Joe Biden did cocaine at the State of the Union????

OR: What the media STILL gets wrong about covering Donald Trump

In this space last week, I went through the most outrageous lines from Donald Trump’s interview with conservative radio talk show host Hugh Hewitt. One exchange, in particular, caught my eye. It was this one:

Hewitt: Now you have said you’ll debate him anywhere, anytime. Do you think he’ll agree to any debates?

Trump: Yeah, anywhere, anytime.

Hewitt: Do you think he’ll agree?

Trump: I don’t think so, but I hope he does. I think what happened is you know that white stuff that they happened to find, which happened to be cocaine in the White House, I don’t know, I think something’s going on there, because I watched this State of the Union, and he was all jacked up at the beginning. By the end, he was fading fast. There’s something going on there. I want to debate. And I think debates, with him, at least, should be drug tested. I want a drug test.

Hewitt: Mr. President, are you suggesting President Biden’s using cocaine?

Trump: I don’t know what he’s using, but that was not, hey, he was higher than a kite. And by the way, it was the worst, it was the worst address I’ve ever seen, the State of the Nation. I’ll tell you, State of the Union, that’s not State of the Union, because he doesn’t represent us properly. That, I can tell you. But he’s obviously, he’s being helped some way, because most of the time, he looks like he’s falling asleep. And all of a sudden, he walked up there and did a poor job. But he was all jacked up.

You don’t even need to read between the lines here. Trump directly suggests that President Joe Biden was high on cocaine during his “State of the Union” speech. When directly confronted by Hewitt, Trump defers — “I don’t know what he’s using” — but barely.

So, let’s be clear here: The Republican presidential nominee is accusing the sitting president of doing cocaine during the SOTU. Again, this isn’t my interpretation. Trump literally says it. He days Biden was “ higher than a kite” in the SOTU!

This should be a MASSIVE news story. Not because it’s true — Trump offered zero proof and wasn’t asked for any by Hewitt, natch — but because if ANY other politician had said this, it would be.

---

I am making this post FREE for all subscribers because I think everyone needs to read it. I am doing this work — every single day — because I believe it to be critical to the future of the country. But, it takes significant time and effort. I need your support and investment. I hope you will consider becoming a subscriber — at $7 for a month or $70 for the year. Thanks.

---

Let’s take a trip in the wayback machine, shall we?

Ok. It’s the year 2000. Vice President Al Gore is the Democratic nominee for president. Texas Gov. George W. Bush is the Republican standard-bearer.

Bush says that he saw a Gore speech and that the vice president was “higher than a kite.” It would immediately be the lead story on every newscast. There would be days of coverage on it. Bush would be asked for proof. And, if he didn’t provide any would come under heavy pressure to recant and apologize.

In short: It would be a THING. A big one.

But, two decades on, the cocaine comment by Trump barely made a dent in mainstream media coverage. As MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough noted:

Now, that would have been on the front page of The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, every other newspaper in America if he had, if anybody else, any other candidate running for president had said something so crazy. Everybody just blew past it.

Yes they did! (To his credit former Obama aide Dan Pfeiffer — a fellow Georgetown alum! — took note of it on his Substack.)

The critical question is why. Because, on its face, the GOP presidential nominee saying that the president of the United States did cocaine before the State of the Union speech would seem to be newsworthy. Right?

I think to answer that question, you have to understand how the media thinks — and how thin-skinned its practitioners are. (I was one of them — I know!)

The media is forever fighting the last war. And, for them — as least as it relates to Trump — the last war is the 2016 campaign.

In that race — and after it —the media was heavily criticized for giving Trump wall-to-wall coverage. Every Trump speech was carried live on cable news. Every Trump utterance — in person or via tweet — occasioned a slew of stories in mainstream media outlets.

The reason was simple: Trump made people watch (and click). Whether you loved him or hated him, the Trump show was must-see TV. The moribund media industry had found its bell cow.

The sense among the media was that Trump was a fun — and well-rated — sideshow. And that they would ride it for as long as it would go, which most people assumed wouldn’t be very long.

Then, sort of out of nowhere, Trump’s message starting resonating with the Republican base. He went from an afterthought to the GOP frontrunner. And then, amazingly, to the White House.

The after-action report — in politics and media — was that the media had done this. In sacrificing profits for principles, they had created Trump. And now he was the single most powerful person in the world.

