In recent days, you might have experienced a sensation while reading the political internet or watching cable news that makes you ask yourself, “Are Democrats really into this, or is it fake?” That feeling was likely caused by coming across or directly consuming copium.

Copium is any narrative or event that Democrats seize on to help numb their sore parts and cope with their sad reality. Over the course of the past two weeks, copium came in the form of Democrat California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desperate social media activity and was then followed by a dose of hopeful rumors that President Trump had either died or was otherwise severely ill.

Both storylines were hyped up by the dying news media, which are just as dependent on copium as the average sad Democrat who can’t get over the 2024 election. After all, they’re effectively one and the same.

With the Newsom copium, the media were hard at work convincing their audiences at CNN and the New York Times that the governor’s corny tweets imitating the president’s voice were comedic gold knocking Trump back on his heels. Newsom was, according to CNN, “owning the MAGAs.”

Anyone not addicted to copium knew that something was off. The tweets weren’t funny or incisive so much as just another exhausted Trump impersonation intending to signal a Democrat’s opposition. But when you depend on such a substance, you have to convince yourself that it’s great.

The death rumor copium was much darker, but just as dumb — online influencers and professional conspiratorialists looked at a sparse White House holiday weekend public schedule and, paired with photos of a bruise, determined the president had died or fallen deathly sick. To understand how potent this particular variant of the sedative was, consider that Stephen Colbert had to quiet his own audience after it booed his acknowledgement that Trump was, in fact, still alive.

The entire affair was driven by internet obsessives who juice social media algorithms with hysterical conspiracy talk, publishing dozens of posts raising suspicions and rumors, usually because they can make money from it. But just as in Trump’s first term, the gross speculation didn’t stay in the world wide web’s sewers; it made its way into the New York Times, where author Katie Rogers on Tuesday both legitimized and trivialized the subject under the headline, “President Trump Is Alive. The Internet Was Convinced Otherwise.”

“Mr. Trump’s critics have speculated about his health for as long as he has been in national politics,” wrote Rogers. “And for his part, he has long declined to explain when and why he has sought out medical care, whether he was suffering from Covid or undergoing routine procedures. But there had never been a conspiracy wave as feverish as this one.” Then she consulted medical professionals and Trump’s public medical history to give the copium a veneer of journalistic integrity.

This wasn’t a matter of curiosity in the public interest. If a president’s barren schedule on a weekend — a holiday weekend, no less — were a national security imperative, Joe Biden would have been dogged for public health updates by the minute for all four years of his term. That didn’t happen, and not because he didn’t deserve it.

Copium isn’t necessarily a partisan drug. But the supply Democrats are using of late is something very stupid and highly toxic.

Eddie Scarry is the D.C. columnist at The Federalist and author of "Liberal Misery: How the Hateful Left Sucks Joy Out of Everything and Everyone."