AP Reporter Volunteers as Witness For Hillary

Over the last several election cycles, the liberal media has progressively emerged from the closet, supporting its candidates (i.e., Democrats) more and more openly. This year, with open declarations of war on Donald Trump by the New York Times, the Associated Press and others, all pretense of neutrality has been set aside.

The latest instance, a truly extraordinary one, comes from Associated Press reporter Lisa Lerer, who, in an AP news story, volunteered as a witness for the proposition that Hillary Clinton is not too sick or too feeble to be president. The story starts with this video, which some have interpreted as depicting Mrs. Clinton having a seizure. It obviously shows no such thing; Hillary acts goofy, but she doesn’t have a seizure. Ms. Lerer is one of the reporters that you see in the video:

This incident is being cited by some as part of a broader concern about Hillary Clinton’s health. That concern is entirely legitimate. She has refused to release her medical records, but we know that she suffered a severe concussion that required her to take months off from her duties as Secretary of State, and, according to her closest aides, left her “often confused.” Recently photos have emerged of Hillary being helped up a short flight of steps, and being held upright as she addresses a crowd. Then there is the fact that she often disappears, sometimes for days at a time. Where is she? Why isn’t she campaigning? No one knows. Concerns about whether Hillary’s health is strong enough to serve a term as president are certainly well-founded.

The Associated Press wants to head off those concerns, lest Donald Trump become president, so it turned its reporter loose to defend Hillary:

[V]ideo of my surprised facial expression has become Exhibit A in the latest unfounded speculation about Hillary Clinton.

As an Associated Press reporter who’s spent more than a year covering her candidacy, I was there for her appearance. After she ordered herself a “cold chai,” my colleagues and I shouted some questions, mostly about Clinton’s recent meeting with Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

Perhaps eager to avoid answering or maybe just taken aback by our volume, Clinton responded with an exaggerated motion, shaking her head vigorously for a few seconds. Video of the moment shows me holding out my recorder in front of her, laughing and stepping back in surprise. …

Two months later, that innocuous exchange has become the fodder for one of some Trump supporters’ most popular conspiracy theories: her failing health.

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Note how the AP reporter delegitimizes any questions about Hillary’s health as “conspiracy theories.”

Where I saw evasiveness, they see seizures.

The AP reporter next gives her own medical opinion as to Hillary’s fitness to serve:

Much of such speculation about the state of Clinton’s health stems from a concussion she sustained in December 2012 after fainting, an episode her doctor has attributed to a stomach virus and dehydration. During the course of her treatment, she was found to have a blood clot in a vein in the space between the brain and the skull behind the right ear.

To recover, Clinton spent a few days in New York-Presbyterian Hospital and took a month-long absence from the State Department for treatment.

Republican strategist Karl Rove later called it a “serious health episode” that would be an issue if Clinton ran for president, fueling a theory the concussion posed a graver threat to her abilities than Clinton and her team let on.

A July 2015 letter released by Clinton’s campaign proclaimed her in “excellent physical condition and fit to serve as president of the United States,” according to Dr. Lisa Bardack, an internist and chairman of the Department of Medicine at the Mount Kisco Medical Group in New York.

Which means, I take it, that there is no need to see Ms. Clinton’s actual medical records. If Ms. Lerer were a real reporter, rather than a Democratic Party operative running interference for her candidate, she would want to see those records for herself, and have them evaluated by an independent neurologist.

Lerer concludes her vouching for Mrs. Clinton with an attack on Sean Hannity, one of the many who have asked questions about Hillary’s health:

Hannity repeatedly played the muffin shop footage, describing what Clinton was doing as “this sort of twitching thing that she does in front of reporters that was really bad” and then as “a violent, violent, repetitive jerking of the head.”

Seemingly as “proof” that something was amiss with Clinton, Hannity exclaimed: “Watch the reporter, like, pull back as she — the reporter got scared. And she keeps doing it. What is that?”

Fox News never contacted me to ask that question. For the record, I wasn’t scared for a moment.

Can I get a witness? Well, sure–from the press corps! For media bias, we have never seen anything like the present presidential campaign.

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