Bill Clinton Fills In for Sick Wife at Los Angeles Fundraisers

LOS ANGELES COUNTY, CA — Former President Bill Clinton is scheduled to speak Tuesday in place of his ailing wife at two Beverly Hills-area fundraisers benefiting her presidential campaign.

The first fundraiser will be a luncheon at the home of television producer-filmmaker-actor-singer Seth MacFarlane that will include a performance by singer Lionel Richie.

Tickets are $5,000, $10,000 and $33,400 per person, according to an invitation obtained by City News Service. The $33,400 figure is the maximum amount an individual can contribute to a national party committee per year.

Clinton will then attend a $100,000 per couple dinner at the home of Barry Diller, chairman and senior executive of the media and internet company IAC and the travel company Expedia Inc., and his fashion designer wife, Diane von Furstenberg.

Plans for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to come to the San Francisco Bay Area and Southern California on Monday and Tuesday for fundraisers and an appearance on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show" were canceled after she fell ill at a 9/11 ceremony in New York on Sunday.

Her campaign initially blamed her abrupt departure from the ceremony on "overheating" but later disclosed that Clinton was diagnosed with pneumonia on Friday and that she's taking antibiotics.

Clinton told CNN's Anderson Cooper in a telephone interview Monday night that she is "feeling so much better."

"I was supposed to rest five days -- that's what they told me on Friday -- and I didn't follow that very wise advice," Clinton said. "So I just want to get this over and done with and get back on the trail as soon as possible."

Clinton said her campaign didn't publicly reveal her diagnosis because "I just didn't think it was going to be that big of deal."

"Obviously I should have gotten some rest sooner -- I probably would have been better off if I just pulled down my schedule on Friday, but like a lot of people, I thought that I could just keep going forward and power through it. And obviously that didn't work out so well," she said.

Charlie Rose of CBS News asked Bill Clinton Monday if there was any chance his wife's faintness on Sunday could be a sign of a more serious illness. The former president said he did not believe that was the case.

"Well if it is, it's a mystery to me and all of her doctors because frequently -- well not frequently, rarely -- but on more than one occasion, over the last many, many years, the same sort of thing happened to her when she got severely dehydrated," Bill Clinton said.

Cooper asked Hillary Clinton how many times she had previously become dehydrated.

"I think really only twice that I can recall," Clinton said.

"You know, it is something that has occurred a few times over the course of my life, and I'm aware of it, and usually can avoid it.

"What happened yesterday was that I just was incredibly committed to being at the memorial -- as a senator on 9/11, this is incredibly personal to me.

"I could feel how hot and humid it was. I felt overheated. I decided that I did need to leave. And as soon as I got into the air-conditioned van, I cooled off, I got some water, and very quickly, I felt better.

"I felt fine, but I'm now taking my doctor's advice -- which was given to me on Friday, that I ignored -- to just take some time to get over pneumonia completely."

— City News Service, photo via Wiki Commons