The Mainstream Media have finally begun asking the hard questions of Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden.
In the last 24 hours, six major newspapers have published stories about the sex-assault allegation, and last night, three top anchors on CNN and MSNBC eviscerated the aging candidate and demanded that he explain himself.
(Of course, none of this actually happened.)
As the Washington Free Beacon reported yesterday, the leftist media have not asked Biden one question about former staffer Tara Reade’s sex-assault allegation.
But now that Biden has pontificated at length about sex assault in the military, maybe some reporter will have the courage to ask him about it.
Five Weeks, no Questions
“Joe Biden has now done 19 interviews spanning nearly 4 hours in the 5 weeks since March 24, the day a former staffer in his U.S. Senate office came forward to accuse him of sexual assault. None of the 142 questions asked by his interviewers have been on the allegations,” the Free Beacon reported.
Biden, the publication noted, has appeared regularly on network television from the basement of his home in Delaware. Yet “reporters” from CNN, MSNBC, and local stations nationwide haven’t bothered to ask about Reade’s very serious charge.
In 1993, Reade says, Biden pinned her against a wall and molested her, and in the last week, two corroborating accounts have appeared.
But the paladins of the press have yet to sally forth and ask a simple question: “Did you do it?”
In the past two weeks alone, Biden has sat for at least an additional 97 minutes and 16 seconds of taped interviews, according to a Free Beacon analysis. The sexual assault allegation never came up. MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski asked Biden what he thought about President Donald Trump’s daily briefings. CBS comedian James Corden asked him to play “show and tell” with something from his Delaware home. CBS4’s Jim DeFede asked if the coronavirus made the case for a $15 minimum wage. KDKA’s Jon DeLano asked what he thought of when he thinks of Pittsburgh and whether he’d like Michelle Obama as his running mate. …
Several of the local news segments only posted edited portions of longer interviews. Pittsburgh Action News 4 and Local 4 Detroit, two of Biden’s recent interviews, largely edited out the questions asked by Biden’s respective interviewers, but the segments they aired included 10 different answers from the former vice president on topics unrelated to the allegations.
To their credit, the Free Beacon noted, reporters have asked Biden’s possible running mates what they think about the matter.
Failed Peach State gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams says a story in the New York Times shows the assault “did not happen,” which is exactly what the Biden campaign says and exactly what the Times denies.
Former presidential contender Senator Amy Klobuchar says Biden is a big leader for women and the Times’s story was a “very thorough” probe.
Biden Denounces Sex Assault in Military
Remiss as the media has been in asking about Reade’s allegation, the former veep did answer one question about sexual assault, as Fox News reported last night.
After a virtual women’s town hall, which also ducked Reade’s allegation, he appeared in a virtual fundraiser and pontificated about sex assault in the military.
“A woman named Nancy Parrish, who is an advocate of combating sexual assault in the military,” Fox reported, “asked the presumptive Democratic nominee if he would support ‘moving the military justice system into the 21st century by empowering experienced military prosecutors to make prosecution decisions for non-military crimes — serious felonies like rape, murder, and child abuse.’”
Biden might be shy about discussing Reade’s claim, but he was ready with an answer about sex crimes in the military.
“The answer is yes, yes, yes,” he said. “When I was vice president, that was my position as well. As a matter of fact, I had a real run-in with one of the members of the Joint Chiefs in the Cabinet Room on that issue. Look, we have to change the culture of abuse in this country, especially in armed services.”
And however far sex criminals in the military might run, they won’t have a place to hide, Biden said:
Number one: I will order the Defense Department to take urgent and aggressive action to make sure survivors are in fact supported and abusers are held accountable for their crimes. Independently, I’d immediately appoint a commission of current and former military leaders, sexual-assault survivors and their advocates and sexual-assault experts, and give them 90 days to make concrete recommendations to me, including on prosecution decisions.
Tara Reade is waiting for the media to hold Biden accountable.
Image: Shutterstock
R. Cort Kirkwood is a long-time contributor to The New American and a former newspaper editor
