The seemingly bottomless well of Hillary Clinton health-related conspiracy theories offered up yet another bucket of conjecture after the Democratic nominee left a 9/11 memorial ceremony due to a medical event (originally described as her "feeling overheated" and later attributed to pneumonia).
The event produced an endlessly replayed video that showed Clinton being helped into a van by members of her security detail and apparently stumbling as she stepped off the curb to enter the vehicle, rekindling medicals rumors ranging from claims that she is prone to seizures to an assertion that she is suffering from Parkinson's disease:
Hillary Clinton 9/11 NYC pic.twitter.com/q9YnsjTxss
— Zdenek Gazda (@zgazda66) September 11, 2016
That video later prompted yet another conspiracy-theory-within-a-rumor when intense scrutiny of it revealed what looked to be a tubular metallic object plopping out of her right pants leg onto the ground as she was being assisted into a curbside vehicle:
Of course, it wasn't possible to determine from the video whether the object in question actually fell out of her pants leg or was dropped by someone else around her, much less identify exactly what that "mysterious" object might have been. That didn't prevent a wide range of speculation, however, everything from claims that the curious incident proves Hillary Clinton wears leg or hip braces to suggestions that it demonstrates she is really a cyborg or robot with a metal endoskeleton:
OMG Watch #ClintonCollapse, her legs buckle & some piece of metal flies out her pantleg‼️ https://t.co/YHvbJjdbA5
— Deplorable FOR TRUMP (@iowa_trump) September 11, 2016
Other suggestions (veering from the plausible to the absurd) about what the object might have been included:
- car keys
- a microphone
- an inhaler
- a phaser or communicator
- a lipstick
- a carabiner
- an ostomy bag clip
- a catheter
- a lighter
- a thumb drive (holding either deleted Benghazi e-mails or Donald Trump's tax returns)
- a mind control receiver
- a subdermal microchip
- a (Diazepam) pen
- a religious medal
- a crack pipe