Tara Reade's Joe Biden Sexual Assault Allegations

Overview

Tara Reade's Joe Biden Sexual Assault Allegations refers to former U.S. Senate staff member, Tara Read's statements regarding presidential candidate Joe Biden's sexual misconduct in 1993. Although Reade attempted to speak about her full experience working for Biden in 2019, she released a full statement in March 2020 describing how Biden raped her.

Background

On April 3rd, 2019, Tara Reade spoke out to reporters saying, “[Joe Biden] used to put his hand on my shoulder and run his finger up my neck. I would just kind of freeze and wait for him to stop doing that.”^[1] Almost immediately, on Twitter, people began sharing her pro-Putin articles. That day, Twitter user @IsaacDovere published a full thread saying, "latest woman to accuse Biden of touching her inappropriately […] wrote in December: 'I love Russia with all my heart … President Putin scares the power elite in America because he is a compassionate, caring, visionary leader.'" The initial tweet gained over 2,800 likes and 2,200 retweets in a year. The Daily Dot^[3] published an article on the Tara Reade Russian agent conspiracy.

Developments

On March 25th, Twitter user @kthalps^[4] tweeted a Soundcloud interview with Tara Reade with the caption, "This is a story that @ReadeAlexandra has been trying to tell since it happened in 1993. It's a story about sexual assault, retaliation and silencing. #meToo" Joe Biden's accuser finally tells her full story Tara Reade has been trying to tell her story since it happened in 1993, when she was working as a staff assistant for Joe Biden. She told part of her story-- about how Biden would put his hands on her." The tweet gained over 21,200 likes and 12,500 retweets in a day. The SoundCloud track accumulated over 207,500 plays in a day (shown below). Redditor rafiki_stonedape posted a full transcript to the interview to r/ourpresident^[2] and received over 480 points (93% upvoted) in a day.

#IBelieveTaraReade

On March 26, 2020, following the release of Reade's full statement the hashtag #IBelieveTaraReade began trending on Twitter. Twitter user @FlyThaiMMA tweeted,^[5] "The media conformity regarding silencing Tara Reade is fucking terrifying #IBelieveTaraReade" (shown below, left). The tweet garnered over 1,400 likes that day. That same day, Twitter user @PepperOceanna posted^[6] a screenshot of #IBelieveTaraReade trending (shown below, right).

Biden Denial

During April of 2020, there was increasing pressure put on Biden's campaign to address the allegations, with Republicans drawing comparisons to the Democrats' perceived lack of pressure on Biden and their stronger push on the allegations of Christine Ford.

On May 1st, 2020, Joe Biden's campaign released a statement in which he unequivocally denied Reade's allegations.^[7] “I want to address allegations by a former staffer that I engaged in misconduct 27 years ago. They aren’t true. This never happened.” He appeared on Morning Joe that morning, where he repeated his denial. He also called on the National Archives to release the complaint made by Reade at the time. The Washington Post could not find record of such a complaint.

Biden resisted the idea of inquiries into his personnel records, which Morning Joe Mika Brzezinski brought up in his appearance. Biden argued the records contained confidential conversations he'd had with Barack Obama and various heads of state. Brzezinski pushed Biden on the #MeToo movement, which Biden has stated he supports. She asked him, "Are women to be believed unless it pertains to you?" Biden stated that he believed women deserve to be heard but stayed firm in his denial of the allegations.

Twitter users were split on Biden's denial. Washington Post journalist and MSNBC contributor Jonathan Capeheart^[8] compared Biden's handling of the accusation favorably to how Donald Trump has handled similar allegations in the past, saying, "Biden could not have been more clear. He gave himself no wiggle room. And while making his case, he didn't degrade Reade and said Reade deserved to be heard. A strong contrast to the President," gaining over 1,500 retweets and 6,500 likes (shown below, left). User @PhilipAKlein^[9] argued that liberals should be "honest" about how they feel about the allegation: "We don't know whether Reade or Biden is telling the truth, but even if Biden did it, Trump's record on women is far worse, and it would be a catastrophe if he got reelected."

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References