Whatever Happened To Tara Reade?

My, how times have changed! Don't like the political weather right now? Wait ten minutes!

It seems as though every single conservative media outlet, even the most venomous ones like Info Wars, has dropped the Tara Reade case. And you can bet your bottom dollar that if those media outlets, from Fox News to Breitbart and back again, have dropped Tara Reade like a hot potato, there was a damned good reason. Why? What could have happened?

Full disclosure, I originally gave Reade some credence. I believed certain aspects of her story, while being doubtful of some of the more lurid details. Then, upon hearing her interview with Katie Halper, I argued that the Democratic Convention should be brokered. I still had some doubts about the "digital penetration" aspect of Reade's story, but I felt that enough of her story was true that Biden couldn't be the candidate.

Well, it seemed my doubts were more justified than my fears. That second article of mine appeared in this blog on May 5th. But later on that month, many other journalists did the leg work I could not, bringing to light aspects of the Tara Reade story that brought down the entire house of cards.

Perhaps it began only a couple of days later, on May 7th, when Laura McGann reported her investigation of Tara Reade's story on Vox. McGann wanted to break the story in April of 2019, but there just wasn't enough evidence to go on. Eventually, other media outlets scooped her. But she remained committed to the story.

McGann's moment came when she compared her 2019 notes to her 2020 notes. "When we spoke a year ago," McGann writes, "Reade told me the only named sources she could give me were her deceased mother and the friend I spoke to. A recently uncovered tape of her mom on Larry King Live appears to corroborate Reade’s claim that she was struggling in Biden’s office in 1993, but does not include an assault allegation. When I reconnected with the friend I spoke to last year, who had previously told me Biden had not assaulted Reade [emphasis mine], she told me a version of the story that matched Reade’s latest account.

"This year, Reade said to Halper that she also told her brother about the alleged assault and harassment. He later told the Washington Post in an interview that he remembers his sister was upset in 1993 about Biden touching her neck and shoulders. He followed up with a Post reporter a few days later over text message to say Reade also said Biden 'put his hands under her clothes.'"

In other words, not only was Reade's story changing, but her primary witnesses were changing their stories as well. Not good.

Then her story changed again, this time in an interview with former Fox News host, Megyn Kelly. During that interview, Reade recounted her story, and said that at the time Joe had assaulted her, he whispered something into her ear. "I can’t remember everything he said," she told Kelly. “Something vulgar.” But Kelly prompted her: “May I ask what?” Reade replied, "He said, 'I want to fuck you.'"

Now, at this point, all my bullshit detectors began to go off. During an assault, if someone whispers something in your ear, you're going to find it impossible to forget because it will haunt you for the rest of your life. And she can't remember? And then, when prompted, she suddenly can remember? And she comes up with something so simple, and so direct, that it would be impossible to forget? How difficult is it to remember "I want to fuck you?" That's too simple, too concocted, and too out-of-character of Biden to be believable. Even if one argues that this is only one part, and that she'd already qualified her statement with "I can't remember everything..." it was prompted. Megyn Kelly cajoled Tara for a detail, and Tara simply blurted one out.

Yes, yes, I haven't forgotten, victims try their best to block out the event. They try to hide from the trauma. But that's exactly what would make any words spoken by Biden during the alleged event impossible to forget. Especially such a simple set of them. The phrase, "I want to fuck you," was clearly made up on the fly! And by my count, that's change of story #3, not counting the witnesses.

All that was bad enough, but on May 15th the proverbial shit really hit the fan. PBS News Hour reported having interviewed 74 former staffers of Joe Biden, 62 of whom were women, and not a single one of those interviewees reported any sexual harassment, assault, or misconduct by Biden. 20 Biden staffers who worked with Biden during the same time Tara Reade worked for him were also interviewed. None of them corroborated Reade's story. One of them, Ben Savage, said that Reade was the only staffer who struggled with her tasks - such as handling constituent mail, which both he and she worked on together. "Of all the people who held that position," he said, "she’s the only one during my time there who couldn’t necessarily keep up, or who found it frustrating."

