story of Clinton’s sick day The ailing Democratic nominee vows to release records, return to the trail this week.

Hillary Clinton never lost consciousness, and never stopped talking on her phone — and never put anyone else in danger — after her near swoon at a Sept. 11 memorial on Sunday in New York, according to accounts offered by several people close to the candidate.

The near-fainting spell, according to Clinton's staff, is a greater political problem than a physical one — and the centerpiece of its Monday pushback strategy was a vow to release a far more detailed medical history of the 68-year-old candidate that proves she suffers from no previously undisclosed conditions.


Clinton’s pneumonia isn’t severe, according to two people with direct knowledge of the candidate’s condition, and she is expected to return to the campaign trail as early as this week. The real issue is chronic dehydration, exacerbated by her lung problem and Clinton’s reluctance to drink water, which has become a source of tension with her staff.

“She won’t drink water, and you try telling Hillary Clinton she has to drink water,” said a person in her orbit – who described a frenzied rehydration mission that included multiple bottles of water and Gatorade.

On Monday, Bill Clinton told Charlie Rose that his wife has suffered from similar bouts over the years —an account supported by at least one of her staffers interviewed by POLITICO. “Rarely, on more than one occasion, over the last many, many years, the same sort of thing’s happened to her when she got severely dehydrated, and she’s worked like a demon, as you know, as secretary of state, as a senator, and in the years since,” Clinton said.

On Sunday, Clinton began showing signs of light-headedness standing at the Sept. 11 memorial service next to New York Sens. Charles Schumer — who on Monday disclosed that he too just got over a bout of pneumonia — and Kirsten Gillibrand, the sources said, and they flagged aides to get her water. After a few minutes, the candidate and her staff determined that she needed to get out of the heat and headed to a pick-up area, where she was seen — and filmed – stumbling into her van in a near swoon.

But the two Clinton confidantes told POLITICO that Clinton, drinking water while sitting in the air-conditioned backseat, quickly recovered and began making calls to tell staff and family what had happened, and almost immediately began assessing the political fallout.

By the time her motorcade arrived at daughter Chelsea’s apartment, she was feeling better — and was given a big bottle of Gatorade. She didn’t rest much while there, one of the sources said, but played with her grandchildren and made more phone calls. Clinton was ready to head back to her house in Chappaqua after about an hour at the apartment — but she had to remain in place to wait for her traveling press pool — which had been penned in at ground zero — to arrive so they could witness her walk out to an SUV, under her own steam.

Even before the episode, Clinton had suffered from a persistent hacking cough — and so did several members of her top staff, including Communications Director Jennifer Palmieri, who was briefly hospitalized with a severe upper respiratory infection and dehydration last month.

The campaign also moved to shut down reports by right-wing websites speculating that Clinton may have infected her grandkids Charlotte and Aidan and a little girl she hugged on a Manhattan sidewalk on Sunday.

“She is not contagious, she’s been told by her doctors,” Clinton press secretary Brian Fallon said during a round of TV interviews. “She was playing with her grandkids yesterday and they don’t have anything to worry about because she’s not contagious at this point.”

Fallon added that members of the senior staff knew about the Friday diagnosis and that other campaign members were notified shortly after.

The confusion about Clinton's condition wasn't limited to people on the outside. Clinton's inner circle — Huma Abedin, Cheryl Mills and her family — knew about the pneumonia diagnosis first. Just when others learned is still an open question: During an appearance on MSNBC Monday afternoon Robby Mook refused to say that he knew about the candidate's condition on Friday, as Fallon suggested.

That rosy portrait of Clinton’s health – reinforced by a Sunday note from Clinton’s personal physician Lisa Bardack — was a tough sell outside the Clinton camp, where trust in such pronouncements is often met with skepticism. Even as the campaign hit the talking points, Twitter filled up with conspiracy theories about the “real” source of the episode, which conservatives suggest stems from a serious head injury Clinton suffered in late 2012.

But reporters and even some Clinton supporters questioned the campaign’s hours-long stonewall of reporters on Sunday — which stoked suspicions that there was more to the health scare than a spokesman’s original claim that the former secretary of state had simply been “overheated.”

“Antibiotics can take care of pneumonia. What's the cure for an unhealthy penchant for privacy that repeatedly creates unnecessary problems?” tweeted David Axelrod, President Barack Obama’s former top campaign strategist.

Clinton’s aides moved to stem the tide of skepticism — and to counter Donald Trump, who on Monday vowed to release the results of his own physical exam — by announcing that she would soon make public a more detailed version of a two-page clean bill of health issued by Bardack last year.

"We'll release additional medical information about Hillary Clinton,” Fallon said during one of several appearances on cable TV meant to reassure nervous Democrats and assuage prying-eyed reporters. "We have been in touch with her physician this morning to get the materials together. We'll release that to further put to rest any lingering concerns about what you saw yesterday," he said of footage of a wobbly-looking Clinton struggling to get into a van that was widely circulated on Sunday.

Clinton's campaign also issued a partial mea culpa, with Palmieri tweeting in response to Axelrod's burn, "We could have done better yesterday, but it is a fact that public knows more about HRC than any nominee in history."

Fallon also provided a few more details about the incident, saying Clinton did not lose consciousness at any point. "I think as she was getting into the vehicle she got a little bit dizzy. She was helped into the vehicle but immediately upon being seated there, she was talking to staff and making calls," he said.

Clinton canceled plans to travel to California on Monday and instead will teleconference in to a fundraiser.

Fallon said that pneumonia is the extent of Clinton's condition. "I can attest that her doctor stated that there was nothing here in terms of anything that was caused by what happened in 2012. So all of that, I think, will be indicated in the further material that we are going to release this week."

In an afternoon interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, Fallon said Clinton is “resting comfortably” and predicted that she should be back on the campaign trail by mid-week.

“At her doctor's advice she changed her schedule, taking a couple days to rest and the staff prevailed upon her to do that,” he said. “I think by the middle of the week she'll be out there campaigning as aggressively as ever.”

Fallon insisted that Clinton was following her doctor’s orders, but added that if it were up to her she would have carried on with her usual schedule.

“Up to her, she would have pressed on. That's the Hillary Clinton that people saw as secretary of state in terms of traveling the country at a break-neck pace representing us abroad. She fits more into it than most Americans,” he said.

Blitzer went on to ask Fallon whether Clinton should have told Americans about her diagnosis of pneumonia, which she received from a personal doctor on Friday.

“As soon as yesterday happened, Wolf, and her doctor visited her again and confirmed that what caused her to have to leave the event early on Sunday was related to the pneumonia and dehydration,” he said. “At that point we did make the decision to change the schedule, and we put out a statement in the doctor's name indicating the condition she was in.”

