(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . The right can't decide if Biden is senile or superhuman [1] ['Daily Kos Staff'] Date: 2024-06-24 Republican Rep. Ronny Jackson appeared on Fox News Sunday morning to reinforce a claim that’s been made several times by Donald Trump. “I’m going to be demanding on behalf of many millions of concerned Americans right now that [President Joe Biden] submit to a drug test before and after this debate, specifically looking for performance-enhancing drugs,” Jackson told Fox News. Trying to set the expectations for a debate is something that both sides do in every cycle. It’s normal that in the days before candidates face off in front of the cameras, surrogates will be on the airwaves insisting that their guy is a humble man of the people and that the other guy is a silver-tongued speaker who has received months of coaching from Socrates and William Shakespeare. The problem for Republicans is that they spend 360 days of the year preaching that Biden is deep in the well of senile dementia. So they need a reason why this same guy suddenly sounds like a tiger. And the only excuse they can think of is drugs. This past week or so included several stories in which watchers of Fox News and readers of Rupert Murdoch publications were told that Biden wandered away across the grass at the G7 summit, couldn’t find his way off the stage following a speech, and forgot the name of Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas. x A deceptively cropped video from the G7 summit in Italy appeared to show Pres. Biden wandering off aimlessly. He was speaking to paratroopers a few feet away. When the Biden campaign called it a 'cheap fake' and pointed out it was cropped Fox News featured it even more. pic.twitter.com/bQVkPoycqL — Decoding Fox News (@DecodingFoxNews) June 20, 2024 Stories presenting Biden as bumbling, incompetent, and losing touch with reality are a staple on the right. Trump was calling Biden “Sleepy Joe” before the 2020 elections. The right has been supported in this effort by a flood of mainstream news stories, such as those in The New York Times, that never let readers forget that Biden is just so, so old. Barely over a week ago, Trump challenged Biden to a “cognitive test,” cited his ability to “ace” a pass/fail test for dementia, then forgot the name of the doctor who gave him the test. I took a cognitive test and I aced it. Doc Ronny. Doc Ronny Johnson. Does everyone know Ronny Johnson, congressman from Texas? He was the White House doctor, and he said I was the healthiest president, he feels, in history, so I liked him very much indeed immediately. Not only did Jackson claim Trump was an incredible physical specimen, he also reportedly handed out drugs like candy, including Provigil, a stimulant that treats narcolepsy. Sleepy Donald could have used some of that during his New York criminal trial. The extent to which Republicans lean on the idea of an elderly, incompetent Biden makes it essential that they have a go-to excuse when Biden steps up. Following Biden’s incomparable State of the Union address, Republicans dragged out their “it was drugs” excuse for why the nation had just seen more than an hour of fast-paced, hard-hitting rhetoric from the guy they’d said could barely tie his own shoes. “I was in the State of the Union address and Joe Biden must have been jacked up on something that day. I absolutely believe that from a medical viewpoint and actually have a little bit of good knowledge that happened,” Rep. Greg Murphy told Fox News. “He can’t stand, and he can’t stand under the lights for that long, and I don’t think he can keep a concept in his brain that long.” Murphy also claimed he was able to produce evidence that Biden had taken some kind of drug. He just … never did that. Even before the details of this week’s presidential debate were worked out, Trump was repeating the claims about a “jacked up” Biden and pretending that he was going to call for a drug test. “I’m gonna demand a drug test too, by the way,” Trump said in a speech at the Minnesota Republican Party’s Lincoln Reagan Dinner. “I am, no I really am. I don’t want him coming in like the State of the Union, he was high as a kite.” Trump may talk about taking a test, but when Jackson talks about a drug test, he mentions administering a test to only Biden. But then, as the guy who reportedly spent four years handing out Trump’s drugs, Jackson may be a bit concerned about what would turn up. But the silliest thing about all this may be the idea that there are “performance-enhancing drugs” someone can take to overcome dementia. The sad fact that millions of American families face every day is that most forms of dementia are a one-way street. Treatments may slow the progress of the condition, but nothing can pull someone back once they have gone far down that path. All the stimulants in Jackson’s little black bag can’t drag someone from the kind of senile state that Fox News and Republicans claim Biden lives in and restore them to vigorous, determined competence. If only it were possible. Everyone would love to lay their hands on these magic pills. For all Trump’s talk, don’t expect him to volunteer for a drug test on Thursday evening. He doesn’t need to. He could wander around the stags, talking about sharks, batteries, and the difficulty of getting shampoo from his luxuriant hair, and it wouldn’t rate a column on page 15 of any paper in the nation. That’s not a concern on the right. Biden isn’t going to do any handstands on Thursday evening. And don’t be surprised if the Friday headlines contain the shocking news that Biden managed the name of a foreign leader or forgot the date of some obscure event. Because Biden is still held to the level of expectation that has been conveniently discarded for Trump. There will also be talk about how old Biden is. The Times bought their Biden-so-old stories in bulk. They’re not about to stop running them now. What worries Republicans about Thursday evening is that some of the MAGA faithful could be exposed to Biden live and unedited. But since this debate is running live on CNN, that’s not a huge concern. By the time any of it gets to Fox, it will surely be edited to make it seem that Biden is less competent. Or on drugs. Or both. 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