President Donald Trump visited Walter Reed Army Medical Center on Saturday, and according to CNN, a person “familiar with the matter” claims the visit “did not follow the protocol of a routine presidential medical exam.”
I was about to say that this White House leaks like a sieve, but that would be unfair to sieves, which are supposed to filter out at least a few things. That’s no slight on Trump, by the way. There literally aren’t enough true loyalists in D.C. to staff the White House without letting in a bunch of leakers.
But does this particular leaker have the goods, or is CNN peddling in fake news?
CNN’s hackiest of hacks, Chris Cillizza, didn’t waste any time jumping on the paranoia bandwagon. The White House said on Saturday that POTUS was in for a “quick exam and labs” in preparation for his presidential physical, but Cillizza claims that we have a “President and a White House who have set a standard of dishonesty and obfuscation.” He also notes that “Trump is 73 years old,” and at his most recent physical “he clocked in at 243 pounds.” This is where I’d point out that Chris seems to be of expanding girth himself in recent years, and has a long history of just being flat-out wrong about pretty much everything.
Scrolling through the mentions, “THE PRESIDENT MIGHT BE DYING OF CANCER OR EBOLA OR SEOMTHING,” might be CNN’s new Flight MH370 disappearance. The network is just that obsessed.
The network’s squeaky-voiced host of the charmingly-named Reliable Sources breathlessly tweeted this late yesterday:
>> @KTumulty says we can be "fairly certain" that the White House is not telling the truth about Trump's trip to the hospital "because those people lie about pretty much everything."https://t.co/yARpjP5nnM
— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) November 17, 2019
So the Washington Post filed a routine story on Saturday about the president’s maybe-not-routine visit to Walter Reed. The next day, Jeremy Diamond filed a story based on a single anonymous source claiming the visit wasn’t routine, but lacking any actual details. WaPo columnist Karen Tumulty nearly simultaneously publishes a column saying we can’t trust the White House on this because we can’t trust the White House on anything, but still lacking any actual details about this story. A few hours later, CNN’s Veronica Stracqualursi and Noah Gray filed a second version of Diamond’s story for good measure, including Diamond’s byline but still lacking any actual details. Finally, CNN’s Brian Stelter picked up on Tumulty’s column in a news cycle circle-jerk of “LOOK AT THE HORRIBLE WHITE HOUSE LIE EVERYONE IS TALKING ABOUT!”
CNN has already gotten two stories, a column, and a wet Stelter out of a single slow news day report on the president’s doctor’s visit, but it’s safe to assume that they’re just getting started.
As to Trump’s health, who knows? He doesn’t take very good care of himself, yet seems completely robust. You could say the same thing about Bernie Sanders, who had a heart attack not long ago, but doesn’t seem to have lost a step. I suppose we’ll find out one way or another soon enough, but meanwhile, the real story is the MSN-DNC hubbub surrounding a barely-sourced CNN report. What we have so far is a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing, as the wise man once wrote.
P.S. Has anyone seen or heard from Ruth Bader Ginsberg lately? I’m told by everyone at CNN and WaPo that she’s fine.
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