Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel is calling for the networks that ignored the sexual assault allegation against former Vice President Joe Biden to be barred from hosting any 2020 presidential debate.
Biden has been accused of both sexually harassing and sexually assaulting Tara Reade, a woman who worked in his Senate office in the 1990s. She alleges that Biden pushed her up against a wall and penetrated her with his fingers without her consent, but he has denied the allegation.
McDaniel, in a Sunday morning appearance on ABC News’s This Week, brought up the lack of media coverage surrounding the allegation early on, contrasting the matter with coverage of sexual misconduct allegations levied against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation process.
“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 … 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,” she explained.
“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,” she added.
McDaniel was referencing a report from the Washington Free Beacon, which said the former vice president gave 19 interviews without facing a single question about Reade’s allegation. Some of the outlets that passed on the opportunity to question Biden included CNN, MSNBC, and CBS. More than a month after Reade came forward, Biden appeared on MSNBC to address the claim last week.
“Media bias exists not only in how they cover stories but in what they choose not to cover as well,” RNC spokesman Steve Guest told the Washington Examiner on Monday in regard to McDaniel’s remarks. “And since the allegation became public, America has seen the Left and their media allies has one standard for Republicans and a completely different standard for Democrats like Joe Biden. This double standard is appalling.”
During the 2016 presidential election cycle, the Commission on Presidential Debates chose NBC News, ABC News, CNN, CBS News, and Fox News to moderate both the presidential and vice-presidential debates, but McDaniel’s idea would render three of those networks ineligible, according to the Washington Post.
The Trump campaign has already warned that the president could skip the debates in the fall if he feels the moderators, who are selected by the CPD, are not “fair.” The campaign, which views the CPD board of directors as anti-Trump, has sought the possibility of holding debates outside the commission.
The RNC did not respond to additional questions about whether the president would boycott a debate if it were hosted by one of the networks that did not question Biden after the allegation came to light.
