Panicking Trump Tries Yet Another Get-Out-of-Debate-Free Card

Donald Trump’s campaign is hard at work manufacturing a reason for him to skip Thursday’s presidential debate, and his latest tactic is the most ridiculous one yet.

Trump and his former White House doctor Representative Ronny Jackson, who reportedly kept the former president’s administration “awash in speed,” have repeatedly suggested that President Joe Biden will take performance-enhancing drugs before the debate, as part of their crusade to undermine the event and give Trump a get-out-of-jail-free card.

Now they’ve elevated their own bonkers conspiracy theory even further: Trump posted a letter to Truth Social on Monday that Jackson supposedly sent to the White House demanding Biden submit to a drug test before the debate.

“I demand that you submit to a clinically validated drug test in order to reassure the American people that you are mentally fit to serve as President and not relying on performance enhancing drugs to help you with your debate performance,” Jackson wrote. The pill-pushing Texas Republican demanded that the results of the president’s drug test be made public.

In his letter, Jackson echoed Trump’s and right-wing media’s insistence that Biden is suffering from cognitive decline, including a reference to a video of Biden that had been doctored to make him appear to wander away from a group at the G7 conference, and Robert Hur’s damning report casting public doubt on Biden’s memory. Hur’s characterization of their interview has been contested by the White House.

All of this concocted drama around drug use, as well as claims that CNN will host a biased debate, positively reek of desperation to get the former president out of Thursday night’s presidential showdown. It’s not surprising, as Trump is not suited to actual debate: His speech is often erratic and incoherent, and he’s prone to going off on tangents. Plus, Trump has historically taken a hit in the polls after debating with Democrats, in 2016, and again in 2020. While Trump loves to hype up a crowd, he’s just not that convincing when he’s sharing the stage.

It also appears that Jackson may soon want to focus on problems of his own. The House Ethics Committee announced Monday that it will review a report from a congressional watchdog that discovered “substantial reason” to believe that Jackson had converted thousands of dollars of campaign money for his own personal use.

Jackson was demoted by the U.S. Navy in 2022 after the Pentagon inspector general found that he regularly drank on the job, berated his subordinates, and acted inappropriately. Last year, Jackson was filmed unleashing a profanity-laced tirade on a Department of Public Safety officer.

Judge Aileen Cannon, who is presiding over Donald Trump’s classified documents case, once again has made a decision that appears to help the former president and convicted felon—and legal experts are calling her out. 

On Tuesday, Cannon will continue to divert the trial’s focus to whether special counsel Jack Smith’s appointment to investigate and prosecute Trump’s mishandling of classified documents is even constitutional. Legal experts, including Trump’s former lawyer Ty Cobb, have blasted Cannon’s decision to entertain Trump’s motion against the special counsel, pointing out the mountains of legal precedent affirming the appointment’s legality under the Constitution.

MSNBC legal analyst Andrew Weissman, a former federal prosecutor, took Cannon to task on Deadline: White House Monday afternoon, calling her aptitude into question. 

“There’s no question she’s inexperienced. And she does not have the tools to handle a case that is this complicated. That’s clear. There’s, you know, everyone’s seen that,” Weissman said.  “We also do have the fact that the Eleventh Circuit, a conservative circuit that she is in, reversed her not once, but twice. And those were conservative judges who just thought she was absolutely bonkers in terms of her rulings.

“And of course, both times that she was overturned, her rulings were for Trump. It’s not like she’s inexperienced and sometimes she gets it right for Trump and sometimes she gets it right or wrong for the government. They’re always siding with Donald Trump and it’s very, very hard at this point to see her as being anything other than partisan,” Weissman added. 

Cannon’s actions in the classified documents case have constantly served Trump’s interests from the start, giving weight to the accusation that she is prone to exploitation. When the case was initially handed to her, more senior judges in her circuit urged her to turn over the case to a judge with more trial experience, but she refused. 

Cannon has also agreed to hear pretrial motions that have slowed down proceedings, including the one questioning Smith’s appointment. She’s thrown out parts of the case, and her willingness to entertain every motion from Trump’s team, no matter how frivolous, has postponed the trial indefinitely.

Steve Bannon pointed out why the right wing is whining about CNN dismissing Donald Trump’s press secretary Karoline Leavitt from an interview on Monday, and it’s because of Trump’s upcoming debate with Biden.

On his War Room show on Real America’s Voice, Bannon said in an interview with Leavitt that she was owed an apology.

