White House spokesman scoffs at 'snorting' Trump calling for drug tests

The White House mocked Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump on Monday for suggesting that both candidates take a drug test before their final faceoff Wednesday.

“So you’re telling me that the candidate who snorted his way through the first two debates is accusing the other candidate of taking drugs?” White House press secretary Josh Earnest said to reporters during the daily briefing. “That’s a curious development in the campaign.”


At a rally Saturday, Trump likened himself and Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton to athletes and proposed that the two take a drug test before their bout in Las Vegas. He described Clinton as “all pumped up at the beginning” of the second debate but claimed she could “barely reach her car” once it was over.

“I think we should take a drug test,” he said. “Anyway, I'm willing to do it.”

Asked for clarity Monday on whether he was suggesting that Trump’s sniffling in the first two debates was related to drug use, Earnest said, “Not at all.”

“Just trying to have a little fun,” he told the White House press corps. “You guys are so serious today.”

Told that there were gasps after his initial response, Earnest said he “was expecting for chuckles.”

“It’s probably my flawed delivery,” he conceded. “I laughed,” Mark Knoller of CBS News noted, to which Earnest replied, “Thank you, Mark.”

Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean apologized “for using innuendo” last month after tweeting with no evidence that Trump’s sniffling during the first debate might have been a result of cocaine use.

“Notice Trump sniffing all the time. Coke user?” Dean tweeted during the Hofstra University debate.