In the run-up to Thursday’s presidential debate, Donald Trump and his allies have worked overtime to claim that Joe Biden will show up to the stage on drugs, an obvious attempt to preemptively explain away what they clearly fear will be a decent performance by a guy they’ve long suggested has dementia. “Right now, crooked Joe has gone to a log cabin to ‘study,’” Trump told supporters at a rally on Saturday, putting air quotes around study. “He’s sleeping now, because they want to get him good and strong. So a little before debate time, he gets a shot in the ass…. I say he’ll come out all jacked up, right?” Then he insinuated that Biden would do the debate on cocaine.

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That is obviously an insane thing to say, even for Trump. And while most of his followers on the right have fallen in line with the Biden-on-drugs story, one lawmaker dared to sort of call bullshit on Tuesday.

In a conversation with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, House Speaker Mike Johnson spoke of the drug rhetoric: “There’s a lot of things that are said in jest. Of course no one expects that Joe Biden will be on cocaine.” He nevertheless insisted that people are asking legitimate questions when they wonder if Biden will “be on some sort of energy drinks or something.” Claiming the president’s energy levels “vary depending on what format he’s in and what forum,” Johnson said, “We expect that he’ll do what he did at the State of the Union. He had a lot of energy that night, so that’s the Joe Biden I expect to see.” Then, as Republicans are contractually obligated to do, he added: “The question is, can [Biden] stay for 90 minutes on that stage and go toe-to-toe with President Trump, who, as you know, goes to rallies and talks for two hours on end without any break and any notes?”

Also appearing on CNN on Tuesday was exasperated Biden spokeswoman Adrienne Elrod, who said of Trump’s drug claims: “This is what he does because he doesn’t have anything else to run on. He doesn’t have a plan. He doesn’t have a record for fighting for the American people. He doesn’t know why he’s running, except to seek political retribution on his enemies. And so he has to resort to these types of tactics, which are frankly just silly and turn off a lot of voters, especially voters who want to see their president fight for them.” She noted that the ex-president has been accusing his opponents of drug use since at least 2016, when he demanded Hillary Clinton be drug tested; four years later, he said Biden should be subject to the same thing. And now, here we are!