Former President Donald Trump is repeating a baseless claim about President Joe Biden being “jacked up” at his State of the Union address. After agreeing to debate with Biden twice (without a live audience), Trump says he now demands that Biden take a drug test prior to the debates.
[The two live televised presidential debates are scheduled for June 27 on CNN, and September 10 on ABC News.]
U.S. Senator Byron Donalds (R-FLA), a potential vice presidential pick for the presumptive 2024 GOP nominee, is echoing Trump’s claim. When Donalds told Maria Bartiromo on Fox News, “The American people need to understand if they’re giving him some injections,” Bartiromo responded, “These are obviously very serious charges that he’s ‘jacked up,’ we don’t know, we’re not doctors, we have no idea.”
“Donald Trump is just playing chicken. He knows he can’t hold it together for a full 90 minutes or 2 hours so he’s looking for excuses” @JRubinBlogger sounds off on Rep. Byron Donalds claiming Biden takes injections ahead of presidential debate #SundayShow pic.twitter.com/LLr9sQEIlT
— The Saturday/Sunday Show with Jonathan Capehart (@weekendcapehart) May 19, 2024
On the MSNBC show The Saturday/Sunday Show with Jonathan Capehart, former conservative political pundit Jennifer Rubin said: “This is the new Republican thing. Because Biden did so well at the State of the Union, they have to make a story about him being ‘jacked up.’ It’s also becoming, I suspect, the excuse that Donald Trump will use to get out of the debates.”
Rubin added, “Donald Trump is just playing chicken. He knows he can’t hold it together for a full 90 minutes or 2 hours so he’s looking for excuses.”
Note: In September 2020, Rubin announced that she changed her Twitter (now X) profile from “conservative opinion writer” to “NeverTrump, pro-democracy opinion writer.”
In her Washington Post column, Rubin wrote that the GOP party “has grievously betrayed democracy and abandoned simple decency and honesty. Whatever alternative to the toxic waste dump of the Trump GOP arises to replace it may be worth considering — but only if it embodies the most basic American creed (‘We the people. . .’) and abandons veneration of authoritarianism.”