MSNBC's Nicole Wallace Says Biden Accusations Are Part of a Republican Smear Campaign
MSNBC’s Nicole Wallace last week denigrated accusations that presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden committed sexual assault in 1993 as nothing more than a Republican political ploy.
Biden has been battling an allegation from former aide Tara Reade, who has accused the former vice president of sexually assaulting her in 1993 while Biden as a U.S. senator representing Delaware.
Reade, who worked for Biden from December 1992 to August 1993, has said during Biden had kissed, groped and digitally penetrated her during an unwanted sexual advance in the nation’s Capitol. Biden has said the incident never happened.
Wallace sounded off about the GOP during a segment led by MSNBC’s Andre Mitchell. Biden had selected MSNBC as the network for which he would offer his denial that the alleged incident with Reade ever happened.
“Let me just say this to you having once been a part of the Republican Party. The right isn’t running an intellectually honest operation to get to the bottom of whether Tara Reade was victimized. The right is running a smear campaign against Joe Biden,” Wallace said.
She then tried to drag President Donald Trump into the controversy over Biden.
“The right wants to create some sort of equal playing field on which Donald Trump’s more than two dozen, or nearly two dozen accusers, sort of have some company on the other side,” she said.
MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace:
“The right isn’t running an intellectually honest operation to get to the bottom of whether Tara Reade was victimized. The right is running a smear campaign against Joe Biden.” pic.twitter.com/G0QUf9iryN
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) May 1, 2020
“The right is not running the same operation that the Democrats are running, which is to try to, as you just articulated, Andrea, have some consistency around statements that I think just about every elected Democrat has made about women in the context of the #MeToo movement,” Wallace said.
“So everyone should proceed with caution about statements made around this on the right,” she said.
Trump was not long in replying via Twitter, as he posted a tweet from conservative commentator Mark Levin along with his own.
She was thrown off The View like a dog, Zero T.V. Personas. Now Wallace is a 3rd rate lapdog for Fake News MSDNC (Concast). Doesn’t have what it takes! https://t.co/F8azYEJHm5
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 2, 2020
“She was thrown off The View like a dog, Zero T.V. Personas. Now Wallace is a 3rd rate lapdog for Fake News MSDNC (Concast). Doesn’t have what it takes!” Trump wrote.
Although Wallace tried to portray the issue as clearly dividing the right and left, others said that the issue was more complex, according to The New York Times.
One commentator said that the knee-jerk support given to Biden by prominent women in politics, such as Hillary Clinton, and liberal groups could backfire.
“My chief concern is watching all of these powerful, important women leaders staking their credibility to Biden when the fact is there’s been no real investigation,” Michele Dauber, a law professor at Stanford and Democratic fund-raiser, told The Times.
Dauber, who chairs a political action committee called the “Enough is Enough Voter Project,” said her group wants an independent investigation into Reade’s allegations.
“If this is true, and there is no investigation, his candidacy or his presidency could implode over it,” Dauber told The Times.
Law professor Anita Hill, who claimed sexual harassment against Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas in 1991, also said a neutral investigation is needed.
“Joe Biden has denied Tara Reade’s sexual assault allegations, but that should not be the end of the inquiry,” she said in a statement, according to The Times.
“Without these essential elements, uncertainty about who to believe and whether it matters will continue,” she said. “How we proceed comes down to whether we take allegations of sexual violations seriously enough to insist that public institutions have fair procedures in place that protect individuals’ rights to come forward, and the rights of those who are accused to defend themselves.”
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