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Tide Begins To Turn On Biden As Media Increases Heat Over Sexual Assault Allegation

   DailyWire.com
Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden picks up some lunch at Pearl's Southern Cooking restaurant in Jackson, Mississippi on March 8, 2020.
MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images

Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden’s fortunes with the mainstream media have started to shift this week as news organizations are beginning to report more and more on the 1993 sexual assault allegation made against him by former Senate staffer Tara Reade.

Biden had been enjoying relatively little media scrutiny over the allegation when it surfaced late last month during a podcast interview.

“It happened all at once…his hands were on me and underneath my clothes,” Reade said. “Yeah, and he went down my skirt but then up inside it, and he penetrated me with his fingers, and he was kissing me at the same time, and he was saying something to me. He said several things. I can’t remember everything he said.”

As The Daily Wire has previously reported, the mainstream media gave the allegation against Biden virtually no coverage compared to the amount of coverage they gave to Christine Blasey Ford, who accused then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct.

The Media Research Center reported: “In just over a month, the grand total of ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, CNN and MSNBC’s Reade coverage amounted to 27 minutes and 31 seconds, as of April 27. However, 14 minutes and 54 seconds of that came from CNN on April 25.”

The coverage that came from CNN only happened after the Media Research Center “unearthed and posted an August 1993 video clip of Reade’s mother calling CNN about her daughter’s problem with a ‘prominent senator.'”

On Wednesday, publications that are typically friendlier to Democrats have started to turn up the heat on Biden for not addressing the allegation.

CNN published a report about how the Biden campaign was dishonestly claiming that a New York Times investigation into Reade’s allegations found that they were not credible. The New York Times released a statement making it clear that their reporting did not reach that conclusion.

The Washington Post Editorial Board grilled Biden for not addressing the accusation and for not allowing his Senate records to be released from the University of Delaware:

TARA READE deserves to be heard, and voters deserve to hear her. They deserve to hear from Joe Biden, too.

The former vice president and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee has yet to speak publicly about the allegation Ms. Reade has lodged against him: that when she was a member of his Senate staff in the 1990s, Mr. Biden pushed her against a wall and put his fingers up her skirt and then inside her. Mr. Biden’s campaign says “this never happened.” Contemporaneous accounts of Ms. Reade’s claim are counterweighted by the denials of her superiors at the time that she reported any misconduct, as well as inconsistencies in her retelling.

There are, at the moment, no clear conclusions. There may never be. But that is no excuse for not searching. One place to start is the records covering Mr. Biden’s 36-year Senate career, donated to the University of Delaware in 2012 and slated for release to the public two years after Mr. Biden “retires from public life.” These could contain confirmation of any complaint Ms. Reade made, either through official congressional channels or to the three other employees she claims she informed not specifically of the alleged assault but more generally of harassment. They could also contain nothing of the sort. Insisting on an inventory doesn’t mean one believes Ms. Reade or doesn’t believe her. It signals only a desire for the public to know all that’s able to be known, which ought to be in everyone’s interest.

The New York Times published a report that called attention to how the far-left base of the Democrat Party and women’s rights activists have become “angered” over Biden’s “lack of response.”

The New York Times reported:

Finally, several of the women’s groups prepared a public letter that praised Mr. Biden’s work as an “outspoken champion for survivors of sexual violence” but also pushed him to address the allegation from Tara Reade, a former aide who worked in Mr. Biden’s Senate office in the early 1990s.

Then Mr. Biden’s team heard about the advocates’ effort. According to people involved in the discussions, the group put the letter on hold as it began pressuring Biden advisers to push the candidate to make a statement himself before the end of April, which is Sexual Assault Awareness Month. Along with liberal organizers, they urged him to acknowledge the importance of survivors and the need for systemic change around issues of sexism and assault.

Nearly two weeks later, Mr. Biden and his campaign have yet to make that statement, and the advocates have not released their letter. The Biden campaign has said little publicly beyond saying that women deserve to be heard and insisting that the allegation is not true; privately, Biden advisers have circulated talking points urging supporters to deny that the incident occurred.

The Daily Wire, headed by bestselling author and popular podcast host Ben Shapiro, is a leading provider of conservative news, cutting through the mainstream media’s rhetoric to provide readers the most important, relevant, and engaging stories of the day. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a member.

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