Hillary Clinton's health is now emerging as an issue during this presidential election cycle, host J.D. Hayworth concluded Monday night on Newsmax TV's "Newsmax Prime," during a segment with presidential historian Craig Shirley and pollster John Zogby.
"The line about Hillary Clinton not being physically up to the task I think was gratuitous; I would have not included that," Shirley told Newsmax in reference to Donald Trump's Youngstown, Ohio policy speech. "A lot of the eligible commentators will latch on to that and use that to try and deter attention from the speech."
Trump, laying out his plan to defeat ISIS, whose growth he has pinned on the Obama administration, said Mrs. Clinton does not have the "mental" or "physical" ability to make the decisions to destroy the terror group and its ongoing spread throughout the world.
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Fox News, the Drudge Report, and other conservative sites on the Internet have recently raised questions about Clinton's medical fitness to be president, as chronicled by U.S. News and World Report.
The timing was right to change the narrative of Trump's fledgling campaign, Zogby said in disagreement with Shirley.
"I am not sure the mainstream [media] is ready to pick up on [the mention of Hillary's questionable health], although maybe they should," Zogby, director at the Keenan Center for Entrepreneurship and Ethics at Lemoyne College, told Newsmax. "You're just starting to get leaked out some more specified stories about Hillary Clinton's health.
"And if they are anywhere near as serious as some of the blogs are suggesting, it could be a game-changer. Given where the Trump campaign has been — which is mired in some problems — it was probably a decent segue for him to get into that subject."
Craig Shirley, author of "The Last Act: The Final Years and Emerging Legacy of Ronald Reagan," praised Trump's speech Monday, giving it a B-plus on content and delivery.
"I think for the first time Donald Trump may have delivered a speech in which he finally broke through and gotten the attention of the American people," Shirley said. "It was concise. It was well written. It was well delivered."
Zogby, author of "We are Many, We are One: Neo-Tribes and Tribal Analytics in 21st Century America," said there is still time for a Trump revival in the polls and pre-election race.
"They shouldn't go about measuring the drapes at the White House yet," Zogby, who also authored the bestseller "First Globals," said. "Donald Trump is down, but definitely not out."
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