President Joe Biden’s campaign spokesperson dismissed Donald Trump’s demand for a drug test prior to Thursday’s debate as a “silly” tactic that doesn’t sit well with voters—and noted that the former president made the same request when matched up against Hillary Clinton eight years ago.
Adrienne Elrod, after being asked by CNN anchor Boris Sanchez on Tuesday to respond to Trump’s attack, chalked it up as evidence that the presumptive GOP nominee is struggling to find a winning campaign issue.
“I mean, I don‘t even really know what to say about that. I worked on Hillary Clinton‘s campaign. She had also debated him very effectively. He accused her of being on drugs. President Biden defeated Donald Trump twice in previous debates,” Elrod said.
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Not only did Trump call for a pre-debate drug test in 2016 after suggesting that Clinton had taken drugs to help her performance, but four years later, he claimed Biden did so as well.
“This is what he does because he doesn‘t have anything else to run on,” Elrod continued. “He doesn‘t have a plan. He doesn‘t have a record for fighting for the American people. He doesn‘t know why he’s running, except to seek political retribution on his enemies. And so he has to resort to these types of tactics which are frankly just silly and turn off a lot of voters, especially voters who want to see their president fight for them.”
Trump, after setting the bar quite low for Biden by questioning his acuity, has recently reversed course by priming viewers to view the president as on some sort of stimulant. This about-face has been dutifully echoed on Fox News and other MAGA-friendly outlets. Similarly, Trump and his allies pushed the baseless narrative after Biden’s State of the Union address back in March.
For the past several days, Biden has been at Camp David preparing for the CNN debate. Biden’s personal attorney, Bob Bauer, has been playing the role of Trump, as was the case in 2020, The New York Times reported. Trump, meanwhile, seems to see rallies as “the best” debate prep, based on what he told Fox News before a Philadelphia campaign stop last Sunday.
