The View’s Joy Behar denounced the “believe all women” mantra, claiming it hurts women’s credibility when making sexual misconduct allegations.
The co-hosts of the show addressed the mantra during Wednesday’s opening segment, which was focused on disgraced former television host Matt Lauer’s recent column accusing Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Ronan Farrow of failing to meet “journalistic standards” in his reporting of a rape allegation against Lauer.
“Well, I mean, I don’t know what to say about this because it worries me that, you know, a Pulitzer Prize winner does his investigation,” Behar argued. “It’s thorough, and then all of a sudden, somebody comes out of the woodwork and starts to question it. I mean, Trump, in my opinion, could use something like this and say, ‘You see. It’s fake news. No one’s to believe it.’ On the other hand, there’s another issue, like, we’re in the middle of this Tara Reade accusing Biden of sexual assault.”
“Are we supposed to believe her just because she’s a woman? To me, if you say, ‘I believe any woman who makes any accusation’ — if you say that, I think it minimizes our credibility as women, and then nobody’s going to believe anybody at some point,” she continued. “So these things have to be thoroughly investigated, thoroughly vetted.”
Behar then said she wanted to hear from Lauer’s accuser after reading his column and called for the women who have accused President Trump of sexual misconduct to speak up as well. She also expressed her concern that sexual misconduct allegations could be used as a “political cudgel,” prompting Meghan McCain to bring up Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who faced such accusations during his confirmation hearing.
“Kind of like with Brett Kavanaugh? I’m just saying. You hear a lot of women saying, ‘I believe all women,’ and then we’re seeing an entirely different tune after Brett Kavanaugh,” McCain stated. “It’s an entirely different tune that was being sung earlier this year in the Brett Kavanaugh hearings.”
The female empowerment motto of believing women who make such allegations gained national support during the #MeToo movement and Kavanaugh’s confirmation process. The mantra has not been embraced as widely in recent weeks after Tara Reade, a former staffer for then-Sen. Joe Biden, accused him of sexually harassing and sexually assaulting her, which he has denied.
Some Democrats who condemned Kavanaugh have been forced to confront what many view as hypocrisy for defending Biden.