“[CNN’s] Kasie Hunt owes you an apology, CNN owes you an apology today, and if we don’t get that apology to Karoline Leavitt and to the Trump campaign, to MAGA today, President Trump should cancel this,” Bannon said, referring to the June 27 presidential debate that CNN is hosting.

Trump and his allies have already made plenty of excuses to try and either weasel out of the two scheduled debates with Biden or make excuses for his possible poor showing. The former president and convicted felon has tried to push a third debate on his own to give himself an out when it wouldn’t be accepted by the Biden campaign.

Trump’s friend Sean Hannity has floated that Trump shouldn’t take part in any debates until he formally secures the Republican nomination. Trump himself has pushed the idea that Biden will be drugged up to perform well during the debates multiple times, with Hannity and Representative Ronny Jackson echoing this conspiracy theory. Now Bannon is insinuating that CNN won’t be fair to Trump because they have criticized him in the past, and is giving Trump an out, even though Biden and Trump both agreed to the terms of the debate last month.

Bannon should maybe be more worried about his impending four-month prison sentence, which he has bitterly fought and is now trying to weasel out of with a desperate appeal to the Supreme Court. If it goes the way MAGA fellow traveler Peter Navarro’s Supreme Court appeal went, Bannon will end up trying to figure out if he can record his show from a prison like Rikers Island.

Donald Trump may be in trouble for asking oil executives to donate $1 billion to his campaign in April.

Citizen for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a nonprofit watchdog organization, filed a complaint with the Justice Department alleging criminal bribery regarding Trump’s meeting with industry leaders. The former president and convicted felon told them the $1 billion would be part of a deal in exchange for loosened regulations of the oil industry.

In a statement, CREW’s president Noah Bookbinder said Trump’s actions towards oil executives “follow a pattern.”

“Donald Trump’s actions here follow a pattern of Trump opening himself up to corrupt influence, courting conflicts of interest, and using official positions to enrich himself—and in this case may run afoul of the criminal law,” Bookbinder said. The complaint was sent as a letter to the chief of the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section, Corey Amundson, as well as FBI Director Christopher Wray.

Senators Sheldon Whitehouse and Ron Wyden, the respective chairs of the Senate Budget and Finance Committees, are also investigating the meeting, with Whitehouse calling it the “definition of corruption.”

And he has a point. Trump is effectively selling laws to big business, with oil executives already drafting executive orders for him to sign immediately if he gets reelected. Trump reportedly promised these executives that he’d scrap a ban on permits for new liquefied natural gas exports on the first day, overturn new tailpipe emission limits designed to help the transition to electric vehicles, and offer more leases for drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.

Trump’s first term was full of giveaways to the fossil fuel industry, so why is he asking for cash now? It’s because he’s short on cash, already funneling his donor contributions to the lawyers concerned with his many legal issues. As much as his rise in politics came from attacking the wealthy elite establishment, he’s fully willing to cozy up to billionaires and wealthy business leaders as long as they are willing to pay up.

Last week, Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry signed into law a controversial bill requiring the Ten Commandments to be displayed in public school classrooms. Shortly before, he told donors at a GOP event in Tennessee, “I’m going home to sign a bill that places the Ten Commandments in public classrooms. And I can’t wait to be sued.” Sure enough, Louisiana parents and a coalition of civil liberties organizations are granting him his wish.

The ACLU, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and the Freedom From Religion Foundation, along with the parents of children enrolled in Louisiana public schools, filed a lawsuit against the state for violating the religious freedom of students on Monday. The move was widely expected, not just by Landry and religious conservative pugilists, but also by a consensus of legal experts, who claim the law is unconstitutional. Supreme Court legal precedent is on their side; two previous attempts to mandate similar displays were struck down.

But Landry’s giddiness for the upcoming legal fight echoes the attitude of the bill’s co-author, Louisiana State Representative Lauren Ventrella, who, in the midst of a flailing attempt to defend the law on national television, revealed the Christian conservative strategy on which she and Landry will rely.

“Now it is a different bench” on the Supreme Court, Ventrella told CNN’s Abby Philip. With a 6–3 conservative majority—including religious fundamentalist Christians Amy Coney Barrett and Samuel Alito, and multiple justices who have shown a willingness to depart from precedent capriciously—advocates of the law are hoping to move the lawsuit through the courts until it finds a friendly reception at the Supreme Court.

In the meantime, though, they’ll continue to run roughshod over the First Amendment.