At roughly the same time, Politico published a story about some of Tara Reade's other acquaintances, who described her as a manipulative and deceitful liar, often begging for money, and sometimes being outright combative. That, in and of itself, did not disprove Reade's story, but it certainly damaged the character of the witness.

"Character assassination," you say? Maybe by itself. Maybe from Breitbart or Rush Limbaugh. Maybe even Politico, if you're willing to stretch it. But PBS?

By May 19, CNN jumped off the bandwagon with an article confirming all the above points, plus emphasizing how glowingly Reade spoke of her time being employed by Joe Biden, and blaming her termination on health reasons. Again, this proves nothing, but taken together with everything else, it does weigh in.

But the real blow came on May 22. Doug Wigdor, the #MeToo lawyer who had been representing Tara, withdrew. He did not provide a reason, and said, his decision was "by no means a reflection on whether then-Senator Biden sexually assaulted Ms. Reade." Empirically, this was true, but it didn't look good, either.

Perhaps the reason he withdrew was because that same day, ABC News reported that no fewer than three times over the past two years, Tara Reade had taken the stand as an expert witness in sexual assault court cases. And what qualified her as an expert witness? Not the assault on her by Biden! Not even her being a victim, elsewhere. No, under oath, she testified that it was her former employment with Biden which qualified her as an expert witness! And furthermore, she worked with Biden while he worked on the Violence Against Women Act! She praised Biden's defending of women, and included herself among those who helped him. That's what qualified her to testify!

If I were Wigdor, I'd drop her as a client, too!

So, logically, we have only two choices: either she withheld a critical detail under oath no fewer than three times, or her accusations against Biden are false. The only thing we can't do is consider her a 100% honest witness.

This is why not even Fox News will touch her with a 10-foot pole, anymore. As desperate as the conservative fake-news outlets are to stain Biden with anything that will bring him down, they can't use Tara. Not anymore.

So where does that leave me? I first labeled Biden as "passable." Not excusable, just "passable." Then I argued for a brokered convention. Do I reverse course yet again?

Indeed, I must. Truth is truth, and I'm committed to the truth, no matter what. I haven't gotten it 100% right on this blog. Hell, back in 2016 I thought the bankruptcy story on Trump's tower in Canada was a game-changer, until I found out that the only thing having to do with Trump was someone paying a franchise fee. I don't always get it right. But when I get it wrong, I come clean.

In my defense, I never said I believed all of Reade's story. Some aspects of it, I still doubted. I only concluded that enough of her story was true to make Biden too unpalatable to be the Democratic nominee. It seems that the amount of her story that contained truth is somewhat less than I supposed.

But I still think something happened between Biden and Reade. No, I don't think he "digitally penetrated her." That part of the story always struck me as too Trump-like an element to be taken at face-value. I doubt Joe even reached underneath her clothes. However, the phrase, "But I thought you liked me," is so very Biden-esque that I can't help but believe it. I do think he made a pass at her. Maybe he even made a hard pass at her. But that's all it was. She said no, and that was that - until thirty-eight years later. Like any good liberal, he backed off. He didn't do a Trump-like move and "grab her by the pussy." The phrase, "I want to fuck you," is also pure bullshit. But I'm still convinced something did happen. It's just a little bit more in line with the seven other women who have accused Biden of being way too handsy at various events.

And that's just it. We all know Biden has been a handsy old fart. We know that he needs his afternoon nap if he's to function. Tara Reade tried to take that up a notch to knock him out of contention. It nearly worked, and perhaps would have if she'd struck sooner. Fox News, OAN, and all the other news outlets who made Trump their own personal Frankenstein monster, supported her cause. But when it became clear that she was no Blasey-Ford, they washed their hands of her like Pilate.

So will I, from here on. I'm done with this topic. Joe Biden is hereby re-elevated to the low-bar of "passable," on this blog.

Let's hope he stays there.

Eric

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