Today the hashtag #DropOutBiden is trending on Twitter in response to new information that supports the credibility of Tara Reade’s allegations against him. Here’s Hillary stan Peter Daou saying the party has no credibility if it sticks with Biden:
DIFFICULT THREAD — #BIDEN SHOULD WITHDRAW
1. I respect the will of the voters.
2. But new information has emerged supporting #TaraReade's account of being sexually assaulted by #JoeBiden.
3. Credible rape accusations are disqualifying or we have NO moral standards.
— Peter Daou (@peterdaou) April 25, 2020
9. This is the ethical position AND the smarter strategy to beat Trump.
10. We lose ALL moral authority if we embrace "the lesser of two accused rapists."
11. Polls show other Dem candidates can win.
PRINCIPLES MATTER. WE CAN BEAT TRUMP AND PROTECT OUR VALUES.#DropOutBiden
— Peter Daou (@peterdaou) April 25, 2020
The hashtag has been used more than 74,000 times as I write this. Many people are supporting Reade and want Biden out:
I am a professional in the field of sexual violence. I find Tara Reade and her allegations of rape against @JoeBiden to be credible and believable and I am calling for Joe Biden, who has been credibly accused of rape, to drop out now. #DropOutBiden
— Prof Zenkus (@anthonyzenkus) April 25, 2020
There’s definitely a political angle to the reactions. Quite a few of the people using the hashtag are obviously Bernie Sanders supporters who never liked Biden in the first place. In fact, Bernie’s former Press Secretary seems to be piling on the trend without actually calling for Biden to drop out.
The Democratic Party effectively chose Biden as its candidate when it coerced competing moderates to drop out following SC.
Now it can choose to remedy that mistake, but it would have to put the interests of the people before corporate donors. https://t.co/mJwlW9B6Sh
— Briahna Joy Gray (@briebriejoy) April 24, 2020
Democrats could've treated these allegations seriously, offered contrition and attempted rehabilitation. It's not clear if the public would have (or should've) accepted it, but it would have preserved their credibility w/r/t issues of sexual misconduct.
Now what do we have? https://t.co/6R8eSB2giI
— Briahna Joy Gray (@briebriejoy) April 25, 2020
It's a good time to note that Bernie's on the ballot.
— Briahna Joy Gray (@briebriejoy) April 25, 2020
Progressives didn't make this happen.
Corporate Democrats chose Biden. https://t.co/95xVE0TkOt
— Briahna Joy Gray (@briebriejoy) April 25, 2020
Of course not everyone using the hashtag is on board with this. The Krassenstein brothers, who were removed from Twitter but seem to have sidestepped the ban, are still pushing doubts about Reade’s story. They, and a number of other people, are suggesting the hashtag is part of a Russian plot:
Again #DropOutBiden begins trending in the middle of the day in Russia, while most Americans are sleeping. Again it’s pushing the story of a woman who praised Biden for helping stop sexual assault for over a decade before suddenly claiming he raped her. https://t.co/cdCwd4zGDj
— Mrs. Krassenstein (@HKrassenstein) April 25, 2020
What’s driving this is new evidence supporting Reade’s story (I wrote about it yesterday). Specifically, Reade claimed she told three people about what happened to her at the time. One of those people was her mother who passed away in 2016. However, Reade recalled that back in 1993 her mother was so outraged about what had happened to her that she called into a television show and described the situation to the host. Yesterday, Ryan Grim of the intercept was given a transcript of the Larry King show and within hours the Media Research Center had located video of the phone call which Reade has since confirmed is her mother’s voice:
#BREAKING: HERE is the video from August 11,1993's 'Larry King Live' described by @TheIntercept (and Tara Reade) as allegedly featuring her mother calling in and alluding to Reade's sexual assault claims against @JoeBiden (blog here by @ScottJW) https://t.co/fCgEqBnX7n pic.twitter.com/V5FGHskv56
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) April 24, 2020
The call doesn’t specify what issues Reade was having with the Senator but the fact that it would be newsworthy and damaging to the Senator (Biden) is suggestive. If nothing else, this clip proves that Reade did have a problem in Biden’s office which she told her mother about at the time, consistent with what she has been saying all along. Reade’s best friend at the time has also confirmed that Reade told her the details of what happened including the situation where Biden allegedly maneuvered her against a wall and put his hand under her skirt.
We’re still a long, long way from the kind of saturation coverage of this story that we saw with regard to Christine Blasey Ford during the Kavanaugh confirmation hearing, but CNN did publish another story on the new information and discussed the significance of the call featuring Reade’s mother on air:
CNN addressed Tara Reade’s allegation against Joe Biden on-air today.
A few hours ago, the network wrote up an article about a video that appears to show Reade’s mother calling into “Larry King Live” in 1993. Many outlets still yet to cover:pic.twitter.com/CykDN8J2Vl
— Shelby Talcott (@ShelbyTalcott) April 25, 2020
So the media logjam hasn’t completely broken yet but the pressure behind it continues to build. I don’t believe there’s any chance he’ll drop out but after weeks of getting a pass, Biden is going to be asked about this the next time he does an interview. And that is going to give this story even more oxygen. And that means that all of the hypocritical progressives who wanted us to “believe all women” a couple of years ago are going to have to start calling Reade a liar more loudly now.
Tara Reade isn’t going away no matter how many times partisan opportunistic hacks like Amanda Marcotte and Joan Walsh are sent out to try to smear, demean & discredit her.
Nobody is going to let the Democratic Party play games with weaponizing sexual assault allegations. Sorry. pic.twitter.com/CptlFtRhrf
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) April 25, 2020
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