One of the many cheap tactics the national media have used to justify their delayed reporting on Tara Reade’s sexual assault allegations against Joe Biden has been to deploy the “What about the allegations against President Trump?” card, as if that justifies the fact that it took major media outlets 3 weeks or more to file their first reports on Reade’s claim that Biden raped her in 1993 while she was a member of his Senate staff.

ABC News’s Martha Raddatz went that route on Sunday when she hosted the network’s “This Week” program and interviewed Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, and immediately regretted it.

During the segment, McDaniel noted that the Biden everyone was seeing right now was the “2020 version”, who had shifted far to the left on many policies. McDaniel then stated that Biden was finally “challenged for the first time in five weeks on allegations that many in the media have ignored.”

Raddatz, who was filling in for George Stephanopoulos, took issue with McDaniel’s claim but strangely could barely be bothered to look at her when she tried to refute it. “Well, I know we here at ABC have not ignored it and many in the media have not ignored it. We haven’t ignored it. But I want to turn to those accusations,” Raddatz said, while not mentioning the fact that ABC News only filed their first detailed report last week, over a month after Reade went public.

But when Raddatz “turned” to the accusations against Biden, she played the “whataboutism” game, setting the stage for what would be an epic smackdown by McDaniel.

“You put out an ad, an attack ad against Joe Biden. But the President has also been accused of sexual harassment, sexual misconduct, sexual assault by more than a dozen women. And in a radio interview on Thursday, President Trump said while Tara Reade, the accuser, sounds credible, ‘I would just say to Joe Biden, just go out and fight it’ adding, ‘I guess in a way you could say I’m sticking up for him.’ Is he sticking up for Joe Biden? And how far will you go with these attack ads?” Raddatz fretted.

McDaniel went off:

MCDANIEL: I’m going to take issue with the media ignoring this. It has been appalling the hypocrisy, as to how Brett Kavanagh was treated versus Joe Biden. Brett Kavanaugh, every accuser was put on TV, it was wall-to-wall coverage. They went into his high school yearbook. They said he needed an FBI investigation. Michael Avenatti was on TV accusing him of gang rape from an accuser who never even met Brett Kavanaugh.

And then you go to Joe Biden, five weeks of silence. 19 interviews without a single question. He won’t let people go into his records in the University of Delaware. They’re calling on the DNC to do the investigation. It from #MeToo, #MeToo, #MeToo to move on, move on, move on in a nanosecond because he’s a Democrat.

And the hypocrisy is appalling and it’s not just from the Democrats, it’s from the media. And I’ll tell you, I think any outlet that conducted those 19 interviews and didn’t ask a single question should be disqualified from conducting any part of a presidential debate.

RADDATZ: So, why did the President say he was “in a way sticking up for him?”

MCDANIEL: Because due process and the presumption of innocence has no longer been the standard in this country when it comes to Republicans. Now, Democrats are suddenly embracing those legal standards that we have made the cornerstone of our country when it comes to Joe Biden. But they threw it out the window when it came to Brett Kavanagh. And so did the media. And the hypocrisy has been appalling. We need to do some self-reflection as to how Kavanaugh was treated versus how Biden is being treated right now.

Watch a segment from the exchange below, via MRC-TV:

McDaniel’s suggestion that the debates should not include any of the media outlets who failed to ask Biden a single question about the Reade allegations is a good one, I think, but maybe it should be extended to any news outlet that failed to cover the story in a timely manner. That would mean pretty much all national media outlets would not get the chance to host or participate in the debates, which in my opinion would not be a bad thing at all, considering how they’ve dropped all pretense of objectivity over the last 3+ years.