Hillary’s problem isn’t that she has pneumonia, it’s that she and her campaign will not tell the truth unless absolutely forced to do so (and sometimes not even then). David Axelrod, Obama’s former campaign adviser, touched on this yesterday in a tweet:

Antibiotics can take care of pneumonia. What's the cure for an unhealthy penchant for privacy that repeatedly creates unnecessary problems?

— David Axelrod (@davidaxelrod) September 12, 2016

Short answer: There isn’t one. Clinton friendly media types like Axelrod (who now does political commentary for CNN) and Ron Fournier have been trying to send the Clinton camp a signal for months about the dishonesty but she has not received it.

Consider that the entire email server story is really about Hillary’s “unhealthy penchant” for secrecy. That led to an FBI investigation and 18 months worth of ever-changing explanations to try and excuse it. And now, with Hillary’s “honesty and trustworthiness” numbers already scraping the bottom of the barrel, she demonstrates she has learned nothing.

Why didn’t Hillary’s camp simply reveal the diagnosis Friday? Here’s the only answer that makes sense: They were hoping they could get away with not mentioning it. In other words, they were planning to lie.

And then Hillary felt too sick to stay at the 9/11 event and her camp claimed she had left feeling “overheated.” Keep in mind, they already know she has pneumonia but instead of coming out with that, they lie some more about the real cause of her leaving the event.

Here’s a follow-up question to ponder: If a bystander on the street hadn’t filmed Hillary passing out on her feet would we ever know it happened? Who would have told us? Not the Clinton camp, surely. If some cop or bystander had reported it without benefit of the video to back him up, what would the Clinton camp have said? Would they admit it? Or would they have denied it and implied the person was a crank who was spreading conspiracy theories about Clinton’s health? You already know the answer.

And then hours later she walks out of her daughter’s apartment and claims she feels fine. She and her campaign, no doubt after anxious discussion, decided they still were not going to tell anyone about the pneumonia. Instead, they were going to keep lying. Hillary’s exact words were, “It’s a beautiful day in New York. I’m feeling great. Thank you.”

Feeling great? No. She lied again.

To review, her camp didn’t reveal the diagnosis when it was made. They didn’t reveal the diagnosis when she left the event. They didn’t reveal the diagnosis when she walked out of her daughter’s apartment a couple hours later “feeling great.” Lie, lie, lie and, damn, there’s a video clip of Hillary collapsing in the street. Okay, well, she has pneumonia.

Hillary for America’s communication director Jennifer Palmieri looked at the sequence of intentional lies by the Clinton campaign and pronounced it a minor blemish on an outstanding record of transparency:

We could have done better yesterday, but it is a fact that public knows more about HRC than any nominee in history. https://t.co/Q50oHK85wQ

— Jennifer Palmieri (@jmpalmieri) September 12, 2016

Instead of the most transparent administration in history, Palmieri is claiming Hillary is the most transparent candidate in history. But that’s not what most of America sees when they look at Hillary Clinton. The pneumonia will clear up but the secrecy and the lying that goes with it are a permanent condition.