It is far easier to argue that your opponent is not fit to serve if you can provide confidence that you are fit to serve yourself. That’s part of how Donald Trump’s refusal to publicize his medical records followed by contradictory and incomplete explanations from Trump’s campaign, makes for a major campaign moment that has the potential to upend the race to the White House. Fitness now takes on literal meaning and outsize importance in a tumultuous campaign that already seemed to see everything. Questions about Trump’s health figure to compete for space with how Trump’s campaign handled the fallout, for at least the next few days, if not right through Election Day.
One bad health spell could have the impact of legitimizing concerns raised by Kamala Harris that Trump has been seeking to delegitimize. It puts Trump’s allies in an awkward spot in what was already set to be a difficult phase of his campaign. In a measure of how difficult this may be for Trump to muddle through, Harris and her campaign have shown very little restraint.
NEW: Over 250 doctors and health care providers call on Trump to release his medical records
“Trump is displaying irrationality and irritability… Given his advancing age, his refusal to disclose even basic health information is a disservice to the American people” pic.twitter.com/Q8LDnaFkfL
— Kamala HQ (@KamalaHQ) October 14, 2024
They realize that this is a mess of Trump’s creation and that their efforts to make it worse could have far-reaching ramifications for the balance of the race. All of the former president’s reassurance that he’s in perfectly good shape are hard enough to believe on their face even before Trump and his aides’ long history of misleading the press and public on the specifics about his health.
By simply refusing an opportunity for transparency, Trump’s campaign reinforced concerns about his honesty and accountability. The timing also happened to play into a Harris campaign line of attack about his stamina and overall health. When events and actions reinforce those storylines, it’s time to be concerned. Those theories will harden and go mainstream, until or unless the campaign addresses them not with accusations and partial accounts but with solid information and have reputable doctors assure voters that he’s not secretly suffering and dying of AIDS and ass cancer.
Much of the above text was plagiarized and mad-libbed from ABC News’s September 12th, 2016 article “ANALYSIS: Hillary Clinton’s Health Scare Creates Major Campaign Moment.” There may be some errors in the editing, so deal with it. The AIDS and ass cancer part was not in the ABC article.