New Delhi, April 5 -- On the Saturday of Easter weekend 2025, a wave of speculation washed across X, formerly Twitter, with users claiming that President Donald Trump - aged 79 - had been rushed to Walter Reed National Military Medical Centre in Bethesda, Maryland. The hashtag and phrase "Walter Reed" began trending on the platform, drawing millions of impressions before any credible evidence had emerged to substantiate the claims.

There was, to be unambiguous, no verified evidence that any such hospitalisation occurred.

The speculation appears to have coalesced around two separate and unrelated circumstances that users conflated into a single, alarming narrative.

First, reports circulated - though these, too, remained unconfirmed - th...