Newsweek senior writer Kurt Eichenwald didn't mince words when it came to his thoughts in Rudy Giuliani and Sean Hannity spreading conspiracy theories about Hillary Clinton's health on Fox. Some of you may recall the op-ed Eichenwald wrote for his publication recently, where he told Hannity he needed to apologize to those with epilepsy, or burn in hell.
Eichenwald was just as harsh, minus the cursing of course during this interview on MSNBC's AM Joy and he took the Trump campaign to task for jumping on the conspiracy theory bandwagon as well. Joy-Ann Reid played a portion of Rudy Giuliani's interview on Fox News Sunday from earlier the same morning, and Sean Hannity playing a clip of Clinton with no sound and claiming she was having a seizure and asked Eichenwald to weigh in.
REID: When you see that video and see then see Sean Hannity and Giuliani and these others portray that as a seizure, what do you make of it?
EICHENWALD: I make it that they are a bunch of amoral sociopaths. I mean, I have epilepsy. I know what a seizure is like. That is not a seizure an attempt to try and make it seem like one, an attempt to try and make it even worse, seem like somebody who has seizures is unfit for public office is the kind of thing you would expect to hear about in the late 19th century.
These people owe an enormous apology. Now i wrote -- the piece i wrote for Newsweek, as you know, had a lot of lines in it that you can't say on national television, because my editors recognized that I had a right to be incredibly angry, and I was. And since I wrote that, I’ve been hearing from lots of people with epilepsy, thanking me, because they were infuriated that this condition that, that drop-outs like Sean Hannity were misrepresenting what this condition was, for the purpose of trying to make a political point, and a ridiculous political point.
REID: But it is not just Sean Hannity. it is actually -- you could take this closer inside of the campaign. let's listen to Katrina Pierson who is the national spokesperson for the Trump campaign attempting to diagnose Hillary Clinton with dysphasia .
Cue Katrina Pierson's shameless display from earlier this week.
REID: Dr. Katrina Pierson there attempting to make a diagnosis as a guest on a television show. Dysphasia, or actually aphasia is an impairment of language, affecting the production or comprehension of speech and the ability to read or write. It is almost always due to the brain injury, most commonly from a stroke. There being no evidence that Hillary Clinton had any of that happen, or that she suffers from this condition, the idea of naming a condition they think she has, what do you make of that?
EICHENWALD: I think it is a sign of desperation and a sign of what kind of despicable people we're dealing with here. I mean look, they may think it is smart politics to play into the conspiracy theorists. Look at how angry I am. Look how angry, the phone calls I’m getting from people who have these conditions are.
You know, you've got 20 million people in this country who have epilepsy. Well, any of them who have had what is the kind, you know, a seizure of any magnitude, is furious... because it is being misrepresented. It is putting people who do have these problems in danger. It is also communicating that people who have these problems are somehow unfit. Well, way to go, guys! You know, there are real people whose votes you're losing and the conspiracy theorists were going to vote for you any way.
After Reid asked Eichenwald about Trump's ridiculous remarks about how “astonishingly excellent” his own health testing results supposedly were, Eichenwald wrapped things up with some digs on the candidate himself.
EICHENWALD: The letter, it was the most nonsensical thing I’ve ever seen. I mean, any doctor I’ve shown it to laughs. For example, just to say, everything was a positive result. Well that means he has every disease he was tested for. You know, that is not a medical term. If you are testing for cancer, and you test positive for cancer, you're going into chemotherapy. The letter was not anything. It didn't tell you anything about Donald Trump.
I mean, if we want to play the role of conspiracy theory, let's do reality. Donald Trump has a major history in his family of Alzheimer’s. There is a test that can be done to determine if there is a protein you have that demonstrates or indicates a proclivity to that condition. Well why don't we have that? And you know, the fact of the matter is, symptoms of Alzheimer’s include an inability to stay on track, meandering off into different topics, being erratic. Well we're hearing all of those words about Donald Trump.
We should get real medical records from Donald Trump before they start slamming the real medical records that have been released from Hillary Clinton.
REID: Yeah. I think we'll put those in line with the tax returns. We'll get all of that in due course.
None of us, including Joy-Ann Reid are holding our breath for either of them.
