(THREAD) It's time to talk about Trump's mystery visit to a military hospital in late 2019. I researched this visit for months for my book PROOF OF CORRUPTION—out next week—and it's time to outline what I learned. All this info is fully sourced. I hope you'll read on and RETWEET. 
1/ Everything about this trip was counter to protocol. Trump has *designated sites* for every type of medical encounter, including both preventative care, pre-physical work, routine care, and acute care. He should *not* have been at Walter Reed Military Hospital in November 2019.
2/ Proof of Corruption outlines where Trump should be and should go for every type of care. It also outlines the security protocols for informing those at the location in question and for getting Trump to the location. Again: *every single protocol was violated* in November 2019.
3/ There are also practices and protocols for Trump's attire; for how he travels to the site; for how and when media is alerted; for whether Trump is himself carrying a bundle of docs while on-route; and much more. Yet again: *every single protocol was violated* in November 2019.
4/ The protocol violations suggest—at a bare minimum—two things: 1) that the visit was unexpected and made on an emergency basis, but also, and as importantly, 2) something about the issue made it necessary to go to a *military* hospital rather than Trump's usual acute-care site.
5/ The White House created a cover story for the visit that we learned conclusively—just yesterday—was false. The cover story was that Trump had suddenly found himself with free time, and decided to begin his 2020 Walter Reed annual physical 2+ months early. Again—this was a lie.
6/ It is not merely that experts agree there is *no precedent* for beginning a 2020 presidential physical in 2019. It is not merely that Trump did not complete the physical in anything like the timeframe he *swore* he would in 2019, undercutting his "multi-staged physical" story.
7/ It is not merely that Trump was *ill* between November 12 and November 15—ill, as it happens, with cold/flu-like symptoms consistent with some sort of virus—and therefore would under no circumstances have chosen that period of time to begin an annual exam by military doctors.
8/ And it's not merely that, *even if* Trump had planned a multi-stage 2020 physical to begin in 2019, the *part of the physical he said he was getting* would—under protocols—have occurred within the White House itself, using existing facilities and medical staff already on-site.
9/ No—it's *also* that a book released by a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist just today includes (as merely a tidbit; the book doesn't focus on this at all) that the White House asked VP Mike Pence to be on "standby" in November 2019 in the event Trump had to be "anesthetized."
10/ All this confirms that the story put out by Trump, and the story put out by Trump's press secretary (which she changed multiple times), and the story put out by Trump's doctor—part of a long string of provably lying Trump docs—about a "physical" was in no way whatsoever true.
11/ Some irresponsible folks on Twitter—either with no evidence whatsoever or (worse) as non-reporters who now allege secret sources they won't identify—claim Trump went to Walter Reed Military Hospital in November 2019 because of a "series of mini-strokes" or a "cerebral event."
12/ The claims—which, again, haven't been reliably reported *anywhere*—have superficial plausibility (which they're clearly intended to have in order to get as many retweets as possible) because there *is* much video of Trump seeming to have certain stroke-like physical symptoms.
13/ The problem is that *none* of these observations—however plausible—have anything *provably* to do with Trump's November 2019 visit to Walter Reed Military Hospital. What's happening is that folks are turning personal observations into "reported news" when they are simply not.
14/ The first reason not to do this is that it normalizes Trump's daily penchant for doing the same thing. For instance, yesterday Trump pretended in an interview with Fox News that a crazy conspiracy theory he saw on social media was in fact intelligence he'd seen. It was *not*.
15/ But more importantly, it lets Trump off the hook. We *know* he's repeatedly lied to America about his medical condition, and his medical records—and for that matter, his tax records—and not only has he never paid a political price for it, but media has failed to get answers.
16/ Whatever happened with Trump in November 2019, we know he lied to American voters to cover it up, and encouraged others to lie, and even had his doctor lie. And we can presume there are *national security implications* to that lie, because Walter Reed was his chosen hospital.
17/ Somehow—for some reason—Trump needed to falsely *classify* an emergency medical visit instead of doing what tradition and protocol demands: transparently telling America what's going on with him medically. He failed to do so and media let him to get away with that scot-free.
18/ But there's a *fourth* reason pretending we know what happened in November 2019 hurts America, besides 1) normalizing Trump's disinformation practices, 2) taking the focus off what we *know* (Trump lied on a key matter), and 3) not forcing media to do its job and get answers.
19/ The fourth reason is that—as Proof of Corruption details—the White House got repeated military-intel briefings on an emerging virus threat between November 10 and November 30, 2019. During that period, Trump exhibited symptoms of a virus and was rushed to a military hospital.
20/ We *don't know* why Trump needed to classify his Walter Reed visit and lie about it, but we *do* know he's lying about when the White House first heard about the coronavirus in Wuhan—and we *do* know he can't reveal to America *any* fact that would confirm he lied about this.
CONCLUSION/ We mustn't risk, with this #TrumpStroke fake news—or *potentially* fake news, as we just don't know and mustn't pretend we do—the *possibility* (which media must examine) that the "Walter Reed lie" is about covering up what COVID-19 intel the White House had and when.
NOTE/ I'm not proposing a theory of what happened. That's *not* what Proof of Corruption does—rather, it curates reliable major-media reports. I'm saying that if the military had *feared* Trump's cold/flu was the result of a weaponized virus, he'd have been rushed to Walter Reed.
NOTE2/ I do agree, however, with anyone on Twitter noting that Trump has a long, documented history of hiding his physical weaknesses from voters—as he believes they contradict his implicit and sometimes explicit theory of his own genetic superiority and imperviousness to malady.
NOTE3/ I therefore agree an equally plausible line of inquiry for investigative journalists to pursue is that Trump classified his emergency hospital visit in November 2019 for the same reason he's hidden calls with Putin, MBS, and Xi Jinping—to *protect his re-election chances*.
NOTE4/ None of us doubt—not even Trump's biggest super-fans really *doubt*—that *if* Trump had been having serious medical episodes on the order of "mini-strokes," he'd have sought to hide that from voters by falsely *classifying* them via a trip to Walter Reed Military Hospital.
NOTE5/ I'm using "classifying" here in both an official and unofficial sense. By getting his treatment at Walter Reed Military Hospital, Trump was passively ensuring he was being treated in a classified setting and actively making far harder for anyone involved to speak about it.
EXCERPT/ As many of you know, back in July I published an excerpt from Proof of Corruption that deals with Trump's mysterious November 2019 Walter Reed Military Hospital—and with COVID-19 intelligence and Trump's virus response broadly writ. Here it is: read.macmillan.com/lp/proof-of-co…
