In profane statement, Team Biden rejects Trump's call for pre-debate drug tests 

President Trump has repeatedly called for drug tests before Tuesday's first presidential debate, claiming that Joe Biden's performances have gotten better and implying that the Democrat must be taking performance-enhancing drugs.

Biden has stayed mum on the demand, but his campaign came out Sunday with a fierce — and profane — response.

"Vice President Biden intends to deliver his debate answers in words. If the president thinks his best case is made in urine he can have at it," Biden's deputy campaign manager Kate Bedingfield wrote. "We'd expect nothing less from Donald Trump, who pissed away the chance to protect the lives of 200K Americans when he didn't make a plan to stop COVID-19."

In a post on Twitter on Sunday, Trump said he wanted drug tests before or after the debate, vowing to take one himself. 

"I will be strongly demanding a Drug Test of Sleepy Joe Biden prior to, or after, the Debate on Tuesday night," Trump wrote. "Naturally, I will agree to take one also. His Debate performances have been record setting UNEVEN, to put it mildly. Only drugs could have caused this discrepancy???"

Trump has been demanding drug tests for months. In August, he said he thought Biden's differing performances in past debates during the Democratic primary season deserves scrutiny, noting that Biden performed poorly in early Democratic debates but got much better when he faced off with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT).

"Nobody thought that he was even going to win," Trump told The Washington Examiner in an Oval Office interview. "Because his debate performances were so bad. Frankly, his best performance was against Bernie. We're going to call for a drug test, by the way, because his best performance was against Bernie. It wasn't that he was Winston Churchill, because he wasn't, but it was a normal, boring debate. You know, nothing amazing happened. And we are going to call for a drug test, because there's no way — you can't do that."

"What do you think was going on?" columnist Byron York asked.

"I don't know how he could have been so incompetent in his debate performances and then all of a sudden be OK against Bernie," Trump said. "My point is, if you go back and watch some of those numerous debates, he was so bad. He wasn't even coherent. And against Bernie, he was. And we're calling for a drug test.

"I look. I watched him in the debates with all of the different people. He was close to incompetent, if not incompetent, and against Bernie, he was normal ... and I say, 'How does that happen?'"

"Go back and watch his performances in some of those debates," Trump also said. "He didn't know where he was. And all of a sudden, he was not good, he was normal, and I don't understand how. I don't know if there is or not, but somebody said to me, 'He must be on drugs.' I don't know if that's true or not, but I'm asking for a drug test. Both candidates. Me, too. I take an aspirin a day."