As of right now, we are starting to see some stories bubble up regarding the allegations against former Vice President and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.
Those allegations, made by a former staffer named Tara Reade, are that he sexually assaulted her – it is a much different image of Biden than the slightly creepy hugger and hair sniffer that Good Ol’ Uncle Joe has been portrayed as in the past, but they are worth investigating.
I’ve said this before, but I am as skeptical of these allegations as I was the Kavanaugh allegations. Kavanaugh served on the second most powerful court in the nation before being nominated to the Supreme Court and only when he was nominated did the allegations come out. Biden has been a political icon in the Democratic Party for decades, has run for President more than once, and served two terms as Vice President. The timing for both gives me pause.
The difference between the Kavanaugh and the Biden allegations, however, is that at no point did anyone corroborate Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s story (nor any of the stories that came out afterward, which were all less credible than the original). Despite this, however, you had multiple people Democrats who proudly believed Dr. Ford and used her claims to carry out their political agenda of thwarting President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court pick.
Those same Democrats now are very quiet on the Reade allegations. His national campaign co-chair, Gretchen Whitmer, was one of the vocal “I believe Dr. Ford” types, but won’t give the same automatic support to Reade.
Our media, meanwhile, does not wish to talk much about it. It took weeks for the allegations to be mentioned in two of the nation’s leading newspapers, The Washington Post and the New York Times. The Times, in particular, made a show of explaining away why they didn’t run with them. However, a former neighbor came forward without Reade asking to tell Business Insider that Reade told her about the allegations at the time.
Another big reveal over the weekend was the footage of Reade’s mother calling Larry King’s show on CNN. When the video came to light, it was confirmed by Reade that it was her mother’s voice, and it fit the timeline.
The problem with all this is that these allegations are not new. They didn’t just appear over the last week or so. This has been bubbling up for weeks, and in all that time, Biden’s had several television appearances where he wasn’t asked once about them. The national press can talk all it wants about having “covered” the story, but at no point has anyone who has had a chance to talk to the candidate himself actually asked the question. That is bad journalism.
Many of the journalists in our national press have leftward leanings. That isn’t new, but it does make the double-standard here so egregious. They ran with dozens of stories about Kavanaugh per day. They ran with every allegations, corroboration or not. However, when it comes to someone running against Trump, they have been demonstrably walking on eggshells around the issue.
It is something we would absolutely expect from Democrats, but it is behavior that is shameful for our journalists to be engaging in. We are a country that believes in innocence until proven guilty, but to engage in declaring one man (Brett Kavanaugh) guilty while another man (Joe Biden) gets a pass when the claims against the latter are, on the face, stronger than the former is just bad.
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