The Latest Allegation Against Joe Biden
- May 3, 2020
- 5 min read
One of the big challenges of today for progressives is the reality that Joe Biden, the Democratic nominee for US President, has recently been accused of sexual misconduct. His accuser is Tara Reade, a devout Bernie Sanders supporter. While there is no question that Biden's public conduct with certain women in regards to personal space (see video below) is not acceptable by today's standards, and that sexual misconduct happens on a spectrum, sexual assault and what he does in this video are not quite the same. They are related, but not exactly the same. If a person is publicly inappropriate, it is arguably more likely that they are similar or worse in private, but that is not always the case. Here, I would like to go over the allegation against Joe Biden and some of the reasons to believe it may be credible as well as some of the reasons to be skeptical of it. As someone who typically does believe these types of allegations, this is not something I feel very comfortable having any skepticism of, but I also believe in the importance of being objective and looking at all the facts. We should take allegations like this one seriously, but that does not mean that we have to blindly believe all of them, no matter what the facts are. As noted in the second link below, the allegation is that back in the 90s when Tara Reade worked for Biden, Biden pinned her against a wall and used his fingers to penetrate her. Is this a credible allegation? My answer is yes and no, which will be explained in the next few paragraphs.
One of the reasons I say that there is some credibility to it is that like I previously said, if someone is inappropriate in public, it is not unreasonable to assume that they might be like that or worse in private. As seen in the video I shared, he has been seen touching women in ways he should not. That alone obviously does not mean he is guilty of what Reade is accusing him of, but it sure does raise some suspicion against him.
The second reason I say the allegation has credibility is that there is some corroboration. For example, as confirmed by the link below, Reade's brother says she also told him about the incident. It also confirms that a woman called into Larry King's show, supposedly about he incident, and Reade says that the caller was her mom. Corroboration definitely adds to the credibility of this kinds of allegation.
As for why there is reason to be skeptical of this allegation, the first reason is that as shown in the first link below, Reade has a history or praising both Russia and Vladimir Putin. This by itself does not mean the allegations is false, but as shown by the second link below, there is evidence that Russia is trying to influence or 2020 election, so having connections to Russia and particularly Putin is a red flag in terms of the potential for there being false or misleading information, especially since Reade deleted her posts on that shortly before making the allegation.
The second issue with this allegation is that Reade has a history of openly supporting Biden on her old Twitter account that she used under the name Tara McCabe, which I have posted a link to right below. I have taken a screenshot of a Tweet where she did such and posted it below the link. It is not unheard of for victims of sexual violence to act at least somewhat fond of their abuser, though it is a bit unusual for a victim to be praising their abuser this often and so openly/willingly.
https://twitter.com/taramccabe94/
The third issue with Reade's allegation is that while there is some corroboration, that corroboration is nonetheless questionable. For example, as can be seen in the link below, Reade's brother changed his story on what she told him happened. Reade herself also has said that she made a complaint about it to the Senate personnel office, and they are supposed to have records of that type of thing, which they do not have of this allegation. Might they have purposely not recorded it, hid it, gotten rid of it, or something similar? Yes, though that is not likely. There are supposed to be records of all complaint that are made to the senate personnel office, so it is quite a stretch to assume that they would conspire to do such a thing. The call her mom allegedly made to Larry King's show also might not necessarily actually be her mom. Reade says it was her mom, but we cannot confirm that as her mom is no longer alive. Also, the call in question did not specifically say anything about sexual assault.
Fourth, as noted by the link below, Reade did in fact accuse Biden of touching her inappropriately, but she did not mention anything about penetration. So she too changed her story. Neglecting or not remembering certain details of an assault is relatively common for victims, but it certainly does not reflect well when an accuser lacks consistency. Normally, this would not make me very skeptical of an allegations of sexual violence, but it makes me more skeptical in light of the other facts.
Fifth, Reade has a bit of shady history in general. Once again, it does not mean that she's lying this time, but it is still concerning with regard to her credibility when combined with all the other facts of this allegation. In particular, as is also mentioned in the article linked above, Reade has not been honest about loosing her job. At one point, she said she just did not want to comply with Biden telling her to serve drinks at an event, and left the job after feeling "pushed out". However, she more recently has said that she was fired by Biden's chief of staff for filing the sexual harassment complaint. Aside from being inconsistent, that clearly shows she is not being straight forward about what actually happened.
Finally, there are no other allegations of sexual assault against Biden. In a lot of these cases of powerful men being sex offenders, they are serial offenders. As is shown in the article below, a large percentage of rapists are serial rapists. So if this allegation against Biden is true, he has probably done the same thing to other people, and there should be others coming forward with the same allegation. People usually do not end up coming forward with these things, but public allegations like this usually lead to others mustering up the courage to come forward publicly as well. So far, that has not happened, in this case.
In the end, as is true with most allegations of sexual violence, it is unknown whether this allegation against Biden is true. We might never know whether it is true or not. The facts of it seem to show that there is some credibility to the allegation, but that it should be taken with a grain of salt. Is Biden guilty of inappropriate touching, and should he be called out on it? Yes. Does it make it more likely that he would be inappropriate and/or worse in private as well? Probably, but that still does not mean that he definitely would commit sexual violence, and given the facts of this allegation, we should be more careful this time about coming to any solid conclusions.
Comments