The drug test comments are part of a strategy
by digby
The press seemed a little bit startled to hear Donald Trump suggest that Hillary Clinton is on drugs and challenge her to take a drug test before the next debate. It just sounded like more of his lunatic rambling.
Actually it’s not as you’ll see from this story from Breitbart a few days before the last debate:
“If athletes need to be tested for drugs for the biggest race of their lives, shouldn’t candidates be tested for the biggest race of yours?” That’s the question the Defeat Crooked Hillary PAC is asking in a new 30-second ad titled, “Race of a Lifetime.”
The text of the ad is featured on top of Fox 10 News video footage showing Hillary Clinton audibly coughing and asking, “Can I get some water?”The Super PAC’s call for drug testing the candidates comes just days before Clinton and Trump face off in St. Louis for their second debate on Sunday.
The ad comes as part of a new targeting campaign, which will begin running on Friday. The new ads “are supported by a six-figure ad buy. Each ad will target swing states and undecided voters on Facebook, YouTube and Google,” the Super PAC writes in a press release.
Presumably, neither campaign should have reason to object to drug testing the candidates, as Clinton’s campaign has repeatedly insisted that Clinton is in fine health, and Trump has demonstrated his physical stamina with the rigorous campaign schedule he has kept for over a year, in which he addresses thousands of people each day, oftentimes in sweltering heat. It is also well known that Trump’s lives a lifestyle that has been completely free of alcohol, cigarettes, drugs, or even coffee.
However, in recent weeks — despite the efforts both by Clinton’s campaign and by many in corporate media to dismiss discussion of Clinton’s health — the subject has become a topic of concern.
Many among those concerned have pointed to Clinton’s chronic coughing episodes, her memory loss, her previous falls, her collapse at a memorial service on the 15th anniversary of 9/11 (followed by her campaign’s denial of any health problems, then their claim that it was “overheating,” and finally their claim that it was actually pneumonia), the various footage demonstrating her apparent difficulties ascending and descending stairs, and her bizarre appearance and volume in a recent video message to voters in which she shouts at the camera: “Why aren’t I fifty points ahead?”
These incidents, in combination with her appearance during recent televised campaign events, have led some to question whether Clinton is being propped up on medications to “engineer” an appearance of alertness during widely-watched events. Following the last debate, Dilbert creator Scott Adams wrote that Clinton looked “drugged, tired [and] sick.”
“Clinton looked [to my eyes] as if she was drugged, tired, sick, or generally unhealthy, even though she was mentally alert and spoke well,” Adams wrote. “But her eyes were telling a different story. She had the look of someone whose doctors had engineered 90 minutes of alertness for her just for the event. If she continues with a light campaign schedule, you should assume my observation is valid, and she wasn’t at 100 percent.”
Both Kellyanne Conway and David Bossie worked for the “Defeat Crooked Hillary PAC” before signing on to the Trump campaign. But I’m sure there was no coordination or anything. These people have the highest integrity. Trump just happened to read Breitbart one day and saw this story. Or more likely, being a genius and all, he just came up with it randomly by himself.