Former President Donald Trump, who four years ago called on Joe Biden to take a drug test prior to the pair’s first debate that September, decided to make the same demand on Friday—one that Biden is sure to wave away once more.
At a campaign rally in Minnesota—where he said he would never return if he lost the state in 2020—the indicted former president recycled his old line of attack against the now-president in advance of the debate next month on CNN.
“I just want to debate this guy, but you know, I’m going to demand a drug test, by the way. I am, I really am,” Trump told supporters at the state GOP Reagan Dinner in St. Paul.
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Trump then reiterated what has become a right-wing talking point on Fox News and other platforms regarding Biden’s State of the Union address, which seemed to quell criticisms of the president’s demeanor.
“I don’t want him coming in like the State of the Union. He was high as a kite,” Trump said without any evidence, similar to Fox News host Sean Hannity calling Biden “hyper-caffeinated” and “jacked-up.”
In 2020, after Trump made the same ask, the Biden campaign responded sharply.
“Vice President Biden intends to deliver his debate answers in words. If the president thinks his best case is made in urine he can have at it,” Kate Bedingfield, Biden’s deputy campaign manager, said then. “We’d expect nothing less from Donald Trump, who pissed away the chance to protect the lives of 200K Americans when he didn't make a plan to stop COVID-19.”
For Trump to make any sort of personal testing demands of Biden seems a bit rich. According to his former chief of staff, Mark Meadows, Trump tested positive for COVID three days before that first debate against Biden—but went ahead with it anyway.
In his speech Friday, Trump also lied once again about the 2020 election, claiming he won Minnesota.
