Podcast host Jack Hopkins has a tweet with 1M views speculating Biden might've been surreptitiously drugged Thursday

[Metaphorical]

27. When I was suffering a particularly bad case of COPD

I was pretty heavily on cold medicines - Dayquil, Nyquil, Mucinex, etc. - because the medication I took for my heart condition (Lisinipril) also tended to induce heavy coughing. I was "functional" during the day, when I took it, but was sufficiently out of it that I finally ended up having to quit my job as a programmer because I couldn't think.

I did wonder about the possibility - that was in fact the first thing I thought when I saw him during the debate.

Do I think someone else drugged him? It's possible, but I consider it unlikely.

I do think that CNN did him no favors. A skilled camera person would have run a check for gamma levels to correct for the intense lights of the studio -- too high and someone can looked washed out, and with Biden's already pale complexion and white hair, that should have been done. Similarly, the levels on his mic was set too low, making him sound distorted, muffled, and hard to hear. Finally, if you had a multi-camera setup (which they obvious did) there is usually a telltale light indicating which camera is live at the moment. The fact that he always seemed to be looking at the wrong camera when answering the moderator made me wonder if their camera team was deliberately switching cameras.

I don't think Biden had a great night, and that was on him, but there were a lot of things that didn't add up to someone who's done broadcast work before.