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WATCH: Hillary Clinton Has Coughing Fit On ‘Rachel Maddow Show’

   DailyWire.com
Rachel Maddow, Secretary Hillary Clinton -- Interview with Secretary Hillary Clinton in Studio 3A, 30 Rockefeller Plaza on Wednesday May 1, 2019
Mackenzie Calle/MSNBC/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images

After keeping a low profile for much of the last year, Hillary Clinton reappeared on the “Rachel Maddow Show” on Tuesday night — and so did the cough that plagued her throughout much of her failed 2016 presidential campaign.

The former first lady closed her half-hour interview with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow by hacking, momentarily losing her voice, and waving goodbye at the camera.

Clinton began to grimace and clear her throat while discussing the Texas heartbeat law, a pro-life protection that shields unborn children from being aborted if medical personnel can detect a fetal heartbeat.

“I was born before” Roe v. Wade, said Clinton, a streak of gray clinging to the 74 year old’s left temple. “It seems likely” in upcoming Supreme Court decisions “that if Roe is not completely overturned, it’s going to be considerably limited,” she continued after clearing her throat. Referring to herself as “a recovering lawyer,” Clinton surmised that “[t]he Mississippi law may be a more direct threat” to the 1973 Supreme Court decision that first asserted an unwritten “penumbra” of the U.S. Constitution conferred a previously unknown “right” to have an abortion.

She then began coughing uncontrollably.

Maddow attempted to cover Clinton’s coughing fit by claiming she had caused it. “Oh, excuse me,” Maddow told Clinton. “I didn’t mean to jump in there in a way that surprised you,” she said, laughing. A federal judge once ruled that Maddow’s “statements cannot reasonably be interpreted as allegations of fact.” Clinton then reached for something off-screen.

Maddow ended the interview by saying, “It’s a real pleasure to have you.” Hillary Clinton waved goodbye before saying mustering the words “thank you” in a noticeably hoarse voice.

The hacking attack marked the reemergence of a cough that interrupted numerous speeches and personal appearances — and fueled endless speculation about her health — during the 2016 campaign. She suffered from a long-lasting bout of coughs during a speech in Cleveland, joking, “Every time I think of Trump I get allergic.” As The Daily Wire reported, a “sudden coughing fit plagued Hillary Clinton in the middle of her lies as she gave testimony at the congressional Benghazi hearing” in April 2015.

Her most serious health scare occurred as she apparently fainted and collapsed into a van on September 11, 2016. Her campaign alternately explained the episode as the result of pneumonia, overheating, and/or dehydration. Nearly a year after the election, Clinton injured her foot in a fall, forcing her to miss multiple TV and radio appearances.

During the Maddow interview — which was intended to promote the book Clinton co-wrote with Louise Penny titled “State of Terror” — Hillary Clinton called for “gatekeepers” to control the way people access information, decried people who broke the law without suffering consequences, and warned of the possible return of a terrorist threat to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.

She called for stern punishments for lawbreakers. “We have got to end impunity. We have to hold people accountable for their actions particularly when those actions threaten our way of life, our rule of law, our future as a democracy,” she said, speaking of Charlottesville, not her own unpunished use of a private email server that resulted in nearly 600 national security violations, last summer’s deadly riots, or credible allegations that Bill Clinton sexually assaulted Juanita Broaddrick.

She apparently asked for greater regulation of the way Americans consume information. “Because of the way we are getting our information today — and because of the lack of gatekeepers and people who have a historic perspective, who can help us understand what we are seeing — there is a real vulnerability in the electorate to the kind of demagoguery and disinformation that unfortunately the other side is really good at exploiting,” she warned darkly. “I think we’re really in the precipice, Rachel. Seeing people particularly in the Republican Party, but not only there, who truly just want power,” including the “power to implement a religious point of view.” During the 2016 presidential primaries, candidate Hillary Clinton said that “religious beliefs” that oppose abortion-on-demand “have to be changed.”

She called for greater understanding and social harmony. “We all had better be much more sensitive to, understanding and empathetic toward each other,” said Hillary Clinton, whom many believe lost the 2016 presidential election after calling “half” of President Trump’s voters “deplorables” and “irredeemable.”

While she blamed the fall of Afghanistan on former President Donald Trump, she warned of a potential resurgence of terrorism in the region. “There is a continuing need for great vigilance about possible threats coming toward us out of Afghanistan again,” she said.

Maddow appeared to unintentionally insult Hillary Clinton at the beginning of the interview. “We use this comically long set of titles to introduce you — presidential nominee, former first lady, former senator, former secretary of state — but now you’re just a novelist,” Maddow said.

At the beginning of the second interview segment, Maddow again introduced Clinton with that full list of titles, sans the term “novelist.”

You can watch the full interview below (in two parts):

The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

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