Livni: ‘Hysteria’ over Clinton stumble ‘wouldn’t apply to a man’

Tzipi Livni, a former foreign minister of Israel, said the intense media focus on Hillary Clinton’s health after she stumbled in public amounted to “hysteria” and would not be applied to a man.

“I don’t know what Hillary Clinton has and I don’t intend to engage with the US elections,” Livni, a leading figure in the opposition who almost became prime minister in 2008-9, wrote Monday on her (Hebrew) Facebook page. “But nonetheless it’s clear to me that if a man underwent a similar incident, it would not be treated with the same hysteria. It’s amazing in an era where everything appears so close and unmediated, we still can’t accept that leaders are people, too.”

Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee, left a 9/11 memorial service in New York on Sunday after feeling faint and was helped into a van by Secret Service agents, appearing to stumble as she entered.

Her campaign later said she was being treated for pneumonia with antibiotics. Her doctor, Lisa Bardack, said Clinton had overheated during the campaign and became dehydrated.

Clinton later Sunday emerged from her daughter’s Manhattan apartment and said, “I’m feeling great.”

The stumble received blanket news coverage.

Clinton’s Republican rival, Donald Trump, has sought to make an issue of his stamina vs. hers in the election, and conspiracy theories about her ailments have circulated on right-wing media, with some mainstream outlets examining them as well.