>> Joe Biden has finally personally addressed the sexual assault allegations made against
him by a former senate staffer by the name of Tara Reade. This is a story that has continued
to develop despite the fact that the Biden camp has attempted to pretend like it doesn't
exist. They had only addressed it through a Statement denying, reads allegations.
For those of you who are catching up to this story, I'm about to go to Mika Brzezinski's
interview with Joe Biden this morning. And I do wanna warn you that there are some specifics
and some details about the accusation. So for anyone who might have been a victim of
sexual assault, or is triggered by that, please be aware.
But without further ado, let's hear what Biden had to say.
>> Former Senate aide accuses you of sexual assault. And to our viewers, please excuse
the graphic nature of this. But I wanna make sure that there was no question as to what
we're talking about. She says in 1993, Mr. Vice President, that you pinned her against
the wall and reached under her clothing and penetrated her with your fingers.
Would you please go on the record with the American people, did you sexually assault
Tara Reade? >> No, it is not true. I'm saying unequivocally,
it never, never happened, and it didn't, it never happened.
>> So that was him unequivocally denying the allegation against him. There's more from
the interview, but I wanted to get some of your thoughts before we go to other portions
of this conversation.
>> Yeah, and of course, I mean, both you and I, and we've talked about this numerous times
now, and most of my thoughts are out there. It was one of the things that I'd wanted was
for him to have to answer to it himself. But not because I thought that it would then solve
the whole situation and we'd know for sure exactly what happened and everything would
be better.
He denied it, which of course he was going to, he did it repeatedly. There are certainly
issues that we can take with other parts of the interview, including aspects of the story
that were not brought up, which is frustrating because if you're finally going to have him
being interviewed about it, we'd kinda like all of the parts of the story that we know
about to at least be included in that, and unfortunately, they were not.
I mean this is sorta what we should have expected. He's going to be asked about it eventually,
we knew that that would happen. He would deny that it was true. And he'd be kind of stuck
in the same position we were in before. >> I agree with you and that it's important
for him to address it personally and I'm happy that he has.
But this has raised more questions, especially when it comes to his senatorial records. And
whether or not he's going to allow for a real investigation, because had she reported this,
there would be some documentation. And that part of it I'm super curious about, but there
were other follow-up questions by Mika Brzezinski that I thought were important.
So I'm glad she asked at least some of these follow-up questions. What you're about to
watch is an example of that. >> Stacey Abrams said during the Kavanaugh
hearings, I believe women, I believe survivors of assault should be supported and their voices
heard. Kirsten Gillibrand tweeted, do we believe women?
Do we give them the opportunity to tell their story? We must be a country that says yes,
every time. They now both support you. Nancy Pelosi falls into this category, too, as well
as many other leaders in the Democratic Party. Are women to be believed unless it pertains
to you?
>> Look, women are to be believed, given the benefit of the doubt if they come forward
and say something that they said happened to them, they should start off with the presumption
they're telling the truth, then you have to look at the circumstances and the facts. And
the facts in this case do not exist.
They never happened, and there's so many inconsistencies in what has been said in this case. So yes,
look at the facts, and I assure you, it did not happen..
>> But why is it different now? Do you regret what you said during the Kavanaugh hearings?
>> What I said during the Kavanaugh hearings was that she had a right to be heard.
And the fact that she came forward, the presumption would be she's telling the truth unless it's
proven she wasn't telling the truth. >> So I personally have noticed the difference
in the way Democrats have handled these accusations versus the way they've talked about or commented
on accusations against other high level politicians, political figures, public figures like Brett
Kavanaugh.
With Brett Kavanaugh story, which by the way, anyone who's watched the show for a long time
knows I believed her, I took it seriously. And that was one of the stories that really
broke me during the Trump era because of the sham FBI investigation that took place in
that case.
>> Yeah. >> There has been no investigation in this
case. And all of a sudden the Democrats are saying, including Joe Biden, that there's
a qualifier like, yeah believe women that you should throw them out. But then you need
to do this investigation and you need to make sure that what she's saying is the truth,
it's just an interesting like new standard that's being presented, that was not the case,
and was not presented before.
>> Yeah, so I apologize in advance I have a hard time expressing this cuz I think it's
a complex thing that's frustrating me right now. So, at the end of the day, assuming the
allegations are true, the person who is obviously the most wrong is Joe Biden. In terms of the
hypocrisy, right now, my frustration is mostly, as you were saying right there, with other
people, including, by the way, members of the media, like Mika Brzezinski, who was doing
a great job in that interview, seemed to take it very seriously today, not a week ago or
a month ago.
And, honestly, I don't really care about her that much as an individual. But as a member
of the media with a gigantic platform on MSNBC or CNN, it is one thing to take it seriously
now, now that the candidate that I think we can assume you were supporting is the nominee
then versus doing it before.
In terms of women being heard, like it's not up to Joe Biden. It's up to the media to talk
to the person and to spread her message and to be willing to bring her on, that sorta
thing. Joe Biden is potentially the villain in the story, but he's not the goalkeeper
on whether the media talks to her and obviously some reporters did and are getting credit
for that right now.
And so it feels a little bit like, to some extent, if she's doing her job and asked him
the question, yes, that's good. But also, there's a little bit of covering the ass of
the media by implying that somehow that what Biden had been stopping them from taking the
story seriously, or even asking him about it during the last few weeks since the story
has been common knowledge, he's done many interviews but they weren't asked about it.
Now, maybe he set prerequisites on doing the interview, that's possible. If so, let us
know that because that then again makes him a villain in that particular aspect. But there's
a lot of frustration that I think we should have and it isn't just for him. It's also
for the people who protected him up until this point.
