WASHINGTON — If Hillary Clinton runs for president in 2016 at age 69, her age and health are certain to be talked about.
What had been only a secondary issue, compared with the prospect of electing the first female president, has suddenly burst to the fore. On Tuesday, the New York Post ran a provocative headline: “Karl Rove: Hillary may have brain damage.”
The newspaper reported that the GOP strategist suggested as much at a recent conference near Los Angeles.
“Of course she doesn’t have brain damage,” Rove said of a head injury Clinton sustained after a fall in December 2012. But he maintained that Clinton had suffered “a serious health episode” about which “she is going to have to be forthcoming.”
Clinton had to reschedule her congressional testimony regarding the September 2012 attack on the U.S. diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, Libya. When she did appear, Clinton wore special eyeglasses, with a lens known as a Fresnel prism, that help treat double vision.
Rove noted that media organizations will demand her medical records, as they do for every major presidential candidate.
A Clinton spokesman says the former first lady is “100 percent.” She fell after becoming dehydrated with a virus, suffering a concussion and a subsequent blood clot.
