President Trump’s campaign is amplifying sexual misconduct allegations against Joe Biden, a messaging strategy Republican allies are confident will tear down the presumptive Democratic nominee without boomeranging on an incumbent with a history of similar accusations.
The Trump campaign, joined by the Republican National Committee and prominent supporters, is blitzing the media with demands for Biden to address allegations by Tara Reade, 56, who says the then-senator assaulted her when she worked for him in 1993. Normally, an obvious line of attack, the broadside risks casting fresh attention on accusations of sexual misconduct brought by multiple women against Trump.
Republicans in Trump’s orbit are comfortable with the strategy. Allegations against Trump were litigated in public during the 2016 campaign — and he won the presidency. With the Reade accusations, Trump, a polarizing candidate with low personal favorable numbers, has an opportunity to nuke some of Biden’s greatest political assets — likability, empathy, strength with female voters — and even the playing field. The tactic was effective against Hillary Clinton four years ago.
“It comes as no surprise that the Democrats and mainstream media have given Joe Biden a pass on his sexual assault allegations,” Trump campaign spokesman Ken Farnaso said Wednesday. “It’s baffling that nearly everyone in American politics has been asked for a reaction to this except Joe Biden himself. Is he off-limits?”
Trumpworld operatives raising the Biden allegations are leavening attacks on the presumptive Democratic nominee with media criticism and charges of Democratic hypocrisy.
Congressional Democrats opposed the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh on the basis of decades-old, unproven sexual misconduct allegations with thinner corroboration than the Reade accusations. They were near unanimous in asserting Kavanaugh’s accuser deserved to be believed, while Republicans argued the evidence was insufficient — especially in light of strong character references. Democrats are standing by Biden on similar grounds. “Apparently, ‘believe all women’ only goes one way,” Donald Trump Jr. tweeted.
Meanwhile, Republicans who fielded tough questions from reporters in the fall of 2018 regarding the allegations against Kavanaugh, and in 2016 regarding accusations against Trump, say the press is going easy on Biden and Democrats associated with him.
But while there are benefits to highlighting Democratic hypocrisy and media inconstancy, the larger goal is to raise awareness of Biden’s alleged misdeeds with voters. The president is newly vulnerable amid a coronavirus pandemic that has bludgeoned the economy, and the Trump campaign aims to make Biden unacceptable with women and independents who are dissatisfied with the incumbent such that they will sit out November or vote third party.
“The Trump campaign strategy to push the Reade allegations makes imminent sense for them,” said Rob Stutzman, a Republican operative in Sacramento, California, often critical of Trump. “To beat Biden, they have to drive his negatives through the roof and strive to create equivalencies with Trump’s most loathsome qualities.”
Some Republican insiders believe the president understands the risks, pointing to that, uncharacteristically, he has yet to comment personally on the Biden allegations or give them voice in his Twitter feed.
“Trump knows that as soon as he criticizes Biden for this, it will invite scrutiny of his own past,” a GOP strategist said. “I almost wonder if Biden’s whole strategy is to wait until Trump says or tweets something, and then he can respond along the lines of: ‘I won’t be falsely attacked by someone who paid off pornstars.’”
The Biden campaign did not respond to a request for comment. Trump aggressively denied all allegations against him at the time each were made.
