Beneath his usual bluster, Donald Trump is “concerned” about his debate with President Joe Biden on Thursday, according to former RNC spokesperson Tim Miller.
Miller pointed to Trump’s suggestion that Biden has been using performance-enhancing drugs to get “jacked up” before campaign events and his insistence that Biden take a drug test before Thursday as proof that the former president is worried about Biden’s attacks on him at the debate.
“I do think that what we can see publicly is that Donald Trump is concerned about how this debate is being framed up as you lead into the debate. That is why he’s doing all the weird stuff about Joe Biden being on drugs. It’s worth reminding everybody that he tried this exact same playbook in 2020.… But he already tried this ‘Joe Biden is on drugs’ thing. It didn’t work then,” Miller said on MSNBC.
Indeed, analysts agreed that Trump handed Biden an easy win in the first debate in 2020 by lowering expectations, attacking Biden as a feeble basement dweller, only to appear unhinged beside Biden’s relative composure. This year, not only Trump but the entire Republican apparatus may be setting itself up for a similar blunder. The RNC has made Biden’s age, depicted in selectively edited videos of gaffes by Biden on the campaign trail, a centerpiece of its campaign strategy.
Trump isn’t alone in calling for Biden to take a drug test; Texas GOP Representative Ronny Jackson, the former White House physician freshly accused of ethics violations, also accused Biden of taking performance enhancers and demanded that he submit to a pre-debate test. If Miller is right, a strong showing by Biden at the debate could be disastrous for Trump and a Republican messaging machine that seems pot committed to depicting Biden as senile.
