Clinton campaign warns media to tread carefully

[WestVirginiaRebel]

The Hill:

While Clinton responded to a fit of coughing this week with humor, saying she was “allergic” to GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump, her aides and surrogates played the role of bad cop.

 

Campaign spokesman Nick Merrill took to task an NBC reporter who wrote about the coughing spell, posting on Twitter that the writer should “get a life.”

 

The five-paragraph story, by Andrew Rafferty, was titled “Hillary Clinton fights back coughing attack” and reported that the “frog in Clinton’s throat on Monday was one of the most aggressive she’s had during her 2016 run.”

 

Jon Favreau, a former speechwriter for President Obama, asked via Twitter if “anyone on NBC, or anywhere else,” was willing to defend the piece.

 

The pushback signaled that Clinton’s campaign intends to sharply counterattack news organizations that take questions about her health seriously.

 

“They’re trying to work the refs a little bit as they try to push back on the mainstream media’s willingness to pick up on some of this stuff that’s usually left to the fringes,” Clinton surrogate Jim Manley explained.

 

The Drudge Report and other conservative media sites have largely driven the coverage of Clinton’s health, following the concussion she suffered in late 2012 and years before she announced her intention to run again for president.

 

But Manley said the Democrat’s camp has seen the coverage “bleeding to the mainstream media” in recent weeks.

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Shut up about her health, they said.