That's what's so bad about these sorts of allegations, the culture that's been created.
It isn't just the people that's doing it, it's all of the people who continually protect
them and cover for them. And it seems like we're seeing that same thing still.
>> Yeah, I think you're absolutely right.
I think that there's plenty of blame for the way Joe Biden has handled this. I mean it
has taken how long for him to personally address it. We also do know that the Biden camp released
talking points for their surrogates and supporters. And those exact talking points were regurgitated
by female democratic politicians, right?
What you heard Stacey Abrams say in her defense of Joe Biden was almost word for word what
was in the talking points of the Biden camp gave people. So I bring that up because I
think that there is a coordinated effort to try to keep these accusations. On the down
low, clearly, that didn't work.
Because luckily, we do have independent media sources like the Intercept, Ryan Grim doing
incredible reporting on this story. And there was just this buildup of corroborating or
at least elements corroborating, parts of Tara Reade story. So for instance, Tara Reade
told the Intercept that her mom had called into the Larry King show in 1993 to ask what
her daughter should do, and then it turns out that video exists, Ryan Grim reported
on that.
Then you have investigative reporters with Business Insider finding two women who corroborated
Tara Reade story, one of them being her next door neighbor, the other being a former colleague
of hers. This is all evidence that could have easily been found by these mainstream media
sources that have unlimited resources.
But you gotta ask yourselves, why did they choose to try to bury this story? It wasn't
until it became a monster of a story that they finally decided to cover it. And I agree
with you in the way that it's been covered by them seems to be more in line with like
trying to protect them as opposed to trying to get to the bottom of what's really going
on.
They could have covered this when the primaries were still happening because the allegation
came out during the primaries, that would have placed the Democratic Party in a much
better position to beat Donald Trump because we would be able to make a much better choice
in terms of having a candidate who's more electable.
But anyway, I think that things played out unfortunately the way that they were hoping
it would. But that's my speculation. So minutes before Biden made his appearance on Morning
Joe, he did release a medium post that I wanna give you a few statements from. So he writes,
I wanna address allegations by a former staffer that I engaged in misconduct 27 years ago,
they aren't true, this never happened.
And then he says, responsible news organizations should examine and elevate the full and growing
record of inconsistencies in her story which has changed repeatedly in both small and big
ways. He does not provide examples, at all, for how her story has allegedly changed. Her
story has not changed, her story, I guess, she elaborated on it more and shared the sexual
assault component of it, but she has not changed her story.
So I don't know what people are referring to when they say that. Giving more context
and providing more detail into what she experienced with Biden is not the same as changing the
story. He also writes, she has said she raised some of these issues with her supervisor and
senior staffers from my office at the time.
They, both men, and women have said unequivocally that she never came to them, and complained
or raised issues. News organizations that have talked with literally dozens of former
staffers have not found one, not one who corroborated her allegations in any way. No, that's not
true. The high level staffers who worked for him in the Senate say that they do not recall
Tara Reade coming forward.
And there was an intern that Tara Reade was overseeing who corroborated a portion of Tara
Reade story. Tara Reade said that once she complained about the sexual assault allegations,
she was abruptly fired. She was no longer overseeing the intern program. She wasn't
overseeing it. And so she was fired abruptly.
One of the interns did corroborate that portion of the story. That part was conveniently left
out of his post. One other thing. So the former staffer, he writes, has said she filed a complaint
back in 1993. But she does not have a record of this alleged complaint. The papers for
my Senate years that I donated to the University of Delaware do not contain personal files.
There is only one place a complaint of this kind could be the National Archives. The National
Archives is where the records are kept at what was then called the Office of Fair Employment
Practices. I am requesting that the Secretary of the Senate ask the archives to identify
any record of the complaint she alleges she filed, and make available to the press any
such document.
But it turns out that the documents actually are unlikely to be there. An investigative
reporter with Business Insider looked into this and wrote the following. Joe Biden said
that Tara Reades complaint can only be found at the National Archives at what was then
called the Office of Fair Employment Practices.
But a National Archives spokesperson told me that they do not hold records from that
office. >> Yeah.
>> Instead, a Senate Historical Office staffer said the Fair Employment Practices records
are governed by a Senate resolution mandating that records containing personal privacy information
closed by statute, and records of executive nomination are closed for 50 years.
So when those records are actually gonna be available to the public, it'll be two decades
after this story blew up. So this is- >> Yeah.
>> So- >> Well, I mean-
>> There are actual inconsistencies in his story. But, hey, let's just let that go, I
guess. >> Or at least a lot of ignorance in his story
as to where records actually kept.
But the frustration, too, is that even hypothetically, if we were to find that, that would show that
he was either lying about an issue being filed, or not remembering it. But it would be about
sexual harassment effectively because supposedly the actual initial complaint wasn't about
the assault. So even if we found it, which would be great, and again, it would show that
his recollection or the way that he's been talking about it is incorrect, but it wouldn't
prove the particular details.
>> Right, exactly. They were the only two people who were there when this alleged assault
happened. So it's a difficult case to prove. But my issue with this has been the smearing
of Tara Reade, the attempt to bury the story, the lack of transparency from Biden himself,
the unwillingness to address it.
These are all problems and it's the type of stuff that does not make him the most selectable
person, right? So, look, we're principled, we're sharing the story with you guys, these
are the details, this is what we know so far. And you get to make a decision about what
you feel comfortable doing.
It's such a devastating story. And I hate the fact that we're having a conversation
about a credible sexual assault allegation against the one person who could get elected
over Donald Trump.