Speculating about Trump's health is 'dangerous,' but Hillary Clinton's was fair game? Can you imagine what the Trumps, Bannons and Hannitys of the world would have done if Hillary Clinton had gone to an unscheduled doctor’s appointment?

Kurt Bardella | Opinion columnist

When I heard about President Donald Trump's unexpected weekend visit to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, honestly, my first thought was the stress and strain of impeachment coupled with his Big-Mac-KFC diet finally got the better of him.

Instead, White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham issued a statement saying, “Anticipating a very busy 2020, the President is taking advantage of a free weekend here in Washington D.C. to begin portions of his routine annual physical exam at Walter Reed.” Grisham would later add via tweet that “further speculation beyond the extensive & honest info I put out is wholly irresponsible & dangerous for the country.”

But how “routine” was this medical visit? And can you blame many of us for asking?

Trump has made 13,435 false or misleading claims over 993 days, according to The Washington Post Fact Checker. He and his aides have lied about everything from the trivial to important matters of national security. They lied about inauguration crowd sizes, his affair with porn actress Stormy Daniels, and why he fired FBI Director James Comey. This administration has lost any right to the benefit of the doubt.

Conspiracy theories on Clinton's health

It is beyond absurd for Grisham, who has yet to conduct even a single White House press briefing, to expect anyone to believe a word she says. When it comes to speculating about health, Grisham might want to revisit the ghosts of Donald Trump’s very recent past.

In September 2016, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton disclosed that she had pneumonia — a common illness that is the most common cause of hospital admissions in the United States (other than women giving birth). This of course prompted her then rival, Donald Trump, to attack her health and Trump’s smear team of Jerome Corsi and Roger Stone to spread conspiracy theories to allies on the right that Clinton had suffered from “seizures” or had “brain damage”

Before he was running Trump’s campaign for president, Steve Bannon was running Breitbart News, pushing headlines such as, “There’s Something Seriously Wrong with Hillary Clinton’s Health.”

Fox News’ Sean Hannity used his show to run a relentless crusade targeting Clinton’s health. The Washington Post reported on a Thursday in August 2016 that Hannity had been hammering on a debunked story every night that week, summoning "a 'Fox News Medical A-Team' to probe the claim that Hillary Clinton has serious medical issues, covered up by a press that won’t demand her medical records.”

I don’t remember Grisham or Trump or anybody in their camp denouncing Hannity, Bannon, Corsi or Stone for being “wholly irresponsible” or “dangerous” back then.

We should have known: Donald Trump wrote his own medical report. Reckless language makes that obvious.

Trump didn’t seem to concerned with “speculation” when, during an appearance on Fox, he invented a conspiracy theory that Clinton “goes away for five or six days and you don’t see her. She goes to sleep.”

Trump campaign spokesperson Katrina Pierson didn’t seem to be preoccupied by what was good “for the country” when she appeared on MSNBC and made the insane allegation that Clinton was suffering from the language disorder “dysphasia.”

So many lies, can't tell fact from fiction

Donald Trump has given us more pause to doubt his fitness for office than Hillary Clinton ever did. Which brings us to Trump’s unscheduled visit Saturday to the doctor. Can you imagine what the Trumps and Bannons and Hannitys of the world would have done to Hillary Clinton had she gone to an unscheduled doctor’s appointment?

Age is not just a number: Bloomberg + Sanders + Biden + Trump + Warren = 374. What's wrong with this 2020 picture?

This White House is so steeped in lies and hypocrisy that it is virtually impossible to tell fact from fiction. The bottom line is you have to ask yourself two questions, and answer them:

►Is this president capable of lying to the American people? Yes.

►Is the White House press secretary capable of lying to the press to cover up the president’s lies? Sean Spicer and Sarah Huckabee Sanders have shown us the answer to that question is also a resounding yes!

Trump’s unexpected doctor’s visit could very well be an unplanned but routine medical check in an effort to get ahead of his 2020 schedule. But it also could be something much more serious. At the very least, I think Trump deserves the same benefit of the doubt that he and his allies gave Hillary Clinton. None.

Kurt Bardella, a member of USA Today’s Board of Contributors, is the former spokesperson for Breitbart News and Republicans on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Kurt left the Republican Party in 2017 and joined the Democratic Party. Follow him on Twitter: @kurtbardella