The Only Conspiracy Theory About Hillary Clinton’s Health Is That There’s Nothing Wrong With It

Hillary Clinton’s campaign has a problem. A truth problem, to be specific. No, not the problem of being completely incapable of ever telling the truth, although that is a problem. The truth problem I’m talking about is the Clinton campaign’s inability to tell believable lies.

Maybe. But these are the Clintons. If you’re a Clinton, you lie. It’s what you do. Expecting them to not lie is a fool’s errand. But given the amount of time the Clintons have spent in politics lying to the public–somewhere in the neighborhood of three decades–they really ought to be better at it by now.

For those who’ve been living under a rock, people have been asking questions about the aging Democratic nominee’s health ever since a potentially life-threatening blood clot near her brain was discovered after the former Secretary of State suffered a serious concussion that sidelined her for several weeks. According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Clinton blamed that concussion for her alleged inability to recall details about her lawless e-mail server scheme.

Here are a few headlines that captured the rough tenor of coverage of Hillary’s health woes over the past few weeks:

• CNN (Aug. 24, 2016): Clinton’s health is fine, but what about Trump?
• New York Post (Sept. 4, 2016): Dr. Drew loses show after discussing Hillary’s health
• Washington Post (Sept. 6, 2016): Can we just stop talking about Hillary Clinton’s health now?
• Sarah Silverman (Sept. 8, 2016): “I think anyone bringing up her health is a f***ing a**hole”

The wheels officially came off the bus on Sunday when Hillary Clinton seized up and passed out on camera. Suddenly, asking questions about her health no longer indicted you as an un-person who should be sent off to the re-education camps.

Clinton’s bout of unconsciousness was the catalyst for a whole host of lies from her campaign about her health. Unfortunately, the lies didn’t really make any sense to those with the neural capacity to recall the old lies that were issued right before all the new lies.

Let’s take a look at all the different, and contradictory, explanations we’ve had for Hillary Clinton’s health problems over the last week, going back to her nearly unwatchable coughing attack on September 5:

1) She’s fine.

2) Okay, maybe she coughed a little, but it’s just allergies.

3) Calm down, she just tripped at that 9/11 memorial event.

4) Okay, maybe she didn’t exactly trip, but she overheated because it was so hot outside.

5) Okay, maybe it was only 79 degrees and she was in the shade, but she was totally dehydrated and stuff.

6) On second thought, she has a really bad case of pneumonia.

7) Actually, she’s “feeling great” now and not contagious so we’re going to make a spectacle of her hugging a kid in the street.

8) Yeah, about that not contagious thing: the whole campaign pretty much caught the plague from Hillary.

9) Hillary Clinton feels so great right now that her campaign just canceled two days of events.

10) She’s fine.

Not only do these explanations not jibe with each other, they don’t jibe with the video of Hillary seizing up and getting thrown into a van, either. When your lies contradict each other and reality, that’s a pretty good sign that you’re a really bad liar.

Was Hillary’s coughing attack caused by allergies or by a crippling bout of pneumonia? Did she just kind of stumble, or did she completely freeze up? Did she get overheated in the shade at 9:30 in the morning when it was 79 degrees outside, or not? Was she really ill and incapable of walking, or was she totally fine an hour or two later? Was she so healthy that she could head over to the home of her newborn granddaughter and hug a random child on the street, or was she ill enough to require the cancellation of numerous campaign events? Was she not at all contagious, or had her entire campaign team come down with the same strain of the Black Death that required her to be dumped into a van “like she was a side of beef?”

See, those can’t all be simultaneously true. The thing about a good lie is that it doesn’t contradict your old lie. A good lie doesn’t crap all over the lie you just told five seconds ago. A good lie doesn’t saw off the limb that your idiot supporters just climbed up. Pro-tip: if you’re going to claim your candidate has a highly contagious infection that caused her to pass out (after exhausting a bunch of other absurd excuses), don’t send her to the home of her vulnerable newborn granddaughter, then have her hug all over a little kid on the street while declaring how great she feels, then suddenly cancel a bunch of her events because she’s so ill. I know politics in 2016 are insane, but is it too much to ask that our politicians at least try to peddle some internally consistent lies?

Hillary has a history of serious, ongoing medical problems, including deep vein thrombosis. Because of her condition, she is required to take a powerful blood thinner with serious side effects. These facts are inarguable. By her own admission, her health problems impacted her ability to remember key details about her work as Secretary of State. They sidelined her for several weeks. These are demonstrable facts.

Something is wrong with Hillary Clinton’s health, and her campaign is not being honest about it. And the longer her team lies about what’s happening and stonewalls simple questions that deserve answers about the condition of a major presidential candidate, the rumors and the speculation are only going to get worse. Right now, the only completely ludicrous conspiracy theory about Hillary Clinton’s health is that there’s nothing wrong with it.

In a nutshell, the narrative her team has chosen for her is the only narrative that’s not even remotely supported by the evidence. Something is wrong with Hillary Clinton’s health, and everyone knows it. If Hillary Clinton’s campaign doesn’t want to tell the truth about what’s really happening with her health, the least it could do is come up with some more believable lies.