A controversial author, who once insinuated that Hillary Clinton was a lesbian, on Tuesday said that the current secretary of state wasn’t fit for another White House run because she was “looking overweight.”

“At this very moment that we’re speaking right now, Brian, [the Clintons] are already thinking seriously about running in 2016,” author Ed Klein told Fox News host Brian Kilmeade. “She’ll be 69 years old. And as you know — and I don’t want to sound anti-feminist here — but she’s not looking good these days. She’s looking overweight, and she’s looking very tired.”

ADVERTISEMENT

“It looks like she’s not trying,” Kilmeade agreed.

“Yes, it does look that way,” Klein replied.

“I think she’s going to take some time off, get back into shape. And if her health holds out — that’s a big if, of course — if her health holds out, there’s no question in my mind she and Bill — two for the price of one — will run in 2016.”

Klein’s 2005 book The Truth About Hillary was blasted by critics for being “poorly researched, poorly written, poorly sourced.”

Among other things, the former editor of The New York Times Magazine suggested that Hillary Clinton was a lesbian and was raped by then-Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton (D) when they conceived their daughter Chelsea.

ADVERTISEMENT

“Were there any telltale signs on the presidential sheets that they ever had sex with each other?” Klein wrote. “For that matter, did the Big Girl have any interest in sex with a man? Or, as was widely rumored, was she a lesbian?”

“She was a mother, but she wasn’t maternal. She was a wife, but she had no wifely instincts. She said she was passionately in love with her husband, but many of her closest friends and aides were lesbians,” he claimed.

Later in the book, Klein quotes Bill Clinton as allegedly saying: “I’m going back to my cottage to rape my wife.”

ADVERTISEMENT

Even conservative writers like the The New York Sun‘s Alicia Colon dismissed the book’s “lurid allegations.”

“Mr. Klein’s title led me to believe that his book would be pointing out these little hypocrisies, but instead he grovels below the belt – delving into the Clintons’ sex life, which is none of our business,” Colon wrote in 2005.

ADVERTISEMENT

During the last month, many conservative websites — including Fox News — have mocked the secretary of state for appearing in public without makeup.

“See what’s happening here?” Jezebel’s Erin Gloria Ryan wrote “Honor is connected to a female politician’s looks, and not her work or ideology or politics.”

“You may not agree with a woman, but to criticize her appearance — as opposed to her ideas or actions — isn’t doing anyone any favors, least of all you. Insulting a woman’s looks when they have nothing to do with the issue at hand implies a lack of comprehension on your part, an inability to engage in high-level thinking. You may think she’s ugly, but everyone else thinks you’re an idiot.”

ADVERTISEMENT

Listen to this audio from Fox News Radio’s Kilmeade and Friends, broadcast June 5, 2012.

(h/t: Media Matters)