Columnist Jay Bookman writes that the claims by Donald Trump that any success President Joe Biden has at the 2024 CNN debate in Atlanta will be due to performance enhanced by pharmaceuticals is a replay of his 2016 campaign attack against Hillary Clinton. Win McNamee/Getty Images)
Back in the Before Times, when things were more normal than we understood and Donald Trump was still a weird novelty act in the world of politics, he made the startling claim that Hillary Clinton was so sickly and weak that the only explanation for her strong performance in the 2016 debates had to be pharmaceutical.
“We should take a drug test prior to the debate because I don’t know what’s going on with her, Trump said. “At the beginning of her last debate, she was all pumped up. And at the end … she could barely reach her car.”
At the time it seemed extraordinary to just invent such serious charges, based on no evidence whatsoever. But four years later, in the 2020 campaign, Trump resurrected the same lines to use against another opponent, this time Joe Biden. Biden was so weak and sickly and decrepit, Trump argued, that only “performance-enhancing drugs” could explain his success in debates.
“I got a debate coming up with this guy,” Trump told his followers. “They give him a big fat shot in the ass, and he comes out, and for two hours, he’s better than ever before!”
Now here we are, in 2024 with an important debate scheduled here in Atlanta, and … well, we are all too familiar with the shtick by now.
“He can’t walk. Can’t find his way off a stage. Can’t put two sentences together,” Trump said of Biden last month. But with crunch time near, “They want to get him good and strong, so a little before debate time, he gets a shot in the ass!”
The only reason Trump loses debates is because the other side cheated.
The only reason he loses in civil court and then loses in criminal court is because the other side cheated.
And the only reason he loses elections is because the other side cheated. Trump may be the only person in America who gets cheated on more in public than his own wife, Melania.
Note the two constants:
The other side cheated.
And Trump loses.
Trump’s right about this much: At age 81, Biden is indeed old, and it’s well past time for a new generation of Americans to take the reins. But Trump, at 78, isn’t far behind, and his own tethers to reality were snipped so long ago that few people would notice any additional deterioration. It’s certainly nothing that a shot in the ass could cure.
In the alternative world that Trump has created, that his backers agree to believe, we’re enduring the worst economy in American history, except for the fact that by almost every measure it may be the best economy in American history. Certainly, it’s the strongest in the world post-COVID.
In that alternative Trump world, crime is soaring, except for the fact that by every measure crime has fallen significantly from its Trump-era highs. In that world, the MAGA mob that invaded the Capitol in an attempt to steal the election was not composed of criminals or insurrectionists, they were innocent tourists, no, they were patriots and warriors deserving of pardons and the gratitude of the country.
Likewise, Trump and his supporters, including Fox News, have invested so heavily in the alternative reality of Biden as a doddering, senile fool that a competent performance by the incumbent in the Atlanta debate might be enough to cost them the election.
And wouldn’t that be a welcome kick in the ass.
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