Hillary Clinton brain damage rumor

The Hillary Clinton brain damage rumor is a conspiracy theory that circulated in 2016 alleging that Hillary Clinton was suffering from a worsening neurological disorder resulting from advanced Parkinson's disease, syphilis, or traumatic injury. It originated with photos and videos of Clinton that were "reinterpreted and wrenched out of context" by conspiracy theorists.
Background
In 2012 Hillary Clinton was hospitalized for a blood clot. Two years later, in 2014, Karl Rove suggested the clot had left Clinton brain damaged. Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill responded to the allegation by explaining that Clinton was “100 percent".
Timeline
On August 4, 2016, Australian conspiracy theorist Paul Joseph Watson posted a video to YouTube in which he alleged Hillary Clinton was suffering from a variety of health issues, including neurological issues and brain damage, citing, among other items, a facial expression made by Clinton at the 2016 Democratic National Convention. Within a week the video had received more than 1.6 million views. The following Monday the National Enquirer ran a front-page feature titled “Hillary Clinton’s Secret Health Crisis” while The Drudge Report posted a photo showing Clinton tripping on a flight of stairs, in which it was insinuated the accident was a result of medical issues.
Meanwhile, on August 6, in a question and answer session following a speech to the National Association of Black and Hispanic Journalists, Clinton - responding to a question about the honesty of her public statements during the Hillary Clinton email controversy - said "I may have short-circuited". According to CNBC, the comment "sparked a furor on social media with the hashtag #WhatMakesHillaryShortCircuit trending for hours on Twitter".
By midday of August 8, the second-highest trending Google search term about Hillary Clinton was “Is Hillary having health problems?” The following day Sean Hannity, in his nationally syndicated radio show, suggested Clinton had recently suffered from a stroke, citing alleged aberrant behavior by Clinton. Later, on his television show, Hannity interviewed a physician who concluded that "a traumatic brain injury with symptoms down the road is very, very likely here especially since she had a blood-clot on her brain". A number of blogs and other websites followed by also questioning the soundness of Clinton's health. In most of the cases scrutinized, the Washington Post reported, "a Clinton moment that had been captured by the media was reinterpreted and wrenched out of context".
Specific claims
Several videos and photographs were cited as evidence of Clinton's supposed health issues, including:
* a Reuters photograph from February 2016 showing Clinton being helped by two men to ascend a flight of stairs (Snopes concluded that this claim was a "mixture" of truth and falsehoods, noting the photograph was genuine, but that more recent photos of Clinton navigating stairs on her own locomotion also exist),
* a June 10, 2016 video posted to YouTube showing Clinton at a campaign stop in which it appears she turns her head back-and-forth vigorously for several seconds (the video was manipulated to loop a much shorter Clinton head turn to create the appearance of a spasm),<ref name="wapo"/>
* an early August incident where a Clinton speech was disrupted by protesters and in which Secret Service Assistant Special Agent in Charge Todd Madison (alleged by some conspiracy bloggers to be a neurologist and not, in fact, a U.S. Secret Service special agent) approaches a visibly shaken Clinton and instructs her to "keep talking".<ref name="wapo"/>

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