Politico: New evidence surfaces in Tara Reade allegation against Biden

[DeterDeter]

179. hmm

Last edited Tue Apr 28, 2020, 02:11 PM - Edit history (1)

I hate that we are here too, and while it’s true that victims can tell their stories incrementally, the part that I keep coming back to is where she said in April of 2019 that she wanted to emphasize that it wasn’t Biden itself, that it wasn’t sexual (and compared it to being a “lamp”). Those could go along with some of her other stories (that she felt sexually harassed by his staff when they asked that she serve drinks at an event because Biden supposedly “liked her legs”, and that while he put his hand on her neck in a way that made her uncomfortable, that she didn’t think it was sexual…actually, I know that she has had a few different versions, so I’m not sure if the April 2019 article was just about the neck touching and the drinks thing came later. In any case, it is incredibly damaging to her case that she specifically emphasized that it wasn’t sexual or that the problems she had wasn’t with Biden itself, but for “his staff”, etc.).

The neighbor in the article said that they “revisited their original conversation from the 90s in April of 2019 after the first article" with the dramatically different account of her experience came out, and the neighbor said “oh, I remember that!” So they have clearly been in contact, I'm just wondering why the neighbor was not offered as a corroborating witness when outlets like the Post were having trouble corroborating (aka, her brother saying that he remembers “sexual harassment” and then texting them a few days later with the assault corroboration). If I was the neighbor who was told in April 2019 that it was “coming up again”, I’d be like “Uh, I remember you being so upset that he fingered you! You have to let people know the full story”. The neighbor just seems so blasé about that. Or, if I were the neighbor talking to her in April of 2019, I would have said "You have to see if some of the other woman coming out now [re: the "shoulder touching"] had experiences like yours."

While it seems reasonable to believe that she had a very negative experience working there, perhaps felt sexually harassed or that there was a toxic work environment and told people about it, the comparisons to Christina Blassey Ford are just not accurate because any story discrepancies were so minor compared to what this woman is offering. And I’m sorry, the Russia posts and saying that she got all her news from “her son in Seattle or David Sirota” make me scratch my head. It’s sad that the Me Too movement is being weaponized like this.