Many of us will owe an apology after this interview — to Morning Joe, not to Joe Biden, and more specifically to Mika Brzezinski. Everyone assumed that their big get of having Biden finally address the Tara Reade allegations had come about because of Morning Joe’s track record of less-than-harrowing treatment of major political candidates in campaign mode. Team Biden must have assumed that Biden would get some softball set-ups for his denials.

Big. Mistake. Instead, Brzezinski shredded Biden over his double standards and demanded access to Biden’s official papers at the University of Delaware’s archive. Biden was clearly taken aback, and at one point querulously exclaimed, “I don’t know what else I can say to you!”

It started off with the same abject personal denial that Biden finally issued right before going on the air:

As in his statement, Biden denied that his records at the University of Delaware had any mention of Reade. Brzezinski didn’t let that go, however, and asked why Biden’s not making the records available for others to verify Biden’s claim. Biden sounded confused by the question as well as how a search could be performed, and ended up refusing flat-out to make the records available even for a limited search:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z41rMNaA7X8

We’ll have more on Biden’s “open book” claim in a later post. Brzezinski then demanded that Biden address the double standard on #MeToo claims, asking Biden whether he regretted his comments during the Kavanaugh hearings. “Are women to be believed, unless it pertains to you?”

Biden flat-out lied about his September 2018 comments in response:

"Do you regret what you said during the Kavanaugh hearing?"

Joe Biden: "What I said during the Kavanaugh hearings was that she had a right to be heard. The fact that she came forward, the presumption would be that she was telling the truth unless she wasn't telling the truth." pic.twitter.com/ZkG6rf281b

— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) May 1, 2020

That’s not what Biden said during the Kavanaugh hearings. This is what Biden set as the new standard for accusations:

“For a woman to come forward in the glaring lights of focus, nationally, you’ve got to start off with the presumption that at least the essence of what she’s talking about is real, whether or not she forgets facts, whether or not it’s been made worse or better over time. But nobody fails to understand that this is like jumping into a cauldron.”

In fact, Biden is saying that the standard should be changed to fit his own circumstance. He went so far as to say that the woman has to prove her allegations are true before people should presume them to be so. We used to call that due process back before Democrats set up a Salem witchcraft trial for Brett Kavanaugh — and indeed before Biden set one up for Clarence Thomas, too.

About the only disaster that didn’t happen for Biden in this interview was becoming incoherent. He did manage to keep up with Brzezinski, for the most part, even if he couldn’t come up with defensible answers to her tough questioning. Brzezinski made Biden look defensive, secretive, contradictory, and completely dishonest, especially when it came to his records. Kudos to the Morning Joe team, and our condolences to the Team Biden staffer about to get fired for setting up this interview in the first place.

Here’s the full interview: