Stephanie Carter Sets the Record Straight: That Viral Image With Joe Biden Was Not a #MeToo Moment [View all]

[highplainsdem]

From Mediaite this evening. Btw, Carter and her husband set the record straight years ago, but unfortunately this smear was resurrected by Flores and made an issue again.

https://www.mediaite.com/politics/stephanie-carter-sets-the-record-straight-that-viral-image-with-joe-biden-was-not-a-metoo-moment/

Stephanie Carter took to Medium on Sunday to explain a viral image of her with Joe Biden that has been circulating online in various forms.

Back in 2015, Carter joined Biden for a White House event captured on video.

A still from the video looks decidedly cringy, which has been pointed out again and again.

Here is one version, showing Biden’s hands on her shoulders.

Link to tweet

/photo/1



But as Carter notes, it is not the whole story. In fact, it is not even the right one.

In her own words, Carter explained how she had slipped on the ice just prior and was uncharacteristically uncomfortable when her husband, Ash Carter was being sworn in as Secretary of Defense.

By the time then-Vice President Biden had arrived, he could sense I was uncharacteristically nervous- and quickly gave me a hug. After the swearing in, as Ash was giving remarks, he leaned in to tell me “thank you for letting him do this” and kept his hands on my shoulders as a means of offering his support. But a still shot taken from a video — misleadingly extracted from what was a longer moment between close friends — sent out in a snarky tweet — came to be the lasting image of that day.

She also noted that in the next days the rumor mill didn’t stop, even when her husband told the press that they were friends with the Bidens.

“Ash tried to joke that it was the only way people knew that he had been sworn in,” Carter wrote. “At his first available opportunity, he told the press that we had been friends with the Bidens for years and it wasn’t at all what people thought. But that didn’t stop people I had not heard from since high school sending me messages — usually with some joke or demanding to know what he had said to me.”

Carter concluded by saying she thought if she didn’t dignify the whole thing with a response, it might go away.

It did not. Instead, due to the Lucy Flores story, the image — and accusations — have been circulating once again.

“I thought it would all blow over if I didn’t dignify it with a response,” she said. “But clearly that was wishful thinking.”

She added: “I won’t pretend that this will be the last of that picture, but it will be the last of other people speaking for me.”

-snip-

RWers have kept trying to misuse this for years.

I'd expect that of them.

I wouldn't expect it of a Democratic politician, especially one Biden had helped in the past.

As I've mentioned elsewhere, the fact that Flores resurrected this smear and even said, in what looks like a deliberate lie, that Biden was nuzzling Stephanie Carter's neck, is what really made me doubt her motivations and veracity. What made me think her own story of allegedly inappropriate behavior by Biden wasn't just a misinterpretation of Biden trying to reassure her when he and Flores appeared at the same event in Nevada years ago.