In October 2016, Donald Trump came up with a new line of attack against Hillary Clinton. After months in which the Republican accused his Democratic rival of everything under the sun, he managed to come up with something we hadn’t heard before: Clinton, Trump suggested, might be on performance-enhancing drugs.
Four years later, he did it again. In September 2020, the then-president whined incessantly about his suspicion that Joe Biden was also on drugs. Asked at a White House press briefing whether this line of attack was an attempt at humor, the Republican replied, “No, I’m not joking.”
Trump added, “People say he was on performance-enhancing drugs. A lot of people have said that. A lot of people have written that. … Take a look. Why don’t you just check it? You can check out the Internet. You’ll see.”
It came on the heels of a Fox News interview in which the then-president said about Biden’s successes as a candidate, “I think there’s probably — possibly — drugs involved. That’s what I hear. I mean, there’s possibly drugs.”
That was nearly four years ago. Keeping the pattern going, the former president is apparently at it again. New York magazine’s Jon Chait noted what Trump was up to online during the State of the Union address:
The former president began posting manically on social media that his adversary, who he has previously labeled “sleepy” and also the mastermind of a plot to control the Ukrainian justice system for the benefit of his son, was on some kind of drug combination.
Around 10 p.m. eastern, Trump used his social media platform to declare, in reference to the man who defeated him in 2020, “THE DRUGS ARE WEARING OFF!”
As Chait added, a variety of Trump allies quickly peddled the same line.
For now, let’s put aside the fact that there have been some striking reports of late about rampant drug abuse in the Trump White House, making this an issue that Republicans probably ought to avoid.
Let’s also not dwell on the fact that Trump’s material is becoming stale and predictable, peddling the same absurd line in three consecutive presidential election cycles. Rather, it’s worth appreciating the degree to which this nonsense reflects Trump’s anxiety. GOP officials made the strange mistake of lowering expectations for Biden ahead of his national address. To hear the president’s partisan detractors tell it, the president was a frail and addled old man who’d struggle to stay awake and speak in complete sentences. What the public saw instead was a successful president delivering a fierce speech about his record, his vision, and his differences with his immediate predecessor. In fact, Biden was so good that Trump and his cohorts want the public to believe the incumbent president must’ve been on something, as if there were no other possible explanations for his strong performance. It’s one of the stranger and more unintentional compliments the Democrat will receive this year.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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