With the exception of 60 Minutes in Australia, the media has barely said a peep about Tara Reade for the past several months. One exception came in August when Fox News published an exclusive in which Reade was critical of the DNC’s decision to feature former President Clinton:
“I’m a sexual assault survivor, so to me, what the speaker lineup showed is kind of like a thumb in all of our faces. It was … really disappointing,” Reade said. “Rape culture in the United States is thriving under the Democratic Party. I feel that they are not only enabling but they are allowing that behavior to continue just by virtue of who they lined up as speakers who have credible sexual assault and harassment allegations against them and I feel like there’s an abandonment of the voices that are trying to be heard that really wanted systemic change.”…
“What I find really astounding has been the hypocrisy around the sexual assault and sexual harassment that I brought forth,” Reade told Fox News. “When there were Republicans being accused of that, the media and the reaction from the Democratic Party was quite different and quite aggressive and quite hostile to the perpetrator, potential perpetrator before it was even investigated. In my case, the hostility was directed right towards and I was basically silenced and erased by using classism and so on.”
Despite being absent from the public eye, Reade hasn’t been idle. She’s apparently been working on a memoir which is scheduled to be published one week before the election. Here’s the cover which promises a foreword by Rose McGowan:
Today Fox News has a story up about the book. Clearly the publisher is in a hurry to get this page up since there are a couple of typos in the description:
The synopsis reads, “Tara Reade shares the aftermath of the re-victimization of speaking out about her sexual assault, with then-Sen. Joe Biden in 1993, where the shaming, attacks and threats instigated by the media set (sic) her into a personal tailspin. Tara-rized viciously by cyberbullies, receiving death threats, and fearing for her life and those of her family, Tara tells how living with no regret and coming forward was right for her conscious (sic). The moment that defines Tara will not confine, but instead move her forward by reclaiming her identity and pulling back together the pieces of life left.”…
Jacquie Jordan, founder of TVGuestpert Publishing, told Fox News, “As a woman-owned business, we believe Tara Reade’s story was worth being written, memorialized and shared.”…
When asked what she hopes readers will get from reading her memoir, Reade quickly responded, “Truth.”
Reade has definitely had a tough line to walk. As someone accusing the Democratic nominee of sexual harassment, her most natural allies to tell that story are on the right. But Reade’s story actually broke on a left-wing podcast and then from there was followed up with a story published by the Intercept, i.e. outlets who had no interest in supporting Biden because they saw him as too far right. That was apparently where Reade felt more at home.
As a lifetime democrat, Reade didn’t want her story to be pigeon-holed as Fox News fodder and that often meant she had no options at all. In April Reade told Buzzfeed that she’d learned media bias wasn’t just a Republican talking point and described feeling “politically homeless.”
“It was really devastating when [Kirsten] Gillibrand and Stacey Abrams and Hillary Clinton, all on the same day, just basically implied my story wasn’t true and they believe Joe Biden. I can’t describe to you what that felt like,” Reade said on Thursday, describing herself as a “lifelong Democrat” and particularly a fan of Abrams, the former Georgia state minority leader who has been campaigning to serve on the ticket with Biden as his vice presidential nominee…
“I used to think that a Republican talking point was to call the mainstream media biased,” Reade said. “So I used to think, ‘Oh, that’s just a talking point for them. I don’t believe it.’ But now I’m living it, real time, and I see it — like, I see it for what it is. Because I am a Democrat, or I was. But now I’m not anything, really. I’m politically homeless.”
The TV network that has asked her on most frequently, she said, has been Fox News, from which she said Thursday she’d received four or more invitations to come on air. Only in the last day or two have other TV networks expressed interest; Reade said early on Thursday that she had just received and was discussing an invitation from ABC News, had been contacted by MSNBC that morning, and CBS News had reached out to her the previous night.
With a few exceptions the left never really came out to support her. Most women’s groups and sexual assault organizations held back. Democrats who had gone after Judge Kavanaugh with relish suddenly found that Biden’s denial was enough to convince them there was nothing to see here. And eventually the media collectively decided her story couldn’t be trusted because she couldn’t be trusted.
I haven’t seen her memoir but the title, “Left Out” suggests to me that she’s still sitting in that uncomfortable middle-ground. Once again she has a story to tell about bad behavior on the left, i.e. being abandoned by her own party and the people who championed the #MeToo movement. Once again, I think she’s going to have a hard time convincing anyone on the left there was a problem with how her story was handled. They’ve already decided they aren’t interested in hearing from her.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member