Trump Attacks Clinton for Coughing, Not Having a “Presidential Look”

Donald Trump, the Republican Party’s nominee for president, has of late become fixated on Hillary Clinton’s lack of a certain something—an undefined je ne sais quoi—that, he said, left her looking less than presidential.

“Does she look presidential, fellas? Give me a break,” he asked a crowd in Cleveland on Monday, declining to elaborate as to how the former secretary of state’s appearance might differ from his own. “I just don’t think she has a presidential look,” he explained later, in an interview with ABC’s David Muir that aired Tuesday. “And I think you need a presidential look, you have to get the job done.”
The G.O.P. nominee did not clarify his comment, or his many previous remarks about her “stamina,” but eluded to a dearth of some mysterious essence that prevented Clinton from being a good diplomat, as he proved himself to be last week when he made a surprise trip to Mexico. “I think if she went to Mexico, I think she would have had a total failure; we had a big success.”
“I’m talking about in general,” Trump added, when asked whether he was talking about Clinton’s aesthetics.
Trump, whose doctor spent just five minutes writing a letter declaring he would be the healthiest president in history, has found fault with the appearance of some of his rivals before. “Look at that face!” Trump said of Carly Fiorina, in an interview with Rolling Stone last year. “Would anyone vote for that? Can you imagine that, the face of our next president. . . . I mean, she’s a woman, and I’m not s’posedta say bad things, but really, folks, come on. Are we serious?”
The billionaire’s inscrutable issues with Clinton are more than just cosmetic, however. On Tuesday, Trump went a step further in defining what “look” might befit a president, limiting the criteria to people who don’t cough. After Clinton suffered an extensive coughing fit in Cleveland on Monday (“Every time I think about Trump I get allergic,” she joked), Trump accused the media of ignoring questions about her health. “Mainstream media never covered Hillary’s massive ‘hacking’ or coughing attack, yet it is #1 trending,” he tweeted. “What’s up?”