Donald Trump and his allies are demanding that President Joe Biden be tested for “performance-enhancing drugs” before this week’s debate, and Fox News and the MAGAverse are wondering if the president is medically “experimenting” at Camp David in preparation.
One substance they think Biden may be “jacked up” on during the debate: Mountain Dew.
Fox Business Network host Maria Bartiromo on Tuesday interviewed MAGA Rep. Eric Burlison (R-MO) about upcoming CNN presidential showdown. Bartiromo whined about a Trump spokesperson being booted from a CNN interview for personally attacking the network’s debate moderators, and mentioned the recent letter from MAGA acolyte Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-TX) demanding Biden take a drug test.
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Prior to sending that letter, which was endorsed by Trump on Monday night, Jackson told Bartiromo on Sunday about his intent to demand a drug test, feeding into longstanding right-wing conspiracies that the 81-year-old Biden is being fed a “cocktail” of meds to perform during high-profile appearances. “It’s embarrassing I have to do this. It’s embarrassing as a former White House physician to have to do something like this,” Jackson told Bartiromo.
After airing Jackson’s remarks, Bartiromo turned to Burlison and said “it’s pretty incredible” that Jackson speculated the president’s doctors were “probably experimenting with getting doses right” ahead of the debate. (Jackson, for his part, has been peddling his claim about Biden using memory-boosting drugs since 2020.)
“I think any patient or elderly individual or someone who has dementia, they can find some moments of clarity, right, they can find moments throughout the day that they have energy,” the Missouri lawmaker responded. “And I think we should—Trump’s team should not underestimate Joe Biden and his team’s ability to—whether they’re going to jack him up on Mountain Dew or whatever.”
Burlison then brought up Biden’s fiery State of the Union address earlier this year, which conservatives chalked up to him being on stimulants. Fox News host and Trump confidant Sean Hannity, for instance, reacted to the speech by calling the president “Jacked-Up Joe” while suggesting he was “hyper-caffeinated” or given some unknown magical elixir.
“He had a lot of energy for about an hour or an hour-and-a-half, but it doesn’t mean what we’re seeing is obviously throughout the day he can’t carry that level of energy when he’s out and about. We’re seeing that decline,” Burlison concluded. “So I certainly would not, if I were the Trump team, underestimate their ability to do whatever it takes to make sure that he can work for one or two hours that he’s on the debate.”
It was just a month ago when the conspiracy-boosting Bartiromo pumped the brakes when another GOP lawmaker insisted that he had evidence to prove that Biden was “jacked up on something” during the State of the Union. When the pro-Trump host pressed for proof, the congressman demurred and said he would show her “offline.”
After spending the past few weeks peddling so-called “cheap fake” videos to depict Biden as senile and setting expectations for the president’s debate performance extremely low, MAGA media and Trump himself are now reversing course and preemptively providing a built-in excuse. The ex-president has even gone so far as to claim that Biden would be using illegal drugs and steroids during the debate.
“I’m sure he’ll be prepared,” he exclaimed at a rally last week. “Whatever happened to all that cocaine that was missing a month ago from the White House?” (The ex-president was referencing an incident where a small bag of cocaine was found at the White House. A Secret Service investigation was unable to determine who left the drugs.)
Ironically, just a week ago, Trump attempted to mock Biden’s mental fitness while boasting that he had “aced” a cognitive test administered by Jackson. During that speech, however, Trump repeatedly referred to the former White House doctor as “Ronny Johnson.”
While Fox News and Trump have been pushing this baseless conspiracy theory about Biden taking magic pills to suddenly become coherent on the big stage for years now, the assertion itself doesn’t really hold up to the slightest of scrutiny.
“In addition to lacking anything resembling evidence, this argument doesn’t make much sense—if Biden is mentally disabled but has access to medication that somehow hides it, why would he save the drugs for special occasions rather than taking them all the time?” Media Matters senior fellow Matt Gertz noted this week. “But Trump and his supporters set a trap for themselves with their deceptive claims of Biden’s purported senility and they are desperately trying to escape.”
