What If Trump Campaign is Right, and Clinton Really Does Have Aphasia?

The Washington Post, which among American newspapers is the most unabashedly pro-Clinton and Anti Trump, says "(Trump Campaign Spokeswoman) Katrina Pierson is at it again:"

"... saying Thursday on MSNBC that Hillary Clinton suffers from a medical condition -- dysphasia -- with which Clinton has never been diagnosed. "What's new are the other reports of the observations of Hillary Clinton's behavior and mannerisms, specifically with what you just showed in those previous clips, as well as her dysphasia, the fact that she's fallen, she has had a concussion. . . . it's merely the latest counterfactual claim Pierson has made this month and this campaign. While Pierson's comments have long been controversial, they have taken a particularly strange turn in recent weeks."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/08/15/donald-trumps-top-spokeswoman-katrina-pierson-is-saying-some-very-strange-things-this-month/

But what if Pierson's right? What if the candidate given an 84% probability of being elected President in November (by the LA Times), suffers from Aphasia (often called Dysphasia)? What does this disability imply for us and for her presidency?

As we've reported on this website, Democratic Presidential Candidate Hillary Clinton has suffered what appear to be seizures on camera. http://www.smobserved.com/story/2016/08/19/politics/did-hillary-clinton-suffer-seizure-on-camera-in-june-watch-video/1748.html

The leftist media has ignored it, but Clinton herself acknowledges falling and hitting her head in 2012 in her bathtub, while Secretary of State. She is known to take blood thinners (i.e., anti-coagulants) for this condition

In addition, Clinton is Hypo-thyroid, and takes thyroid tablets--not at all uncommon for 69 year old women.

In the late 1980's Ronald Reagan almost certainly suffered from Alzheimer's Syndrome. This became clear to the public during his second term as President. This affected his cognition, his memory, his reputation and his ability to lead.

And of course, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected and re-elected in the 1930's and 1940's, despite his polio and partial paralysis. He could not walk unassisted.

Today, FDR and Reagan are revered as Presidents go. But it's widely believed that in 1944, months before his death, Soviet dictator Josef Stalin took advantage of FDR's physical and mental weakness, to negotiate his way into Soviet domination of half of Europe for 50 years following the meeting between Stalin, FDR and Churchill. Reagan was not at his best in 1987 and 1988; if you lived during that time period, as I did, you remember all the bad press every comment from Reagan earned.

Is this really the best we can do as a nation? Where is the national conversation on Hillary's Health? (answering my own question, it's on twitter: #hillaryhealth #hillaryshealth. But nowhere else, on the nation's news websites, except perhaps foxnews.com and here).

Katrina Pierson does tell some stories that are clearly not true: That Obama was behind the decision to invade Afghanistan, for example. This doesn't change the fact that something is going on with Mrs. Clinton. As Pierson correctly points out, the Democratic presidential nominee hasn't held a press conference in 2016. Why doesn't she hold one now, and answer some questions from the press about her health?

Aphasia is an inability to comprehend and formulate language because of dysfunction in specific brain regions. Most often caused by a cerebral vascular accident (CVA), which is also known as a stroke, aphasia can cause impairments in speech and language modalities. To be diagnosed with aphasia, a person's speech or language must be significantly impaired in one (or several) of the four communication modalities following acquired brain injury or have significant decline over a short time period (progressive aphasia). The four communication modalities are auditory comprehension, verbal expression, reading and writing, and functional communication. This description, at times, does seem to fit Mrs. Clinton.

The difficulties of people with aphasia can range from occasional trouble finding words to losing the ability to speak, read, or write; intelligence, however, is unaffected.

Aphasia also affects visual language such as sign language. In contrast, the use of formulaic expressions in everyday communication is often preserved. One prevalent deficit in the aphasias is anomia, which is a deficit in word finding ability.

The term "aphasia" implies that one or more communication modalities have been damaged and are therefore functioning incorrectly. Aphasia does not refer to damage to the brain that results in motor or sensory deficits, as it is not related to speech (which is the verbal aspect of communicating) but rather the individual's language. An individual's "language" is the socially shared set of rules as well as the thought processes that go behind verbalized speech. It is not a result of a more peripheral motor or sensory difficulty, such as paralysis affecting the speech muscles or a general hearing impairment.