Last week, the State Department released the news that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was taking time off due to illness. Clinton fainted and suffered a concussion during a bout with a stomach virus and dehydration. She had originally planned to testify before Congress this Thursday about the attack on the Libyan consulate in Benghazi, but the State Department announced that deputies would be attending the hearing while Clinton recovered at home.
A spokeswoman for John Kerry, Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, responded to the news saying, “Senator Kerry was relieved to hear that the Secretary is on the mend, but he insisted that given her condition, she could not and should not appear on Thursday as previously planned.”
As it turns out, not everyone is extending best wishes to Hillary Clinton. On Fox News last night, former UN Ambassador John Bolton floated the term “diplomatic illness.” According to Bolton, who served under George W. Bush, that’s the foreign service equivalent of playing hooky. “When you don’t want to go to a meeting or a conference or an event, you have a ‘diplomatic illness,’” he said.
The word from Clinton’s spokeswoman, Victoria Nuland? “These are people who don't know what they're talking about.”
Watch the video for Chris’s take on Bolton’s skepticism.