The First Tweeter: Howard Dean
So here’s what happened: Howard Dean’s tweeted during the first debate that he wondered if Trump was potentially a coke user. But unlike some of Trump’s tweets—those 5 am-ers that were deleted once he realized how much trouble they could be—Dean doubled down on his is-Trump-on-coke query by going on MSNBC the following day and saying it would be “interesting” to ask Trump about it. After that, silence.
But Then Princess Leia Brought It Back
Cut to last week, when an actual cocaine authority chimed in on the topic. See, actress and Postcards From the Edge author Carrie Fisher went and tweeted (in all caps) “Absolutely” when someone on Twitter wrote her “Tell me something about that sniffle…coke head or no?” But the next day, she backed down a little, telling Vulture that she didn’t know if Trump was in fact on the white witch but pointing out that Trump’s brother Freddy died as a result of alcoholism.
Trump’s Attempt at Deflection
Now Trump—never one to let logic dictate his behavior and always one to respond to fire with a nuclear hit—has accused Clinton of being high during the last debate. “We should take a drug test prior because I don’t know what’s going on with her,” The New York Times reported that he told a crowd of people gathered at a Toyota dealership. “But at the beginning of her last debate — she was all pumped up at the beginning, and at the end it was like, ‘Oh, take me down.’ She could barely reach her car.”
Of course Trump is just taking random things he sees in front of him and tossing them out in the hope of deflecting the ever increasing parade of women who have come forth with allegations of sexual assault but can we just take a beat here? I know with Trump we’ve become accustomed to so many lies that debate fact checkers are being put to use in ways they never have in the history of debates but this man told a group of people gathered at a Toyota dealership that the woman who appears (at least from this former coke head’s opinion) less likely to be on drugs than perhaps anyone in the world was high at the last debate?
The Accusations, Part Deux
In what PoliticUSA called Trump’s “national meltdown tour,” Trump reiterated his Clinton’s-on-drugs accusation, saying, “She’s getting pumped up. Let’s see. You know. Maybe? I don’t know. We’re like athletes right? Hey, look. I beat seventeen senators, governors. I beat all these people. We’re like athletes. Hillary beat Bernie, although it looked like Bernie got a little bit of a bad deal based on Wikileaks. Right? We’re like athletes right? So, athletes, they’re making them more and more. But athletes, they make them take a drug test right? I think we should take a drug test prior to the debate. I do. Why don’t we do that? We should take a drug test prior because I don’t know what’s going on with her.”
The PoliticUSA conclusion: “His presidential campaign has transformed from a quest for the White House into the Magical Mystery Tour that is weaving through the darkest corners of Trump’s broken psyche.”
I couldn’t have said it any better myself. But let me also add: I don’t know about what everyone else did when they got high but I tended to try to write but instead just sit at my keyboard, jump every time I heard a noise, become convinced my neighbors were spying on me with binoculars, chain smoke and then do periodic shots of vodka to try to come down. On a spectrum of being with it and accomplishing things, I think it’s safe to say that this is on the opposite end of participating in a presidential debate, no? All of which is to say let’s be real and admit that probably neither of these folks are high. They’re just revealing themselves to be exactly who they are.