Saturday Night Live’s Weekend Update has mocked Donald Trump’s suggestion that President Joe Biden was on an illicit substance during his State of the Union address last month.
Trump said in a recent interview that Biden “was all jacked up at the beginning,” but “by the end, he was fading fast,” host Colin Jost said.
“Huh. It almost sounds like Donald Trump knows exactly what it feels like to be on cocaine,” Jost added.
“You know, like at the beginning, you’ve got a lot of energy,” he said, before playing a clip of Trump awkwardly dancing to the song “YMCA” at a campaign rally.
“But then, by the end, you’re fading fast,” he added, showing a clip of Trump fumbling his words.
Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, told host Hugh Hewitt on his eponymous podcast earlier this week that Biden may have been on drugs when he delivered his State of the Union address.
Hewitt had asked Trump whether he thought Biden would agree to debates ahead of November’s election when the former president made the suggestion.
Trump brought up an incident from last year when a white powder, later identified as cocaine, was found in a cubby near the White House’s West Executive entrance.
“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,” he said.
“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.”
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When Hewitt asked if Trump was suggesting Biden was using cocaine, Trump said: “I don’t know what he’s using, but that was not, hey, he was higher than a kite.”
Trump also said that Biden’s State of the Union address this year, which was well-received, was the “worst address I’ve ever seen.”
Asked for further comment, Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung previously told Newsweek: “Cocaine was found in Joe Biden’s house.”
Trump’s remarks came after a Pentagon report released earlier this year revealed that controlled substances were dispensed to staffers in the Trump White House with little oversight.
“We found that the White House Medical Unit provided a wide range of healthcare and pharmaceutical services to ineligible White House staff in violation of federal law and regulation and DoD policy,” said the report from the Defense Department’s inspector general.
“Additionally, the White House Medical Unit dispensed prescription medications, including controlled substances, to ineligible White House staff.”
The report said drugs including Ambien and Provigil were given out without verifying the identities of patients.
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.