Friday’s revelation in the Tara Reade-Joe Biden sex-assault story has sent staff members of the recently ended campaign of socialist Bernie Sanders into a rage. But even worse, a top Democrat strategist has said Biden should quit the race. Conservatives can say the media and Democrats don’t take sex assault seriously unless the accused is a Republican. And at least one honest journalist has warned that the story won’t go away.
The latest? Video of a call from Reade’s mother, Jeanette Altimus, to CNN talker Larry King in 1993 in which Altimus asked for help about reporting her daughter’s problems with her employer on Capitol Hill that would avoid involving the press.
In other words, the presumptive Democrat nominee for president has troubles that go well beyond recent accusations of sex harassment and defending long-gone Southerners early in his career.
One problem is the sex-assault allegation itself. The second is what Democrats plan to do about it.
The Call
Altimus anonymously called King and a panel of guests to ask what her daughter should do about her trouble with a “prominent senator” on Capitol Hill.
The call provides at least some proof that Reade did, as she said, tell her mother that something was amiss in Biden’s office, although Altimus did not detail the problem in the phone call.
Said Altimus:
I’m wondering what a staffer would do besides go to the press in Washington? My daughter has just left there, after working for a prominent senator, and could not get through with her problems at all, and the only thing she could have done was go to the press, and she chose not to do it out of respect for him.
Last year, Reade joined several other women and accused Biden of sex harassment. But in late March, during a podcast with leftist Katie Halper, she accused the former vice president of sexual assault. In 1993, she said, Biden pinned her against a wall and digitally penetrated her.
The accusation received little coverage, and the Washington Post and the New York Times published stories that cast doubt on Reade’s story, despite their outrageous coverage of the bogus sex-assault allegations against U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
Reade filed a report with D.C. police. And then the story died.
Until Friday’s viral video resurrected it.
Sanders’ People
Now, some Democrats are furious, among them Sanders’ people, who say Democrats should not have backed Biden given what was already known: The elderly former veep has a thing for touching, kissing, and fetishistic hair sniffing.
Sanders spokeswoman Briahna Joy Gray opened a series of tweets with this line:
The Democratic Party effectively chose Biden as its candidate when it coerced competing moderates to drop out following SC.
Now it can choose to remedy that mistake, but it would have to put the interests of the people before corporate donors.
“It’s a good time to note that Bernie is still on the ballot,” Gray continued, which indeed he is. Sanders quit the race weeks ago. He has 933 delegates against Biden’s 1,282.
Then, responding to a tweet from Donald Trump, Jr., Gray delivered this punch: “Progressives didn’t make this happen. Corporate Democrats chose Biden.”
Trump Jr. had reformulated Democrat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s words about Christine Blasey Ford, the woman who falsely accused U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh of sex assault at a high-school party. “Far too few people are recognizing Tara Reade’s sheer bravery in sharing her story today,” Trump wrote. “That *must* not be overlooked.” Trump substituted Reade’s name for Ford’s but otherwise repeated Pelosi verbatim.
Another Sanders aide, Winnie Wong, isn’t happy either. Wrote Wong, “The video of Tara Reade’s late mother calling into Larry King to blow the whistle about about Tara’s sexual assault is being met with relative silence from a cadre of progressives right now and I want you all to know that I see you. We all do.”
Pete Daou, an advisor to Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, said Biden must quit. “Credible rape accusations are disqualifying or we have NO moral standards,” he tweeted in a long thread.
Biden’s continuing to run would be a “catastrophe,” he wrote. Any one of the Democrats who quit the race is a good candidate, and Sanders can restart his campaign.
We lose ALL moral authority if we embrace “the lesser of two accused rapists.” …
This is about RED MORAL LINES. Sexual assault is unquestionably one of those lines.
I want to defeat Trump and the GOP as much as anyone in America.
I’ve spent my life fighting them.
But we cannot defeat Trump with a lesser of evils approach.
If you really want to win, DO NOT COMPROMISE BASIC MORAL STANDARDS. It is a sure formula for losing.
No More Game-playing
Leftist scribe Glenn Greenwald had a message for the pro-Biden media. “Tara Reade isn’t going away no matter how many times partisan opportunistic hacks like Amanda Marcotte and Joan Walsh are sent out to try to smear, demean & discredit her,” he tweeted. “Nobody is going to let the Democratic Party play games with weaponizing sexual assault allegations. Sorry.”
Marcotte is a writer for Salon.com, and Walsh, a top hand at The Nation.
Tweeted Walsh, “And telling Larry King about a ‘problem,’ nothing more. I dunno.”
This morning, Marcotte tweeted that the Confederate battle flag an “American swastika.” At this writing, her latest is about industrial bleach as a cure for the Chinese Virus.
For its part, CNN hasn’t given its story top billing at its website, even though the network plays a major role.
(Hat tip: Fox News)
Photo: AP Images
R. Cort Kirkwood is a longtime contributor to The New American and a former newspaper editor.
