As her campaign stonewalled on Sunday over a problem it knew of on Friday, one political analyst wondered: ‘Is there a story they couldn’t make worse?’

Before a doctor’s diagnosis of pneumonia was made public on Sunday, speculation about Hillary Clinton’s health was mostly relegated to conservative corners of the internet. After her bout with illness became known, Clinton’s health became a case study in how she and her team have struggled to communicate with the public, a struggle that is nothing short of Clintonesque.

Hillary Clinton has pneumonia, says doctor, after exit from 9/11 ceremony Read more

The Clintons’ reluctance to readily release information was again on display as her campaign complicated what could have been a simple explanation and turned it into an all-day drip of information.

“Is there a story, real or imagined, that the Clinton campaign can’t make worse?” asked Nevada-based political analyst Jon Ralston.

By turns, while reporters tried to piece together what had happened, her team stonewalled, abandoned the reporters assigned to follow her in public and eventually disclosed – after declaring her “much better” for TV crews – that the candidate had been diagnosed with pneumonia two days earlier.

The scrambled timeline and delay in keeping reporters in the loop is a standard of practice that has become expected, and even synonymous, with the Clintons.

On Sunday morning, Clinton arrived at a memorial service for the 15th anniversary of the September 11 attacks in downtown New York. Roughly an hour and half after Clinton arrived, reporters noticed she had gone. For 90 minutes, the campaign refused to give any details to the press designated to follow Clinton in public, refusing to confirm if she had indeed left the ceremony.

Fox News reported that Clinton stumbled as she was helped into a van. After weeks of frenzied speculation about the Democratic nominee’s health, mostly by Republicans and conspiracy theorists, the lack of facts fuelled theories online.



(((Yair Rosenberg))) (@Yair_Rosenberg) Nothing to see here, just @Wikileaks actively stoking insane conspiracy theories about Hillary's pneumonia pic.twitter.com/M18r8KnEcE

At about 11am, the press covering Clinton were told she had gone to her daughter Chelsea’s apartment nearby, after feeling “overheated”. Near the same time, the campaign suddenly told reporters that there was a “typo” in its original statement.

An aide had originally said Clinton attended the ceremony for “just an hour and 30 minutes” when she felt “overheated” and left to go to her daughter’s apartment. The statement was quickly amended – to remove the word “just”.



The press, who had been kept in a pen at the ceremony and did not leave with Clinton’s motorcade, was brought to Chelsea’s apartment in time to see the candidate emerge. Wearing dark sunglasses, Clinton waved and smiled, even pausing to greet a young girl who ran up to her.

“I’m feeling great,” Clinton told the reporters gathered at the apartment. “It’s a beautiful day in New York.”

As the morning wore on, a video surfaced of Clinton appearing to stumble and lose her balance as secret service agents lifted her into a van. Such footage was unlikely to quell questions about her health and stamina. Her campaign would not then confirm whether Clinton had seen, or was planning to see, a doctor.

Hours later, at 5.15pm, the campaign reported that Clinton had been examined by her longtime doctor after returning to her home in Chappaqua. A statement from Clinton’s doctor, Lisa Bardack, revealed that the candidate had been diagnosed with pneumonia during follow-up evaluation of a prolonged cough.

In the intervening hours, partisans had taken to their battlefield lines and tried to make sense of how a simple story – a candidate fell ill over the course of an exhausting, 18-month election – could spiral so out of control.

John Weaver, a Republican strategist and top adviser to the Ohio governor John Kasich, wrote on Twitter that it was the Clintons’ controlling tendencies that had created the controversy. The “Clinton habit of dissembling on items [is] keeping her from putting this away”, he wrote. “But media [is] giving Trump a pass on lies, tax [and] health details.”

Another conservative strategist, Rick Wilson, commented that the Clintons “can’t help it” when reporters wondered aloud why the campaign would not have simply notified the public that the candidate had fallen ill.

A former adviser to Barack Obama, Dan Pfeiffer, wrote that such illnesses were mundane affairs during long campaigns. “Every candidate I have ever worked for has gotten sick on the trail and worked through it because you can’t take days off in a close race,” he wrote.

Nick Merrill (@NickMerrill) Dear @AndrewNBCNews-



Get a life.



Thanks.



Nick

https://t.co/Qbj6OI6Ypf

Last week, the Clinton campaign pushed back hard against rumors about her health. A spokesman for Clinton, Nick Merrill, told an NBC reporter to “get a life” over a short piece on a coughing attack the nominee had in Cleveland. According to the statement released by Clinton’s doctor on Sunday, Clinton was diagnosed with pneumonia in a follow-up examination relating to her persistent cough.

“It’s going to be something that people aren’t going to be able to stop talking about, so we’ll see what happens next,” James Carville, a longtime Clinton aide, told Politico.