Surprise! Jake Tapper sided with President Donald Trump Wednesday in berating journalists who are “irresponsibly” theorizing about first lady Melania Trump’s health and whereabouts following her surgery — even though the CNN host’s own network avidly stokes such speculation.

Melania Trump underwent kidney surgery May 14 with absolutely no advance public warning. White House officials protected her privacy and released scant information about her recovery during her five-day hospital stay. Melania Trump kept a low profile since her return from the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.

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The first lady made no official appearances until this week when she joined her husband Monday to pay tribute to Gold Star families, and on Wednesday for a hurricane briefing at Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) headquarters.

It did not take long for media outlets and pundits to speculate over Melania Trump’s whereabouts as conspiracy theories flourished. Trump took to Twitter Wednesday to defend his wife from the rumor mill and lambaste media speculation.

“The Fake News Media has been so unfair, and vicious, to my wife and our great First Lady, Melania. During her recovery from surgery they reported everything from near death, to facelift, to left the W.H. (and me) for N.Y. or Virginia, to abuse. All Fake, she is doing really well!” Trump tweeted.

The president added, “Four reporters spotted Melania in the White House last week walking merrily along to a meeting. They never reported the sighting because it would hurt the sick narrative that she was living in a different part of the world, was really ill, or whatever. Fake News is really bad!”

Tapper retweeted Trump’s first tweet, writing, “a) He’s not wrong that journalists irresponsibly, and without evidence, publicly speculated about all sorts of hypotheticals. Doing that hurts all journalists.”

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Although Tapper sided with Trump and came to the first lady’s defense, he also used to opportunity to rip the president.

“b) Yes of course he does the same thing all the time — smearing and lying. That doesn’t mean we lower our standard,” Tapper added.

Although Tapper had no qualms about defending Melania Trump amid an onslaught of conspiracy theories, his network at large actively participated in fueling them.

CNN posted a story last week called “Melania Trump hasn’t appeared in public for 20 days.” A CNN video wondered, “Where is Melania?” While covering the FEMA briefing Wednesday, CNN included the chyron, “Melania Trump appears before media for 1st time in 26 days.”

The Media Research Center (MRC) said Wednesday that CNN aired 25 segments speculating about Melania Trump’s health and whereabouts from May 30 to June 5. Even though CNBC’s Eamon Javers tweeted on May 30 that he had seen Melania Trump at the White House with his own eyes, CNN felt the need to gossip about the first lady more than two dozen times afterward.

Melania Trump tweeted on May 30, “I see the media is working overtime speculating where I am & what I’m doing. Rest assured, I’m here at the @WhiteHouse w my family, feeling great, & working hard on behalf of children & the American people.”

Nevertheless, CNN International host John Vause said, “There’s talk that maybe this isn’t exactly a Tweet from the First Lady, maybe it’s Donald Trump pretending to be the First Lady.”

CNN’s “New Day” co-host John Berman complained Monday, “We’re told she will be at a White House event tonight, but we won’t see her. The event is closed to the press.”

CNN’s “Reliable Sources” host Brian Stelter lashed out at the “pro-Trump media” in a June 4 newsletter for their “new attack line” against CNN.

“They’re bemoaning the ‘where’s Melania?’ news cycle,” Stelter wrote. “The First Lady’s office is aligning itself with the right-wing media critics, saying the press corps is ‘rabid.'”

Stelter also tweeted Sunday a graphic of Melania Trump highlighting that she was “last seen” on May 10, complete with a calendar peppered with question marks over the individual days she had “disappeared.”

“If any First Lady ‘disappeared,’ you’d ‘want to know where she is.’ Here’s our @CNN discussion,” Stelter tweeted.

Indeed, Melania Trump’s spokeswoman, Stephanie Grisham, blasted the “rabid press corps” for their rampant gossip in a statement Monday to Fox News.

“Mrs. Trump has always been a strong and independent woman who puts her family, and certainly her health above all else, and that won’t change over a rabid press corps,” Grisham said. “She’s confident in what she is doing and in her role, and knows the rest is just speculation and nonsense.”

Related: Loesch Rips Media Hypocrisy on Melania Recovery

But CNN most certainly wasn’t the only outlet hounding the “missing” first lady over the past few weeks.

With varying degrees of seriousness, some conspiracy theorists wondered whether Melania Trump had moved out of the White House and left her husband altogether. Some mocked her and claimed she was being held hostage in the White House. Some even wondered whether she was actually alive.

The (San Jose) Mercury News published a piece called “‘Missing’ Melania Trump: The first lady tweets she’s ‘feeling great’ but mystery remains.” The Guardian wrote, “‘Missing’ Melania Trump breaks silence after 20-day absence.” The Huffington Post asked, “I Wonder Who Wrote That Melania Trump Tweet,” suggesting that Trump himself may have written it.

USA Today wondered in a video, “Where is Melania Trump? Why has she not been seen in public in weeks?” A USA Today newsletter noted, “Melania is alive and ‘feeling great,’ she, or perhaps her husband, says.”

Even David Mikkelson, CEO and founder of the conspiracy theory-debunking Snopes, told People magazine last week, “You can’t blame people. She was suddenly in the hospital for something that hadn’t been announced in advance, and she hasn’t been seen since,” adding, “It could be perfectly innocuous, but it also could be a cover story for something else.”

PoliZette writer Kathryn Blackhurst can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter.