Tara Reade's accusation is swift-boating. (Link to evidence against her account)

[Bucky]

I have a good deal of sympathy for Tara Reade. She's been a victim of domestic abuse and seems to be a woman under serious psychological stress.

The last thing we should do is attack her personally. but it's pretty clear that right wing media is going to cynically exploit her psychological state or mental condition thats producing her erratic and inconsistent accusations.

I strongly encourage everyone to read this link to an objective accounting of Reade's history of publication concerning Biden and other public issues.


https://link.medium.com/nICOhGgCh5


The villains here are the "moralistic" right-wing journalists who plan to use her and manipulate her story into an even bigger fabrication.

[Gothmog]

1. New York Times 'Deep Dive' Clears Joe Biden Of Sexual Misconduct: 'No Pattern' Of Bad Behavior

Link to tweet

Unsurprisingly, the NYT found no evidence that Biden sexually assaulted Reade and, what’s more, they “found no pattern of sexual misconduct” by Biden, despite years of claims of unwanted harassment and touching by multiple women.

“The Times interviewed Ms. Reade on multiple days over hours, those she told about Mr. Biden’s behavior and friends,” the lead reporter on the story tweeted Sunday. “The Times also interviewed lawyers who spoke to Ms. Reade; nearly 24 people who worked with Mr. Biden in the 1990s and 7 women who criticized Mr. Biden last year.”

“No other allegation about sexual assault surfaced in the course of reporting, nor did any former Biden staff members corroborate any details of Ms. Reade’s allegation,” she added. “The Times found no pattern of sexual misconduct by Mr. Biden.”

The Times does admit that Reade made contemporaneous complaints about the assault to friends, and that she didn’t simply “discover” that she’d been assaulted by Biden in the last several months or years, as Biden’s name surfaced as a potential presidential contender. In fact, the Times does go out of its way to catalog Reade’s claims, made several times over the course of several years — not dissimilar claims made against now-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh by a former high school classmate.
“A friend said that Ms. Reade told her about the alleged assault at the time, in 1993,” the Times reports. “A second friend recalled Ms. Reade telling her in 2008. Ms. Reade said she also told her brother, who has confirmed parts of her account publicly and her mother, who has since died.”

That should give the Times pause — after all, it all but declared Brett Kavanaugh guilty of sexual assault over a similar, largely unsubstantiated claim last year. Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, in contrast, did not make any contemporanous reports of her assault, and the only friend who had any recollection of high school summer parties with Kavanaugh and his friends, a woman by the name of Leyland Keyser, said she remembered nothing.

Instead, the Times goes out of its way not just to clear Joe Biden of responsibility in Reade’s incident — but in all incidents, in a shocking statement.

[Bucky]

5. I am not excusing Joe Biden's specific inappropriate behavior

First off, that's not the topic of my thread

More importantly, I think it's possible to say that he has behaved inappropriately without saying he's guilty of this specific accusation that exceeds the scope and character of the inappropriate handsy behavior that we've all witnessed in numerous videos.

Biden has been properly criticized for this, and he's apologized and promised to change his behavior. But the purpose of my post was to share information with other DUers about what specifically shows that Ms Reade's accusations are inconsistent and she herself lacks credibilty.

[Gothmog]

19. The NYT rejected this story for a host of reasons

Link to tweet

[Cha]

6. Thank you for that, Goth! It's relevant.

[Walleye]

2. There was never gossip or rumors about this in Delaware.

And the whole state is like one big small town, not many secrets go undiscovered.

[Gothmog]

3. There is nothing to this story

Link to tweet

[Cha]

8. TY..

Link to tweet

[Bucky]

10. So what? There's nothing to the email story either. There's nothing to Benghazi.

However they were sledge hammers used to discredit a perfectly qualified Hillary Clinton 4 years ago.

I believe in walking away from a fight, but not while someone's actually slugging you into head.

[no_hypocrisy]

4. Al Franken Redux.

Seen this movie before -- and walked out before the end.

[Bucky]

7. Don't think that we have the power to "walk out" of this one

This is what the debate's going to be about, in part---despite being largely a non credible red herring.

We need to have our counter-arguments lined up and ready to roll second we run into RW trolls over the next 6 months. these are not matters you can just ignore or walk away from.

We have to be ready to push back with every Republican argument we run into.

[no_hypocrisy]

14. In total agreement.

We should have a system like James Carville had ready for Clinton in 1992: Rapid Response. The campaign anticipated attacks like the "bimbo eruptions" and much more. They had responses ready to go within 30 minutes of the initial attack. And smashed the critics like flies.

[demmiblue]

9. I have no idea what this is about... but I saw that the authors are the Krass Bros...

they are a big fucking NOPE.

[Bucky]

12. Thank you

They seem to be sketchy characters themselves.

I still think the evidence they present speaks for itself, but obviously I'll need a reread with a grain of salt.

[demmiblue]

16. Very sketchy. They were eventually banned from Twitter.

https://upload.democraticunderground.com/100210902550

https://www.thedailybeast.com/twitter-bans-resistance-famous-krassenstein-brothers-for-allegedly-operating-fake-accounts

DU is not immune from the influence of dumbshit grifters (the same people who loved them, adored Louise Mensch).

Lol, they even joined DU: https://www.democraticunderground.com/1016236152#post4


* I didn't read the link, so I am not commenting on the content. My comments are only referring to the Krass Bros.

[Hav]

15. I guess, they have gotten themselves a bad reputation

which makes people unwilling, myself included, to even consider what they are saying.

I'd prefer other sources but I thought the article was actually well written. It started out carefully pointing out that every woman should be heard but that there is also a responsibility to check the facts. It then goes through a whole list of lies and inconsistencies in the story and as a whole, it just doesn't make sense. What wasn't needed for that article was the Russia angle, though. The inconsistencies surrounding her claims were clear enough.
I also think this is one of the reasons why this topic isn't captivating the major news outlets.

[treestar]

11. Thing is, how can Republicans expect to use this?

The Pussy Grabber can't take any high ground here.

[Bucky]

13. Just like AWOL Dubya Bush couldn't attack war hero John Kerry?

If your argument is that Republicans can't use this without applying a hypocritical double standard, you are absolutely correct.

To even pull something like that off, they would have to set up their own separate news networks with unbearably obvious partisan slants and fool voters into believing in an alternate reality.

[Hav]

17. At this point,

there is no need to even go there from our side to say "Oh well, Biden did this but look at Trump". There is a claim full of lies and inconsistencies that went through multiple revisions against Biden. With what is currently known, it shouldn't be treated seriously.

[Orangepeel]

18. trumps m.o. is to accuse others of what he is guilty of

[Gothmog]

20. Joan Walsh at the Nation-The Troublesome Tara Reade Story

Link to tweet

There is no evidence former Vice President Joe Biden, now the assumptive Democratic presidential nominee, sexually assaulted aide Tara Reade in 1993. There is no evidence he did not. Reade claims he did — specifically, that he pushed her against a wall and digitally penetrated her against her will, when she worked in his US Senate office. Biden’s campaign firmly denies it.

The story originated on the left, just about three weeks ago, when diehard Bernie Sanders supporter Katie Halper hosted Reade on her podcast, and encouraged her to tell her story publicly for the first time in 27 years. The story took off from there, on the left and the right, with certain Sanders supporters and Donald Trump backers (whose own man is credibly accused of sexual assault or extreme harassment by more than a dozen women) accusing the mainstream media of pro-Biden bias for not investigating the charges against him.....

Where does this leave us? Reade’s shifting stories are a huge problem, as they would be for anyone claiming to be the victim of a crime. And as someone who has personally criticized Biden for his persistent invasion of women’s personal space — up to and including multiple accounts of touching and kissing — I find her allegation hard to believe. Is it possible? Sure. Is it probable? No.

And here’s why, in addition to Reade’s credibility issues: in his closely documented, almost 50-year career, there have been no other similar claims against Biden. The Times interviewed the other seven women who came out last year to accuse Biden of touching them against their will; none said his behavior crossed the line to sexual assault. After many dozen interviews, with Reade and her friends, along with lawyers and two dozen Biden staffers, the writers concluded: “The Times found no pattern of sexual misconduct by Mr. Biden.” Men who do what Reade says Biden did tend to do it more than once (see Harvey Weinstein, Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump). Also, once an allegation like Reade’s surfaces, others usually follow. They have not, at least so far.....

Reporters have done just that with Tara Reade. Her allegation against Biden doesn’t stand up to close scrutiny. And bullying by the left or right won’t change that.