1 accusation versus many more and the worst US presidency ever

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Trump Bragged On Tape Of Being Able To Do Exactly What Biden Is Accused Of

But that’s not stopping the president’s White House aides and campaign staff from going after Biden on the Tara Reade allegation.

By S.V. Date

WASHINGTON — A s*xual assault allegation against his Democratic challenger is offering President Donald Trump with a new message for women voters: Joe Biden is just as bad as I am.

Trump is accused of rape and is fighting attempts to force him turn over a DNA sample. Two dozen other women have accused him of varying degrees of s*xual assault and misconduct. He was caught on tape bragging that his celebrity allowed him to do the precise thing that Biden is accused of.

Nevertheless, his aides have latched on to onetime staffer Tara Reade’s accusation that Biden sexually assaulted her 27 years ago, pushing her up against a wall and penetrating her with his fingers. “Believe all women means all women — you don’t get to choose,” White House adviser Kellyanne Conway told Fox News Friday.

The Trump camp’s strategy, despite the obvious hypocrisy, is transparent, said political consultants from both parties.

“They are pushing her story relentlessly and the targets are young people, progressives and women,” said David Axelrod, the architect of former President Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign. “They don’t expect to win these voters. No one who shuns Biden because of Tara Reade is likely to flock to Trump, given his sordid history. They simply want to depress Biden’s numbers. In a marginal race, even a few votes shaved off his total in some closely contested states can make a difference.”

Tim Miller, a Republican consultant and Trump critic, said the attacks are also designed to give moderate Republicans an excuse to vote for Trump. “Give people who know deep down that Trump is bad a ‘but’ talking point. Absolve themselves of responsibility for Trump’s manifest immortality and unfitness,” Miller said. “Everything they do is about muddying the waters.”

And Democratic pollster Peter Hart predicted the attempts to use Reade against Biden are just a hint of what will come this autumn. “The only thing I feel confident in predicting is that Trump will not bring up the tragic death of Neilia,” Hart said, referring to Biden’s first wife who died in a car accident along with their 1-year-old daughter in 1972. “Beyond that, this is the protégé of Roy Cohen.”

Biden personally addressed the allegation by Reade for the first time Friday on NBC, stating that the event she described did not happen and asking that her shifting explanations be analyzed carefully.

Those shifts have been on both major details as well as minor. Reade came out publicly a year ago and said Biden had made her uncomfortable by putting his hands on her shoulders, but she didn’t allege the s*xual assault until an interview in late March. Early in April, she told The New York Times that she did not mention the s*xual assault allegation with her initial disclosure because she was scared. She also told the Times her postings admiring Russian dictator Vladimir Putin had been part of a novel she was writing and had been taken out of context, but then told BuzzFeed that her views on Putin had changed after she learned more about him.

No Biden staffer who worked with Reade has corroborated her account of any sort of harassment or assault, but several other people have confirmed that she told them some details about the incident either at the time it happened in 1993 or long before the 2020 election.

While numerous women have complained that Biden’s habit over the years of touching their shoulders or hair was unwelcome, Reade is the first to accuse him of s*xual assault.