I never totally bought that line of thinking, by the way. I think it gives the media too much credit.

Yes, there is NO question that, in Trump, media executives saw someone who everyone watched. And, yes, they viewed that as a way to help (if not save) a struggling business model.

But, no, I don’t think Trump got elected president solely because CNN ran his speeches in 2015 live.

After all, Jon Huntsman, just to pick a name from the past, got press coverage WELL in excess of his standing in the polls when he ran for president in 2012. But, he never went anywhere because, well, what he was saying (a message of moderation) didn’t interest the Republican base.

Trump, on the other hand, was channeling — maybe without even knowing it at first — the long pent-up frustrations of that base. Yes, they were hearing his message because cable TV was putting him on all the time. But, they liked what they heard. And would have liked it even if they didn’t watch his whole speech on CNN.

So, yes, the constant coverage of Trump played a role in his rise. But it didn’t create him. I truly believe that would have happened anyway.

But, back to the matter at hand. The media came out of the 2016 election chastised and, mostly privately, admitting that they had not properly balanced their Trump coverage. And promising to do things differently.

The 2020 campaign, because of the Covid-19 pandemic, was a one of one. The pandemic made everything different, including how the candidates campaigned and how it was covered. It was seen then — and now — as an anomaly. And it was.

Which brings us to 2024 — the first “normal” presidential election since 2016. And the lesson that the media tells itself it needs to learn: Don’t over-cover Donald Trump.

Unlike 2016, therefore, the media has vowed to itself that it won’t jump at every Trump tweet or musing on Truth Social. That his campaign rallies won’t be carried in full — or even live because of the challenges of fact-checking him in real time.

Again, I get the impulse. But I think it’s wrong. Because I think it allows people to remember the stuff they believed they liked about the Trump presidency without being forced to confront the utterly bizarre and, at times dangerous, elements of it.

This piece in the Guardian over the weekend makes that point better than I could:

Journalists rightly chose not to broadcast Trump’s entire speeches after 2016, believing that the free coverage helped boost the former president and spread lies unchecked. But now there’s the possibility that stories about his speeches often make his ideas appear more cogent than they are – making the case that, this time around, people should hear the full speeches to understand how Trump would govern again.

Watching a Trump speech in full better shows what it’s like inside his head: a smorgasbord of falsehoods, personal and professional vendettas, frequent comparisons to other famous people, a couple of handfuls of simple policy ideas, and a lot of non sequiturs that veer into barely intelligible stories….

…You not only see the truly bizarre nature of Trump’s speeches when viewing them in full, but you see the sheer breadth of his menace and animus toward those who disagree with him.

His comments especially toward migrants have grown more dehumanizing. He has said they are “poisoning the blood” of the US – a nod at Great Replacement Theory, the far-right conspiracy that the left is orchestrating migration to replace white people. Trump claimed the people coming in were “prisoners, murderers, drug dealers, mental patients and terrorists, the worst they have”. He has repeatedly called migrants “animals”.

Yes to ALL of that.

Regular readers of this newsletter know that I have zigged while the mainstream media has zagged on Trump. Rather than cover what he says less, I have leaned into covering his actual words more.

At the risk of being repetitive, I have done this because I believe reading the actual words Trump uses to talk about himself, the campaign and the country are the best decoder ring we have into what he will do if he makes it back to the White House.

And what I have learned in reading transcript after transcript of Trump speeches and interviews is this: He paints a deeply divisive and dark image of America — past, present and future. His rhetoric is totally devoid of facts or objective truth. He makes stuff up as he goes. He rambles. He jumps from topic to topic without warning. Following his logic is, oftentimes, impossible.

I don’t think the average undecided voter knows that. I think their general perception of Trump is something like: He’s a little rough personally but, generally, he did a good-ish job as president.

I genuinely believe that every single one of these voters should be required to watch (or attend) a Trump rally from beginning to end. (To that end, read McKay Coppins on going to Trump rallies.) Or to read my line-by-line breakdown of a Trump speech or interview. Speaking of which, subscribe to get this lines pieces in your inbox!

I find it hard to believe that they would have that same view if they did that.

Of course, they won’t. But I DO think the media needs to do a better job of not ignoring or downplaying what Trump says at these events. Because he’s not just some guy. He’s the Republican nominee for president.

For my part, I am going to continue to focus on what Trump says. Because it matters. Now more than ever.