Tara Reade says she was sexually assaulted by Joe Biden in 1993. Nancy Pelosi doesn’t care.
That’s the only conclusion one can draw from the House speaker’s latest remarks. During an MSNBC interview Tuesday night, Pelosi called the charge against Biden a “closed issue,” as reported by the Washington Examiner.
“I have said I am proud to support Joe Biden for president,” Pelosi said. “I believe him when he says it didn’t happen. But I also believe when he says, ‘Let them look into the records.’ And that’s what they should do. But I’m not going to answer this question again.”
At the very least, Pelosi deserves credit for transparency as to her newfound disregard for #MeToo and “believing survivors,” now that a Democratic ally stands accused. The speaker is not even being shy about her total change of tune since the Brett Kavanaugh debacle. Sure, when the Republican Supreme Court nominee faced an accusation, Pelosi moralized about courageous survivors “speaking truth” and blasted Republicans for not “hearing, believing, or respecting women.” Now she has clearly revealed that impassioned rhetoric for the partisan propaganda it always was.
But in no way, shape, or form is this a “closed issue.” (No matter how much Pelosi and other Democrats wish otherwise). If anything, it’s the opposite.
The accusation against Biden is more credible and substantiated than Christine Blasey Ford’s charge against Kavanaugh ever was. Blasey Ford, as much as she deserves our compassion, could not even remember where or when the alleged assault happened. The witnesses she claimed would confirm her story all failed to do so. Her story had also changed drastically. She had no contemporaneous corroboration or proof of any kind — and no, therapist notes from 30 years after the fact are hardly contemporaneous.
On the other hand, Reade was definitely a staffer who worked closely with Biden. Although her story has not been perfectly consistent, she has two strong examples of contemporaneous corroboration. Her mother called Larry King in 1993 and mentioned her daughter’s “problems” with a prominent senator, and a neighbor, who supports Biden, has confirmed that Reade told her about the assault in the 1990s. Together, these two facts make it substantially less likely that Reade is just making these charges against Biden up out of thin air in order to hurt his current presidential bid.
The charge against Biden is made even more poignant by his long legacy of leading the Obama administration’s anti-due-process charge undermining fairness for accused students on campus, his past full-throated endorsement of believing all accusers, and his continued refusal to release his full records.
So, no, this isn’t a “closed issue,” nor is it going away any time soon. This will likely haunt Biden and the Democrats throughout November’s election and beyond. Tough luck, but Pelosi and Biden deserve to lay in the bed they made.
