Former President Bill Clinton says he’s dumbfounded by Karl Rove’s claim that his wife, Hillary, suffered brain damage that she’s trying to keep from voters.
“First they say she was faking her concussion. Now they say she’s auditioning for a part on ‘The Walking Dead,’” Bill Clinton said at the Peter G. Peterson Foundation’s 2014 Fiscal Summit, according to USA Today. “She is strong, she is doing great. As far as I can tell, she’s in better shape than I am.”
While conceding the seriousness of the blood clot that doctors found between her brain and skull, Bill Clinton insisted the 66-year-old former secretary of state has more than bounced back since she fell in December 2012.
She “works out every week … she is strong, she is doing great.”
“I must be in really tough shape, she’s still quicker than I am,” quipped Bill Clinton, who underwent quadruple bypass surgery in 2005.
Rove now denies a report in the New York Post that he said the former first lady, who is a leading contender for the Democratic nomination for president in 2016, is hiding just how bad her injury was.
“Thirty days in the hospital? And when she reappears, she’s wearing glasses that are only for people who have traumatic brain injury? We need to know what’s up with that,” the Post reports the GOP political strategist said at a conference last week in California.
“No, no. I didn’t say she had brain damage,” Rove later told Fox News. “I never used that phrase. But, look, she had a serious health episode.”
Hillary Clinton made no mention of Rove’s remarks when she spoke Wednesday at the American Jewish Committee Global Forum in Washington, and instead stuck to her prepared remarks.
Bill Clinton said Rove’s remarks are just the beginning of attacks he expects to come his wife’s way.
“You can’t be too upset about it,” he said. “They’ll just get better and better.”
“I’m still waiting for them to admit there’s nothing to Whitewater,” he added.
While Rove denies the brain damage assertion, he didn’t back down in the Fox interview from his insistence that Hillary Clinton will be dogged by questions about her age and health.
“This will be an issue in the 2016 race, whether she likes it or not,” said Rove, who was deputy chief of staff in the George W. Bush administration. “Every candidate is asked for all of their health records.”
