Former President Bill Clinton was admitted to a hospital Monday afternoon for testing and observation after developing a fever, a spokesperson for Clinton said.
Former President Bill Clinton was admitted Monday afternoon to a Washington, DC, hospital, where he is undergoing testing and observation after developing a fever, his spokesman told CNN.
“The president is fine,” Angel Urena, deputy chief of staff to Clinton, told CNN in an interview, adding the former president is hopeful to be home by Christmas. “He remains in good spirits and deeply appreciates the excellent care he is receiving.”
Clinton, 78, was at his home in Washington when he was taken to MedStar Georgetown University Hospital. He is expected to remain at least overnight in the hospital, an aide said, describing the former president as “awake and alert.”
Word of the former president’s hospitalization two days before Christmas spread quickly among the vast Clinton alumni network. One longtime Clinton associate said the former president’s condition was described as “not urgent or dire by any means.”
Since leaving the White House nearly a quarter-century ago, the 42nd president has endured several health scares.
He had quadruple bypass heart surgery in New York in 2004 and experienced a partially collapsed lung the following year. He had another heart procedure in 2010, when two stents were inserted into a coronary artery.
He was hospitalized in Los Angeles for six days in 2021 for a urological infection that spread to his bloodstream.
Clinton spoke at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August and was extraordinarily active on the campaign trail this fall. He has kept a robust travel schedule since the election with the release of his new book, “Citizen: My Life After the White House.”
“President Clinton was admitted to MedStar Georgetown University Hospital this afternoon for testing and observation after developing a fever. He remains in good spirits and deeply appreciates the excellent care he is receiving,” Angel Urena wrote.
Urena also confirmed to Fox News that he did not have much additional information at the moment regarding admittance or when they expected the hospital to discharge Clinton.
The former president made headlines earlier this month when he recalled the pardon of his brother, Roger Clinton, during an interview at the New York Time DealBook Summit, while talking about President Biden’s pardon of his son, Hunter Biden.
“I think that the president did have reason to believe that the nature of the offenses involved were likely to produce far stronger adverse consequences for his son than they would for any normal person under the same circumstances,” Clinton said.
Clinton added that he read that it was comparable to when he pardoned his half brother, Roger Clinton, when he was president. Roger Clinton went to prison in the 1980s for cocaine charges, according to the Washington Post, and had served his sentence before Clinton pardoned him. Roger was arrested for drunk driving nearly a month after receiving a pardon.
According to the New York Times, “Mr. Clinton said that he did not believe the two situations were analogous, even as he stressed that presidential pardons are often complicated and politically fraught.”
