Hillary Clinton coughed a bunch and now Twitter thinks she’s dying

One of my biggest public speaking fears is that I’ll have a coughing fit while I’m trying to make a point. So watching today’s Hilary Clinton speech, which kicked off with a lot of coughing and water sipping, is gut-wrenching.

The incident is also lighter fluid dumped onto the simmering flame of theories about the Democratic presidential candidate’s health. No wonder #HackingHillary saw 100,000 tweets today, many of them linking to videos of the speech’s (admittedly hard to watch) beginning.

If you’re not sure why this matters, certain corners of the internet have been obsessed with Clinton’s health for months, marking up photos and linking to videos that that “prove” all sorts of health problems.

https://twitter.com/TruthBT2016/status/766288587499372544?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

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And they’ve really got a smoking gun here. After all, coughing isn’t something that happens to normal humans. There’s no reason a person who has been using her voice constantly for almost a year, and is on camera 24/7, wouldn’t eventually be caught on camera during a coughing fit. This is a unique moment in human history.

I'm extremely pleased with how fast we got #HackingHillary trending. It shows how many people there really are behind the Alt Right machine.

— Mad Max's Dog (@Mad_Max_Dog) September 5, 2016

Then again, maybe she faked the whole thing, knowing she could bait the alt-right into exactly this kind of widespread nonsense. It’s certainly distracting a whole bunch of people from substantive issues, and will give her a great talking point about the silliness of online rhetoric to use later this week. Great job, internet.

Top trends #HackingHillary & #TrumpCantSwim show level of discourse to expect in debates if @GovGaryJohnson & I are locked out. #OpenDebates

— Dr. Jill Stein? (@DrJillStein) September 5, 2016