Trump demands Biden take drug test for first debate

President Donald Trump demanded Sunday that his Democratic rival Joe Biden take a drug test for their first debate, which will bring them face to face for the first time in the volatile US presidential campaign.

Tuesday’s clash, coming as Biden leads the charge against Trump’s bid to install conservative Amy Coney Barrett in the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s lifetime seat on the Supreme Coart, will thrust the nail-biting contest into a fierce new stage.

For the first time, millions of Americans will watch as the two antagonists — who depict each other as existential threats to the country — step into the ring live on television, after months of shadow-boxing.

Trump, lagging in the polls, taunted Biden Sunday with the fresh salvo on his mental acuity.

“I will be strongly demanding a Drug Test of Sleepy Joe Biden prior to, or after, the Debate on Tuesday night,” he tweeted, saying he would take one also. “His Debate performances have been record setting UNEVEN, to put it mildly. Only drugs could have caused this discrepancy???”

The president offered no evidence to support his insinuation, and recently-completed negotiations between the Biden and Trump camps over debate conditions reportedly made no mention of any drug test.

When asked by reporters about the demand Sunday, Biden laughed before declining to comment.

Both septuagenarians are prone to blunders and gaffes when speaking — but the 74-year-old Trump has repeatedly depicted the 77-year-old Biden as mentally unfit.

Biden has shrugged off such accusations. On Saturday he said he expects “personal attacks and lies” from the president, likening Trump to Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels.

The former vice president has until recently stayed close to his Delaware home due to the challenges of campaigning in person safely during a pandemic.

Trump, meanwhile, has been flouting his own government’s social distancing guidelines to criss-cross battleground states, speaking frequently at mass rallies where participants are often tightly packed with few masks in sight.

– High stakes –

Trump sees his nomination of Barrett to the Supreme Court — potentially tilting the court to the right for years — as a fundamental boost to his troubled campaign.

He told Fox & Friends Sunday the Senate will “easily” confirm Barrett before the election, despite furious Democratic opposition.

But Biden hit back, accusing Trump of rushing Barrett’s nomination in order to launch a new assault on health care.

The president and the Republican-held Senate “see an opportunity to overturn the Affordable Care Act on their way out the door,” Biden told reporters in Wilmington, Delaware.

He again urged the Senate to delay the confirmation until after the election, noting that early voting had already begun.

“Never before in our nation’s history has a Supreme Court justice been nominated and installed while a presidential election is already underway,” he said.

Barring a huge surprise, Republican senators, who have 53 out of 100 votes in the upper house of Congress, are expected to confirm Barrett.