Biden Campaign Crafted Talking Points on Tara Reade Allegation for Other Dems - Report
They’re trying to keep their stories straight.
Former Vice President Joe Biden’s campaign apparently wants to leave nothing to chance when it comes to an explosive sexual assault allegation lodged against the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, according to a report by the liberal website BuzzFeed.
The campaign has issued talking points for Democrats to use if they are questioned by the media about claims by former Biden staffer Tara Reade that Biden assaulted her in 1993, and, naturally, they’re relying on The New York Times to try to make their case.
“Biden believes that all women have the right to be heard and to have their claims thoroughly reviewed,” the talking points conclude, according to BuzzFeed. “In this case, a thorough review by the New York Times has led to the truth: this incident did not happen.”
Well, there’s good reason to doubt exactly how “thorough” the review conducted by The Times actually was.
The fact that Dean Baquet, executive editor of The Times, all but stated outright the Biden campaign had veto power over the actual wording of the piece published on April 12 raises serious questions about what the “newspaper of record” was really trying to accomplish.
In fact, the very first paragraph of the talking points cites a paragraph of The Times article that Baquet admitted had been reworded after the story was published to meet the Biden campaign’s demand.
“The New York Times did weeks of extensive investigative research, talking to nearly two dozen former Biden staff from the 1990s, including those who worked directly with Ms. Reade,” the talking points state.
“Here is what they found: ‘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. The Times found no pattern of sexual misconduct by Mr. Biden.'”
As originally published, that last sentence read:
“The Times found no pattern of sexual misconduct by Mr. Biden, beyond the hugs, kisses and touching that women previously said made them uncomfortable.”
Since “beyond the hugs, kisses and touching” probably wouldn’t sound great in a Biden campaign talking point, it looks like the fix was in from the get-go.
Naturally, that hasn’t stopped some Democrats from using The Times story as though it were the final word on the subject.
The BuzzFeed article doesn’t say when the talking points were circulated by the Biden campaign, but in an April 16 interview with MSNBC (Breitbart has the video here) Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar used The Times story as the centerpiece of her answer (and used the word “thorough” twice in the process).
“He has said, and I agree with this, you’ve got to get to the bottom of every case and all allegations. I think the New York Times — I haven’t read all the stories. I read that one. Your viewers should read that. It was very thorough. They interviewed people,” Klobuchar said.
“I think this case has been investigated. I know the vice president as a major leader on domestic abuse, I worked with him on that. And I think that, again, the viewers should read the article. It was very thorough.”
Americans are supposed to ignore the fact that not only is The New York Times so biased it’s essentially the house organ of the Democratic Party, but also that Klobuchar is one of the names being circulated as a potential running mate for Biden.
In short, a woman with a lot to gain from Biden is using a Biden-supporting newspaper to convince American voters that Biden is innocent.
Former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams — who has been campaigning openly for the vice presidential selection — also relied heavily on The Times when answering a question about Biden in an interview with Trump-hating CNN host Don Lemon on Tuesday night.
She didn’t call The Times investigation “thorough,” though. She called it “deep.”
“I believe that women deserve to be heard and I believe that they need to be listened to, but I also believe that those allegations have to be investigated by credible sources,” she said. “The New York Times did a deep investigation, and they found that the accusation was not credible.”
“I know Joe Biden, and I think that he is telling the truth and that this did not happen.”
There are a couple of things that should be noted here.
First, there’s no proof that Reade’s accusation is true, and Biden deserves the presumption of innocence the left and the media — very much including The New York Times — would never afford a conservative faced with a similar accusation, like, say, Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
Second, talking points are a routine part of politics — every side uses them to keep party representatives on the same page when it comes to dealing with public topics.
But the Biden campaign’s talking points — as they relate directly to the Reade accusation — literally begin and end with references to a New York Times story that even The New York Times executive editor admits was doctored to suit the Biden campaign.
That won’t convince anyone who doesn’t already want to be convinced of Biden’s innocence.
But Democrats are playing the hand they have.
They might have the entire mainstream media complex behind the effort to defeat President Donald Trump in November, but they’re saddled with a candidate who’s weak by any honest measure.
Biden is the presumptive Democratic candidate because he outlasted a Democratic field made of liberal harridans like Elizabeth Warren, wackos like Marianne Williamson and the certified socialist Bernie Sanders — not one of whom had a prayer of winning the support of an America that elected Trump in 2016.
Now Biden, the strongest of the weak, is facing a sexual assault allegation that not only makes a lie of his own image as a champion for women, but makes a lie of much of the Democratic Party’s propaganda of the #MeToo era.
And all Democrats have to answer with is a hideously warped desecration of journalism published by The New York Times, one that’s being undermined with virtually every new development in the Reade case.
It’s going to be tough to keep those stories straight. It’s a long time until November.
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