President Trump’s campaign is calling on CNN to fire political analyst Joe Lockhart after the White House deputy press secretary for former President Clinton stoked suspicion on Twitter about Trump having suffered a stroke.
“CNN should fire Joe Lockhart, a lifetime failure who thought it was a great idea for fellow loser Michael Dukakis to put on that stupid helmet, for knowingly pushing a conspiracy theory about President Trump’s health,” the Trump campaign said in a statement.
“Great political expert that he is, Lockhart single-handedly sank the John Kerry campaign and now he’s doing the same to Joe Biden from a distance. If another CNN employee said similar things about Barack Obama they’d be fired immediately, so the same standard should be applied here. That is, of course, unless CNN is complicit in the smear campaign in order to level the playing field against Joe Biden, somebody who truly has lost a step,” the campaign added.
CNN has not responded to a request for comment.
Lockhart took to Twitter on Tuesday to ask, “Did @realDonaldTrump have a stroke which he is hiding from the American public?”
In a subsequent tweet, Lockhart denied spreading misinformation, saying he was asking a question based on a book from New York Times correspondent Michael Schmidt, who reported that Trump made a visit to the hospital last year and Vice President Pence was put on standby in case he had to assume emergency powers.
“No reporting just a question,” Lockhart said over Twitter.
Trump on Tuesday denied making an emergency visit to the hospital, saying he did not suffer “a series of mini-strokes.”
“It never ends!” Trump tweeted. “Now they are trying to say that your favorite President, me, went to Walter Reed Medical Center, having suffered a series of mini-strokes. Never happened to THIS candidate – FAKE NEWS.”
Schmidt’s book does not say anything about strokes but says Pence was on standby because Trump was undergoing anesthesia during an unscheduled visit to the Walter Reed Medical Center.