This is one of a handful of times in TPM’s history that our reporting sparked a congressional probe.

It’s like a novel and not a terribly good one. It now seems quite probable, if not certain, that the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg on September 18th triggered a chain of events that led directly to the President’s diagnosis and subsequent hospitalization for COVID-19. As you may have heard, a growing body of circumstantial evidences points strongly to the conclusion that the announcement event for Amy Coney Barrett as the President’s nominee to replace Ginsburg was the spreader event that has led to the current outbreak at the White House and in the upper echelons of the GOP.

To date, Trump, Melania Trump, Sens. Lee and Tillis, the President of Notre Dame University, Kellyanne Conway, campaign manager Bill Stepien, Hope Hicks have all tested positive in the last 48 hours. RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel and Sen. Ron Johnson have also tested positive, though their connection to the Rose Garden event is less direct or at least unclear.

I think TPM Reader DC has this right. The real question isn’t when Trump tested positive. It’s the last time he had a negative test result. That seems likely to be the issue with the muddled timeline …

The most important question for timeline is when the last negative test was, and exactly when and what testing platform were positive results obtained.

I am supposing he tested negative Wednesday AM using the daily Abbott rapid test. 50% false negative rate.

In retrospect reports that he was dragging Wednesday Night might explain why Conley indicated he had been sick for 72 hours.

A variety of circumstantial evidence now raises the real possibility that the President was himself the super-spreader at the center of the White House COVID cluster. To know with any confidence we will need a thoroughgoing contact tracing investigation. It’s quite possible the vector is a little-known White House aide who mingled through the crowd last Saturday in the Rose Garden. For the moment we only have information about the high profile infectees.

But two bits of circumstantial evidence stand out.

White House press secretary Kaleigh McEnany announced via Twitter this morning that she has tested positive for COVID-19. But the statement is exceptionally defensive — likely because she spoke to reporters just yesterday without wearing a mask.

Listening to all the little clues and nuggets of evidence and the adamant refusal to disclose the date of the President’s last negative COVID test, I think the piece of kryptonite at the center of this clown show is this: the President went into Tuesday night’s debate without getting tested. Perhaps he hadn’t been tested in some time. Many of the gaps and disconnects point toward a scenario in which the White House was relying mostly on testing those who came in contact with the President as a proxy for testing the President himself. Obviously tests and incubation periods are far too fallible for that to make any sense. But I’m pretty sure that at least to some extent that’s what they were doing. Just how much is pretty key right now.

President Trump seems to be knocking off iconic (and not in a good way) moments in rapid succession now: the Lafayette Park church stunt in June, the slow speed base runabout in his armored SUV two days ago, and then last night’s Triumph of the Will manque set piece with Trump, bathed in light but also clearly struggling to breathe, triumphantly reentering the White House and confidently tossing off his mask. While the June incident long predated Trump’s personal health crisis, each moment shares a common theme: Trumpian efforts to demonstrate strength and dominance which fail because they claim too much, because Trump is in fact weak. And it shows.

We’re hearing reports that President Trump plans to address the nation at some point today — just hours after being released from the nation’s top military hospital after being treated for COVID-19.