Media
Ronny Jackson
Rep. Ronny Jackson

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.

Even Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-TX), the former White House doctor whom the Navy demoted following an inspector general report finding he drank and took Ambien while on duty and whose medical operation reportedly functioned as a pill mill for Trump White House staffers, got into the act.

“Whatever they gave to Biden is wearing off! He is struggling big time! As I have been saying for years now, Joe Biden is NOT fit to be President!” he posted at 10:22 p.m.

Fox host and close Trump ally Sean Hannity took the narrative to the right-wing network in the 11 p.m. hour, trying to coin a new nickname for Biden: “Jacked-up Joe.”

“Everybody knew that Joe had a very big challenge coming into tonight because — and we’ll show tapes throughout the night of his cognitive decline,” he later explained. “Clearly, well, Jacked-up Joe perhaps overcompensated and I think that's being charitable.”

Hannity clearly thought this moniker was very clever: He and his guests described Biden as “jacked-up” at least 9 times over the course of the show.

This is what it looks like when the right is floundering for a response after one of its cherished talking points publicly implodes: They just start making stuff up. Reporters should keep that in mind in the future when assessing whether to treat right-wing claims about the president’s mental stamina with credulity.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

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Joe Biden
President Joe Biden
Joe Biden

Well, that settles it. President Joe Biden can’t possibly win this thing.

Just like Republicans have been telling Americans all along, Biden is too aggressive, too energetic, too fiery, too feisty, too forceful, too loud, too partisan, and definitely too political.

Also, he talks too long, tells too many jokes, and too often goes off-script to spar with opponents. If all that isn’t bad enough, Biden wants to talk to members of Congress when it’s late and decent Republicans are very, very sleepy.

It’s just like they’ve been saying all along. Biden’s age is an issue. Maybe he’ll be more presidential in 2032.

Biden’s 2024 State of the Union speech clocked in at 1 hour, 7 minutes, and 17 seconds. That doesn’t make it the longest speech on record, but considering the clip at which Biden blasted through the material (about 6,400 words in the transcript, more in real life), he packed a lot into that space.

“I know I may not look like it,” said Biden, “but I’ve been around a while.” And in his time in Washington, Biden has clearly learned how to deliver a speech that absolutely confounds both his opponents and a media that had already scheduled plenty of lazy “Biden too old” editorials between now and November.

Three weeks ago, The New York Times was explaining how the age issue that they’ve been pushing 24 hours a day sticks to Biden so much more than to Donald Trump. “Mr. Biden’s voice has grown softer and raspier,” wrote reporter Rebecca Davis O’Brien, and he “moves more tentatively than he did as a candidate in 2019 and 2020, often holding his upper body stiff, adding to an impression of frailty.”

When it comes to Trump, the same article explained that he “holds forth in speeches replete with macho rhetoric and bombast that typically last well over an hour, a display of stamina.”

After Thursday night, both The New York Times and the Republican Party are going to need a new playbook. The Joe Biden who stepped to the podium on Thursday and then stayed in the House chamber so long that the perpetually dyspeptic Speaker Mike Johnson, who dashed home to find his rapture-ready PJs, was not the Joe Biden they’ve been describing.

Biden’s forceful entry into the chamber on Thursday evening, his fast-forward, high-energy delivery, and his absolute eagerness to engage whenever Republicans booed or refused to applaud the most fundamental issue was an absolute joy. He came in hot, only seemed to grow in energy and confidence through the night, and came off the winner every time he sparred with just-say-no-to-everything Republicans.

In his speech, Biden was the happy warrior of American politics. If he had the occasional stumble, it was seemingly because he just could not wait to tell you not just about the things he had done, but also about all the things left to do in making American lives better.

Meanwhile, Johnson sat behind him like a bobblehead whose spring had been wrongly inserted, shaking his head so many times that he is likely spending this morning at the chiropractor. Out in the audience, Republicans intent on mocking Biden instead ended up being an obvious self-parody—something that should have been obvious the moment Biden strolled down the aisle, saw Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s clown suit, and took her apart with no more than an expression.

Only a few minutes into the speech, Republicans were claiming that the guy they’d been describing as little short of comatose was too fast, too loud, and definitely too political. That last part was especially offensive to classy Republicans and the memory of Trump’s completely nonpartisan performances (I mean, it’s not as if Trump had a campaign rally at the White House).

In one night, Biden went from “Sleepy Joe” to “Jacked-Up Joe” as Republicans scrambled for a new handle on the president.

In his speech, Biden made some very gutsy announcements, such as laying out plans for an aid port in Gaza, forcefully talking about America’s role in expanding NATO and the need for Ukraine assistance, and putting abortion issues front and center while telling the Supreme Court to prepare to hear from American women.

If Republicans didn’t like what they were seeing, Americans watching the speech certainly did. As Daily KosKerry Eleveld reported, potential voters in Arizona were turning up the live-reaction dials for Navigator Research, highlighting many parts of the speech that had them excited. A CNN quick poll found that 64 percent of those watching had a positive reaction to the speech, and after watching the speech, there was a 17-percentage-point increase among those saying that Biden’s policies will move the nation in the right direction.

Republicans were left sputtering over Biden’s display of vigor and command. Much of the press was left scrambling to find more synonyms for “energetic.” And viewers were largely left convinced that Biden had the right plan for America.

It’s hard to describe a more successful combination.

Meanwhile, down at Mar-a-Lago, Trump had promised to provide his own live commentary on the speech, but technical issues had him fuming on the sidelines for much of the evening. When he did get his chance to talk, Trump became obsessed with the fact that Biden was occasionally coughing and convinced that the president’s rapid-fire delivery was the product of stimulants.

It’s hard to dispute that Trump may be the expert when it comes to a White House allegedly “awash in speed.” But as Biden’s speech moved toward its conclusion, Trump delivered a meme-worthy “Truth.”

If by that Trump means the drugs that kept America complacent while he speed-walked the nation toward an authoritarian regime, then he’s absolutely right.

In his speech, Biden told everyone to “wake up.” And maybe, just maybe, it worked.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.