Iowa’s Miller-Meeks claims Biden might be on drugs at debate (2024)

Physician and Iowa Republican Congresswoman Mariannette Miller-Meeks has joined Donald Trump allies pushing, without evidence, accusations that Democratic President Joe Biden will use performance-enhancing drugs to help him in Thursday’s high-stakes debate with the former president and presumptive Republican presidential nominee.

Miller-Meeks, a former practicing ophthalmologist and licensed physician from Ottumwa who served as director of the Iowa Department of Public Health under former Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad, told Fox Business on Monday: “We anticipate that for this first debate (Biden) will be on something.”

“We fully expect that they’re trying to hide the fact that he has cognitive decline,” Miller-Meeks told Fox Business.

The White House has pushed back on criticisms of Biden's mental acuity as politically motivated. It declined to comment Tuesday on the accusations and Miller-Meeks’ comments, referring The Gazette to the Biden-Harris campaign. The campaign did not respond to questions Tuesday emailed by The Gazette.

Trump and his allies have frequently attempted to characterize Biden as old and feeble, and made the unfounded drug allegation earlier this year in an attempt to downplay Biden’s forceful State of the Union speech.

“We saw a much different Biden than we’d seen before,” Miller-Meeks said on Fox Business of Biden’s State of the Union speech. “You know, many of the doctors in Congress felt he was on some type of stimulant, whether it was Ritalin or steroids or something else. He was very amped up, very aggressive.”

In a prepared statement to The Gazette, Miller-Meeks said her comments were not a medical diagnosis, but come from an informed medical background.

The 68-year-old has an active medical license with the Iowa Board of Medicine with specific training and experience in diagnosing and treating eye and vision conditions.

“As a physician, I have dealt with many elderly patients and have experience recognizing cognitive decline,” Miller-Meeks said in her statement.

She added that she cared for her mother during the last years of her life as she suffered from Alzheimer’s.

“All of us who have dealt with aging relatives have seen in our own families what appears to be happening to Joe Biden in front of us,” Miller-Meeks said. “It’s heartbreaking but obvious."

She noted some, including members of Congress, have called for President Biden to submit to a cognitive test due to public polling showing 6 in 10 Americans say they’re not confident in Biden’s mental capability, and after reporting from The Wall Street Journal stating the president was showing signs of poor cognitive performance in private meetings with congressional lawmakers.

“While it is clear to millions of Americans, Democrats and the media attempt to dismiss Biden’s cognitive decline as conspiracies and ‘Deep Fakes,’” Miller-Meeks said.

Republicans have seized on Biden’s verbal gaffes — while ignoring Trump’s — and out-of-context video clips to portray Biden as senile, and raise questions about his physical and mental capacity.

Independent fact-checkers and the Biden campaign have noted the selected clips had been edited to present a misleading picture.

Biden’s campaign has reciprocated with attacks on Trump on social media. The campaign posted a montage of clips it claimed showed Trump “getting confused, lost, wandering off, and waving to nobody.” The out-of-context post followed other efforts to paint Trump as confused, senile or attention seeking.

Critics have questioned whether the 81-year-old president and his 78-year-old opponent, Trump, are too old to serve another term. A quarter of the nation's voters think neither has the mental and cognitive health to serve as president, according to a CBS News poll.

The Biden campaign has struggled to rebut the deceptive, but effective, GOP strategy. Trump fares better than Biden in perception of cognitive ability, according to polling.

Miller-Meeks’ comments Monday echo Trump, who used a rally in Philadelphia over the weekend to spread unfounded accusations about Biden’s using drugs to enhance his debate performance.

A White House spokesperson, in a statement last month, told Politico: “It’s telling that Republican officials are unable to stop announcing how intimidated they remain by [the] President’s State of the Union performance.”

White House physician Kevin O'Connor wrote in a memo released at the end of February after Biden underwent his annual physical examination that the president “continues to be fit for duty.”

In the memo, O'Connor writes Biden “fully executes all of his responsibilities without any exemptions or accommodations,” and describes him as a "healthy, active, robust 81-year-old male."

His health remained “stable and well-controlled,” including his asymptomatic atrial fibrillation “with normal ventricular response,” stiffened gait, obstructive sleep apnea and seasonal allergies. Other conditions listed on the report for Biden include chronic acid reflux, spinal arthritis and hyperlipidemia — a condition with an elevated amount of lipids in the blood.

The president also had a skin lesion revealed to be a basal cell carcinoma removed from his chest last year. Biden did not need further treatment for the issue, according the White House physician.

Biden takes three common prescription medications (Eliquis, Crestor and Dymista) and three common over-the-counter medications (Allegra, Pepcid and Nexium) to help with his allergies, cholesterol, blood pressure and acid reflux.

Biden continues not to use tobacco products or drink alcohol, and he exercises at least five days a week, O'Connor wrote.

Republicans, though, point to a special counsel report released earlier this year that described the president "as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.“