Tara Reade publicly stated on March 25 that presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Bide sexually assaulted her in 1993. She said Biden once “pinned her to a wall in a Senate building, reached under her clothing and penetrated her with his fingers,” according to an account in The New York Times
The Times took 19 days to report the allegations, even though the outlet immediately reported allegations against then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, a Republican.
CNN waited an additional five days to finally publish something about the allegations, meaning the outlet waited a whopping 24 days to cover serious allegations against a prominent politician. In contrast, CNN published nearly 700 articles about the Kavanaugh allegations in the span of 19 days between the time the allegations against Kavanaugh were made public and the Senate confirmed him.
CNN has now published something about Reade’s allegations that Biden sexually assaulted her nearly three decades ago while she worked for his Senate office, but the story written by CNN has less to do with the allegations and more about how other Democrats are “grappling” with them.
“Top Democratic leaders and allies of Joe Biden are being asked to respond to an allegation of sexual assault leveled against the former vice president by Tara Reade, at a moment when many in the Democratic Party are eager to consolidate support for the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee,” the outlet wrote.
Notice how Biden doesn’t seem to be grappling with the allegations, as no one has asked him about them. His campaign has denied them, but Biden himself has not had to answer for anything.
CNN went on to quote Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who was asked about the accusations against the man she hopes will pick her as vice president.
“Well, I think women should be able to tell their stories. I think that it is important that these allegations are vetted, from the media to beyond. And I think that, you know, it is something that no one takes lightly,” Whitmer told NPR when she was asked about the accusations. “But it is also something that is, you know, personal. And so it’s hard to give you greater insight than that, not knowing more about the situation.”
NPR also asked Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Biden’s former primary opponent, about the allegations. Klobuchar explained that “all women in these cases have the right to be heard and have their claims thoroughly reviewed.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Biden’s biggest challenger to the nomination, said that “any woman who feels that she was assaulted has every right in the world to stand up and make her claims.”
As Fox News reported, Biden has done 10 TV interviews since Reade made her allegations, including three with CNN. Not once during those interviews was Biden asked about the allegations.
Many of the same anchors who ignored questions about Biden were adamant about accusing Kavanaugh of being a rapist and treating his accuser as a saint. When the Times defended its handling of the Biden allegation, Executive Editor Dean Baquet actually used the fact that outlets ignored Reade’s allegations as a defense for ignoring Reade’s allegations (emphasis added):
Kavanaugh was already in a public forum in a large way. Kavanaugh’s status as a Supreme Court justice was in question because of a very serious allegation. And when I say in a public way, I don’t mean in the public way of Tara Reade’s. If you ask the average person in America, they didn’t know about the Tara Reade case. So I thought in that case, if The New York Times was going to introduce this to readers, we needed to introduce it with some reporting and perspective. Kavanaugh was in a very different situation. It was a live, ongoing story that had become the biggest political story in the country. It was just a different news judgment moment.
And none of this even scratches the surface of the hypocrisy surrounding the Left and the #MeToo movement, which claims to believe all women until a favored man like Biden is accused.