CNN’s Brianna Keilar eviscerated Fox News medical contributor Dr. Marc Siegel on Tuesday for feeding President Donald Trump’s baseless suggestions that his Democratic opponent, Joe Biden, is taking performance-enhancing drugs.
Trump has for months called Biden “sleepy Joe” and accused him of lacking mental acuity, but he recently switched gears ahead of the first presidential debate by claiming that the former vice president will perform well only because he is taking drugs. He has made absurd demands that the two take drug tests before the debate.
Siegel, who recently deemed Trump “extremely sharp” after an interview in which the president boasted about being able to recall five words in a row, speculated with Fox News host Tucker Carlson on Monday about the possibility of Biden taking Adderall or amphetamines to enhance his cognitive abilities. He lent credence to Trump’s call for a drug test, comparing the situation to doping in professional sports.
Keilar let rip on Trump and his favorite network for spewing propaganda, telling her viewers, “He’s just making stuff up.”
“But it’s designed to make you wonder, to creep into your head and stick because that’s how conspiracy theories take hold. He’s planting a seed, and his state-run news channel and its on-staff doctor is watering the hell out of it.”
“He’s supposed to be a doctor. And he’s talking about speed and drug tests?” Keilar asked.
“Siegel is paid actual money by a network with the word ‘News’ in its title,” she continued. “Not to help spread the word about keeping people safe in a pandemic or to correct the anti-science rhetoric of the Trump administration that has cost lives, but to weaponize his medical credentials against a presidential candidate.”
She made note of the “one thing” that the doctor said that people should put credence in: his admission later in the Fox News segment that he has not examined Biden and doesn’t have a clinical diagnosis to make.
She concluded with a reminder that this came from the same doctor who “was impressed with President Trump being able to repeat a string of five words” and who told millions of viewers on March 6 that the coronavirus, which has now killed more than 200,000 Americans, was “at worst” the flu.
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