A good number of people are asking why the Trump campaign has not insisted that Biden be drug tested, and, along with that concern, they are also questioning why the Trump Team consented so readily to having CNN carry the debate using their hosts. Other questions are about Biden’s demands, such as no notes, being able to silence the debater by cutting off his mic, standing vs. sitting, and no live audience.

Here’s my take. The most important thing is that Trump has highlighted all of these “defects” (as we’ll call them) in debate rules. He has put all of it out there so it’s in the minds of anyone paying attention. This will be reinforced when the CNN team states the rules when the debate starts.

For seasoned conservatives, we already know that this kind of bunk is baked into most, if not all, debates, press conferences, and interviews. Nothing new to see there. We know it’s not a level playing field by any stretch, but it is the playing field we are used to, and it’s always the other team (for those of you in Rio Linda, Team Democrat-Media Complex) with the home team advantage. Not us.

Trump, the chess master, is perfectly comfortable on this ballfield. He will harp on all of these “defects” during and after the debate to his benefit.

Image: YouTube screen grab.

If he pushes the drug testing, only for Biden (miraculously) to come up clean and demands to have a conservative moderator, then, after the debate, he loses important talking points. Trump wants to be able to talk about Biden being on something, but if Biden’s drug test is negative or inconclusive, Trump can’t play that up on the campaign trail. The same is true if the debates are conducted in a perfectly non-biased way where the playing field is level. If things don’t go Trump’s way, he cannot play up the fact that the moderator was a jerk, the questions favored Biden, and the entire debate was rigged against him from the moment it started.

All of this—drugs, bias, and the press generally conspiring with the President to rig the debate against Trump—allows Trump to continue the narrative that Biden is so incompetent he has to be drugged up to appear at a debate, his henchmen in the media were overzealous in silencing 45’s mic just as they gagged him in New York, and the Democrat-Media Complex once again prevented the American people from participating in a public presidential debate.

A long sidenote here, so you can have more understanding about how Biden’s team is “handling” him. The reason there is no live audience has nothing to do with what they claim is a raucous audience favoring Trump (although it’s interesting that they’re so concerned about an even playing field in that respect). The real reason is that people in the early to moderate stages of dementia have a hard time with overstimulation. Loud noises, busy scenes, crowded rooms, and crowds yelling, cheering, and clapping are all very difficult for people with dementia to process.

At first, they are fine, but eventually, confusion will start to trickle in as the event progresses—whether a holiday dinner with the family or a presidential debate. They’ll say inappropriate things, be confused about where they are, and forget who people are, all of which we view as okay and to be expected with elderly people. An individual suffering from the early stages of dementia can often power through one, two, or even three hours of overstimulation.

But the aftermath is when it all falls apart. When they get home, they spiral out of control. They’ll hallucinate, they’re inconsolable, and you cannot get them back on track. Sometimes, they’ll try to leave their lodgings, they can become physically aggressive and argumentative, they won’t sleep, and they’ll become irrational and irascible. If you care about them, your heart just breaks as you watch Hell unfold before your very eyes.

This post-event response can just be for the remainder of the night but usually drags it on for days. Those few hours of overstimulation (normal stimulation for the rest of us) set something off in their brains and can often usher in a new level of dementia. It’s hard to watch, often impossible to fix, painful to endure, and hard not to be a participant.

I know this because my Dad suffered from dementia, and I used to call it the Stimulation-Confusion-Delusion spiral. Friends and family would say, “I don’t know what you are worried about. He seemed just fine to me. Had a great conversation with him. He was with it.” However, as that time together wore on, he’d begin to dissipate and be promptly whisked home, where those of us caring for him or his professional caregivers would have to clean up the mess in Aisle Grey Matter.

So, Joe’s handlers are concerned that if Joe must endure all the questioning while standing, without notes, potentially arguing with Trump, and then, on top of that, contending with loud and often raucous cheering, jeering, and clapping from the audience, he’ll end in a Delusion spiral. Worse, it could start on stage. Then, it could take days, even weeks, to correct itself, and he’ll probably permanently sink into greater dementia. You just end up at a new low for the disease (e.g., not recognizing a person, confusing night and day, or having trouble feeding himself).

I don’t know if this is still the case but, in the past, doctors would prescribe to people with early dementia a hard-core anti-psychotic like Quetiapine (aka Seroquel) to “quiet” them down, but the fact is that it’s really a chemical lobotomy. On the drug, they’re exhausted and non-responsive, just staring at nothing and barely speaking. But at least, they’re manageable. It also takes time for that dulled state to subside. While Biden is on it, his people would be calling lids left and right until he is back to being “himself.” Sidenote over.

The upshot is that the Biden team’s desperation to protect Biden, which is almost certainly because of dementia, plays in Trump’s favor. That’s why his campaign hasn’t pushed hard to make changes that would level a playing field he is perfectly happy to play on, as crooked as it may be.