(Media Matters)–“President Joe Biden’s fiery Thursday night State of the Union speech was bad news for the preferred narrative from pro-Trump commentators that Biden is a dementia patient on the brink of death. So they responded by baselessly claiming he must have been on performance-enhancing drugs.
The right has sought to leverage Biden’s age, stutter, and well-known tendency to make verbal gaffes since his 2020 presidential campaign. Republican Party operatives promote out-of-context snippets featuring his miscues, which are then amplified by the right-wing media megaphone and leak into the mainstream press. Fox News and its rivals depict the president as an addled old man whose reelection campaign constitutes elder abuse.
That portrayal crashed and burned on Thursday night, with news outlets describing Biden as making “a forceful case” during a “feisty,” “scrappy,” “energetic” “stemwinder”that may have “reset the 2024 campaign.” As it became clear that no one would buy this speech as evidence that Biden is too old to be president, you could see the right settle in real time on an alternate, evidence-free narrative: Biden was on drugs.
Fox anchor Julie Banderas provided a case study in this progression. As Biden prepared to begin his speech at 9:21 p.m., she posted that she was watching the speech “from bed. Didn’t need to a take a Melatonin tonight, this should do it.” By 9:45 p.m., with her preferred narrative dead, she grasped for a new one and alleged that Biden was on cocaine: “I think I just got to the bottom of the untraceable little baggie found at the White House.”
Her right-wing allies quickly converged on the same narrative.
- OutKick’s Clay Travis, 9:44 p.m.: “What drugs have they shot him up with tonight? This is not how normal people talk.”
- Right-wing cartoonist Ben Garrison, 9:45 p.m.: “They really jacked up Joe with the drugs tonight- think there’s a IV bag under his jacket?”
- TownHall’s Kurt Schlicter, 9:49 p.m.: “Maybe the paramedic who called into @HughHewitt this morning and told me Biden would be on cocaine was right!”
- Podcaster Monica Crowley, 9:53 p.m.: “Biden, pumped full of god-knows-what drugs to make it through this pack of lies, blasts Pharma.”
- Fox contributor Mollie Hemingway, 9:54 p.m.: “Plot twist: It was Joe Biden’s cocaine in the White House!”
- RealClearInvestigations’ Mark Hemingway, 9:57 p.m.: “The rushed jittery pace of this speech is the drugs, right?”
- Fox host Greg Gutfeld, 10 p.m.: “Think we found out who that coke belonged to.”
Donald Trump himself claimed Biden was in an altered state during the speech. “THE DRUGS ARE WEARING OFF!” he posted at 9:59 p.m.”
Just when you thought Right Wing Propagandists had the American public fooled into throwing dirt on President Biden’s grave. The President known as “Sleepy Joe” in MAGA circles, was the one putting that fabricated narrative into its eternal resting place. The Commander and Chief gave a rousing and compelling State of the Union Address that was universally praised.
Unless of course, your job requires you to fabricate fear and undermine democracy by spreading disinformation. Then Biden’s speech was a direct threat to your baseless claims of mental and physical decline. The only argument Republican apologists had in their whataboutism comparison to their entirely flawed candidate Trump. With months of talking points designed to convince voters of a false equivalence between the two. Flushed directly down the toilet when Biden’s fiery remarks captured the nation’s complete attention.
Although defeat is never admitted by those delusional types. They often double down on their invented criticism. This time by accusing the President of being a hardcore drug user at the age of 81. If an 81-year-old was doing Cocaine as they suggest, believe me, we would all know it was happening. Besides his heart exploding on national television, his facial ticks and stuttering would have been off the charts. Cocaine has never once fixed a stutter, but I’ve witnessed many examples of it causing a person to stutter uncontrollably. Yet the President was perfectly comfortable throughout his time speaking on the largest political stage there is.
The MAGA crowd loves to deflect, it comes straight from their leader Trump. Whether it’s the age, mental competence, and now the drug accusations. There is clear evidence that the Trump Administration had been supplying their entire staff with obscene amounts of illicit narcotics. If the Boss wasn’t on board with that kind of behavior then it would never have occurred. Trump had to have known this was happening at his home. So either he was partaking himself or at least was complicity in favor of it. Trump doesn’t strike me as the type to allow others to have a good time on his watch without his prior consent.
As much video proof of Trump stumbling through his words during rally rants, there is far more evidence of his incoherent statements that show his mind is altered in some manner. Trump has always bragged about not drinking alcohol. However, he’s never once had the same reaction when discussing drugs. So maybe it’s best if the Right Wing outlets are very careful about casting certain assumptions at their opponent. Because when you start pointing fingers at others you always have 3 fingers aimed directly at you. As a wise person once warned me “When you ASSUME you make an ASS out of U and ME!” There are no bigger Asses out there than Trump and his surrogates in the media projecting their faults as Biden’s weaknesses.
Click the link below for the Media Matters article quoted in this column
The-Anti-Social-Media Pro-DEMOCRACY WING 