The court documents connected to the indictment of Trump adviser Roger Stone focus on the lies that Stone told investigators about his communications with both the campaign and WikiLeaks, and on his efforts to obstruct the investigation by tampering with a witness. But not so hidden within the document is a hint that possibly the biggest media myth of the entire campaign—the idea that Hillary Clinton was seriously ill—emerged directly as an effort to support what Stone had learned about upcoming WikiLeaks releases, and may have actually originated with WikiLeaks, or with the Russian operation behind WikiLeaks.
The critical exchange occurs in a series of communications between Stone and his associate, right-wing conspiracy theorist and media figure Jerome Corsi.
On July 25, 2016, Stone emails Corsi telling him to go to Assange at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London and find out what’s in upcoming emails. A week later, Stone emails Corsi again, recommending that Trump adviser Ted Malloch also meet with Assange. On Aug. 2, Corsi replies to Stone that he’s been in contact with Assange and that “Friend in embassy plans two more dumps. One shortly after I’m back [from Europe]. 2nd in Oct. Impact planned to be very damaging.” But Corsi doesn’t stop with just letting Assange know what’s in the next batch of emails. He includes a proposed strategy designed to bolster the impact of that release.
Corsi: Would not hurt to start suggesting HRC old, memory bad, has stroke — neither [Bill] nor she well. I expect that much of next dump focus, setting stage for [Clinton] Foundation debacle.
The “sick Hillary” strategy was absorbed and acted on very quickly by both the Trump campaign and the right-wing media. Four days after the email between Corsi and Stone, Donald Trump seized on a chance remark by Hillary Clinton.
Trump tweeted about the subject frequently from that point, including finishing Aug. 6 by claiming that Clinton is “not fit” to be president.
On Aug. 8, six days after the Corsi–Stone emails, Sean Hannity launched an entire week of shows dedicated to “Fox News Medical A-Team” coverage of Hillary Clinton’s health.
As the Washington Post noted in the middle of that week, the Hannity series wasn’t the first time that Republicans had made remarks about Clinton’s age or health. A People magazine cover in which Clinton has her hand on the back of a chair led to multiple charges in right-wing media that she was pictured “using a walker,” and no-spring-chicken Mitch McConnell compared the Democratic ticket to “the Golden Girls.” But those remarks were made before the Republican Party settled on the oldest candidate on record. Following the selection of Trump, comments on Clinton’s age or health went in the cooler. Until August.
In August, following the emails between Stone and Corsi, the story seemed to explode.
In the last week, the baseless allegations of secret Clinton health issues have heated up on fringe news sites, and Hannity has booked doctors to discuss them on his eponymous news show, one of cable's highest-rated. On Monday, Hannity informed his viewers that a photo "which shows Hillary Clinton apparently needing assistance to climb a flight of stairs at a campaign stop back in February" went viral thanks to a prominent link on the Drudge Report. Hannity did not note, as the photo service Getty Images noted, that Clinton had merely stumbled and been caught by Secret Service agents. Instead, he told viewers that the Clinton campaign refused to comment on the new attention paid to the photo, apart from criticizing the source.
These accusations against Clinton’s health would persist through the remainder of the campaign. By the end of August, “Hillary Health Talk” was a regular section on some right-wing news sites.
Rudy Giuliani, speaking on Fox News (and gleefully cited by Sputnik News—not linked), spoke up on Aug. 22 to enthuse about keep the story burning.
Giuliani: All you’ve got to do is go online. Go online and put down 'Hillary Clinton illness' and take a look at the videos for yourself.
Giuliani also spun a conspiracy theory that Clinton’s “secret illness” was being covered up by the media that she controlled.
Giuliani: She has the New York Times, she has the Daily News, she has ABC, she has CBS, she has NBC. She has an entire media empire that constantly demonizes Donald Trump and fails to point out that she hasn’t had a press conference in 300 days – 200 days, 100 days, I don’t know how long – and fails to point out several signs of illness by her.
It didn’t stop in August, and it put such a spotlight on Clinton’s health that every possible sign that she was feeling fatigued by the campaign, or ill with the flu, was put under a media microscope.
By September, polls showed that the “sick Hillary” theme had become one of the dominant ideas of the entire campaign.
The poll, taken Sept. 12 through Sept. 13, shows that eight in 10 (79 percent) said they have heard a lot or some about Clinton’s health concerns.
The only issue that got more airplay, and more attention, was “her emails.” And those polls showed that not only were people hearing about the health issue, but also that it was affecting their opinion of Clinton as a candidate. By the end of September, a month out from the election, 41 percent of those surveyed rated Clinton’s health as “below average or poor.” That issue doesn’t seem to have been polled by major organizations dissecting the results of the election, but it seems clear that this was a major theme for the Trump campaign, a major message for right-wing media, and a coordinated focus that created an image that successfully impacted the perceptions of millions of Americans.
And the timing with which this meme emerged on the right seems to be connected with a plan discussed between the now-indicted Roger Stone and the creator of birtherism, Jerome Corsi. Though there is at the moment no additional evidence to show how this idea spread from the pair through the Right, both had multiple inroads at the Trump campaign and in the media. Their insistence that the Right should begin a focus on this area—and that doing so would support upcoming “surprises” in the WikiLeaks material—gave the idea extra appeal.
As the Washington Post stated way back at the beginning of Hannity’s Aug. 8 scare-a-thon, the claims about Clinton’s health were “baseless,” and the items brought up by the Fox “A-team” were pure speculation.
But the only question now seems to be whether the Trump campaign, Fox News, and other right-wing media were coordinating around a story fed to them by Roger Stone and Jerome Corsi, or whether Corsi was passing that strategy along from the people behind his “Friend in Ecuadorian Embassy.”
Compare the doctored version of Clinton that was being presented in grocery-store lines across the country with the actual news photo at the top of the story.