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Watch RNC Chair Brilliantly Tear Media Apart on Biden-Kavanaugh Double Standard

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So the establishment media finally became aware of the fact that a woman named Tara Reade accused the presumptive Democratic Party presidential nominee of sexually assaulting her when he was a senator.

On Sunday, Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel appeared on ABC’s “This Week” and addressed the fact the media had mostly chosen to ignore Reade’s allegations against former Vice President Joe Biden.

McDaniel said, talking about President Donald Trump’s polling numbers, that “we’ve seen Joe Biden hiding. He hasn’t been vetted. People haven’t seen the 2020 version of Joe Biden, who’s shifted so far left on many of his policies.

“And then this week, we’ve seen him really be challenged for the first time in five weeks on allegations that many in the media have ignored. And finally, those are coming to light.”



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Watch as Martha Raddatz said, in the most desultory of ways, that “we here at ABC have not ignored and many in the media have not ignored it. But I want to turn to those accusations.”

She said it all while looking down at her notes in what could be interpreted as a weak attempt to not break out into laughter.

Instead of dealing with the Reade allegations, Raddatz first transitioned into discussing an attack ad put out by the Republican National Committee on Joe Biden and his handling of Reade’s allegation.

Meanwhile, as Raddatz pointed out, Trump has been accused of sexual misconduct “by more than a dozen women” — something which apparently plays into whether or not Reade is telling the truth or not, but I digress.

Is the media guilty of a double standard?

“And in a radio interview on Thursday, President Trump said while Tara Reade, the accuser, sounds credible, ‘I would just say to Joe Biden, just go out and fight it,’ adding, ‘I guess in a way you could say I’m sticking up for him,'” Raddatz said. “Is he sticking up for Joe Biden? And how far will you go with these attack ads?”

Interesting question. Not biased at all. And, you know, Ronna McDaniel was a lot more interested in talking about bias of a different sort.

“I’m going to take issue with the media ignoring this. It has been appalling the hypocrisy, as to how Brett Kavanagh was treated versus Joe Biden,” McDaniel said.

“Brett Kavanaugh, every accuser was put on TV, it was wall-to-wall coverage. They went into his high school yearbook. They said he needed an FBI investigation. Michael Avenatti was on TV accusing him of gang rape, from an accuser who never even met Brett Kavanaugh.”

In addition to five weeks of silence, the RNC chair claimed, there were also “19 [Biden] interviews without a single question” about Reade.

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When the media finally got around to it, it turns out that Biden was less than transparent, something that the media wasn’t too concerned with.

“He won’t let people go in his records in the University of Delaware. They’re calling on the DNC to do the investigation. It went from ‘#MeToo, #MeToo, #MeToo,’ to ‘move on, move on, move on,’ in a nanosecond because he’s a Democrat,” McDaniel said.

“And the hypocrisy is appalling and it’s not just from the Democrats, it’s from the media. And I’ll tell you, I think any outlet that conducted those 19 interviews and didn’t ask a single question should be disqualified from conducting any part of a presidential debate.”

So why, then, would President Trump say Biden should “just go out and fight it” and that he was “in a way sticking up for him?” Raddatz asked.

“Because due process and the presumption of innocence has no longer been the standard in this country when it comes to Republicans,” McDaniel said.

“Now, Democrats are suddenly embracing those legal standards that we have made the cornerstone of our country when it comes to Joe Biden. But they threw it out the window when it came to Brett Kavanagh. And so did the media. And the hypocrisy has been appalling. We need to do some self-reflection as to how Kavanaugh was treated versus how Biden’s being treated right now.”

Precisely.

Joe Biden is entitled to the presumption of innocence. That doesn’t mean we can’t criticize his response to it (the “Morning Joe” interview was eye-openingly bad) or the media’s response to it (as I’ve noted numerous times, it took The New York Times 19 days to report on Reade’s allegation).

However, not only was Trump’s response a brilliant media move, it was also the right thing to say. If Biden is innocent of these charges, he should fight them.

He doesn’t need to give lip service to how women should be believed, just not this woman. All he should do is fight the allegations.

That’s not what the media wants to hear. They’d prefer to hear nothing, number one.

Failing that, they’d prefer to hear that Trump wants to attack Biden on the allegations because — gotcha! You know the drill.

Instead, he’s giving Biden the benefit of the doubt.

As for that ad? It didn’t directly attack Biden for sexually assaulting Reade, although it did point out his creepy behavior around other women in the past — something the media hasn’t been willing to do.

Instead, it was a destruction of the media’s double standard, particularly when it came to what Democrats said about Brett Kavanaugh’s accusers.



And that’s the whole point.

There’s a vicious double standard here. Christine Blasey Ford and Tara Reade were both just as believable.

If you want to say women who have the courage to come forward have the right to be believed, well, there’s that.

If you want to say both have inconsistencies in their stories, well, there’s that.

One received almost wall-to-wall coverage of her accusation against a Supreme Court nominee. The other has received relatively no coverage of her accusation against a presumptive presidential nominee.

They’re both as believable as the other. The question is which candidate do you want to believe is sullied?

We know that if there weren’t double standards, the media wouldn’t have any standards at all. However, this might be one of the biggest examples of the double standard we’ve yet to see.

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C. Douglas Golden is a writer who splits his time between the United States and Southeast Asia. Specializing in political commentary and world affairs, he's written for Conservative Tribune and The Western Journal since 2014.
C. Douglas Golden is a writer who splits his time between the United States and Southeast Asia. Specializing in political commentary and world affairs, he's written for Conservative Tribune and The Western Journal since 2014. Aside from politics, he enjoys spending time with his wife, literature (especially British comic novels and modern Japanese lit), indie rock, coffee, Formula One and football (of both American and world varieties).
Birthplace
Morristown, New Jersey
Education
Catholic University of America
Languages Spoken
English, Spanish
Topics of Expertise
American Politics, World Politics, Culture




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