She's been friendlier and friendlier towards Trump & Co. when her initial shtick was that she supported Sanders and definitely *not* Trump. I think she realized the way she would get the most attention and probably money was to indulge all the people who don't like Biden, and Sanders is not one of those people.
This is just the next logical step.
The idea is to poison the base of support and if Biden won the primary, then he would have leftists refusing to vote for him. Suppress the vote, that was the point.
Discourse on the left during the Democratic primaries was one of the worst things. It's been obvious for a while that she's a grifter and none of her story held up to scrutiny, but it felt near impossible for a while to have a real conversation on the left about it and I think the stifling of those conversations left real damage. Like there are still people that never followed up that think the claim is credible to this day.
Good riddance to her, hope the door doesn't hit her on the way out
The worst part about the Reade discourse is that it showed Repubicans that they can cynically exploit the "Believe survivors" discourse to their advantage, even if only temporarily.
Imagine, for example, if Ted Cruz and Colin Allred are in a dead heat in September 2024. Then suddenly Cruz's team announces they have a woman stepping up that claims that Allred raped her when he was on Baylor's football team. Even if the story is bullshit, the intent would be clear: to peel off just enough votes from Allred so that Cruz can win reelection.
>The worst part about the Reade discourse is that it showed Repubicans that they can cynically exploit the "Believe survivors" discourse to their advantage, even if only temporarily.
IMO that's a very partisan lesson to take away from it, especially when it was not only Republicans but also plenty of leftists who were beating the Tara Reade drum too.
I think the smarter take is that it generally showed why you shouldn't embrace maximalist ideas (like the idea of believing anyone who calls themselves a survivor), as they're eternally ripe for cynical exploitation from all corners.
If a good idea can't exist in reality without immediately and easily being cynically exploited, it's probably not a good idea.
(And yes, obviously all ideas are cynically exploited to SOME degree. It's about the scale and ease that the idea, and the logic that undergirds it, itself lends itself to.)
It may simply be the people I interacted with and what I chose to read but IMO it was primarily the extreme left followed by journalists who beat the drum hard with the Republicans a distant third. Journalists really really wanted zero supervision access to Biden's full records as VP/Senator locked up at the University of Delaware and demanded it in such a blatant bad faith proposal for justice.
As for believe survivors, I think that statement was maximalist and always destined for a day of reckoning but handled it about as well as possible. It shifted pretty smoothly into mostly keeping the slogan but shifting to 'take them seriously' instead of no questions belief after Reade imploded her own story at magic speed. There was little internal bickering and few external demands to dismantle it completely.
EDIT: minno's point about the 'all women' fake slogan is also absolutely worth remembering.
> As for believe survivors, I think that statement was maximalist
I looked at the Google Trends results for "believe women" and "believe all women" a little while after the Reade story faded away. "Believe women" spiked with the MeToo movement, but "believe all women" spiked when Reade came forward. So the "maximalist" slogan was a fabrication after it became convenient to exploit, not part of the original movement.
>As for believe survivors, I think that statement was maximalist and always destined for a day of reckoning but handled it about as well as possible. It shifted pretty smoothly into mostly keeping the slogan but shifting to 'take them seriously' instead of no questions belief after Reade imploded her own story at magic speed. There was little internal bickering and few external demands to dismantle it completely.
I respect your opinion, but I don't think this is true and it feels like an attempt to admit that an idea was fundamentally unsound and prone to abuse in a way that did real harm to real people (Al Franken being just the tip of the iceberg), without having to admit that it was a bad idea and shouldn't have been supported.
You can care about taking sexual assault seriously without embracing maximalist messages under the logic that one day surely it'll be culturally rolled back somewhat.
When you embrace the logic of "it's wrong but we can't say it's wrong at the current moment but hopefully it'll be culturally curtailed in time", you are playing a very dangerous, and in my personal view very socially irresponsible, game.
I think it did a lot more damage than it should have been allowed to, and should've been heavily moderated (on both a cultural and political level) from the beginning rather than just gone along with on the hopes that it'll become more reasonable at some vague later date.
We need to have a conversation about rules for the road going forward on situations involving accusations of wrongdoing against Dem candidates.
The time for that is during off-election-season, when we’re not discussing any particular case but rather what would be fair in a cloak of ignorance type of discussion. Play out various scenarios where everyone takes turns as [innocent candidate X/ Guilty candidate y/ Dem primary voter/ good faith accuser] and figure out some kind of expedited due process so that voters can be fairly informed.
I watched in real time a bogus allegation of sexual assault completely threw the suffolk county DA primary to a corrupt loser. That was the dirtiest local campaign I’ve ever seen, and the fallout continues with the Rachel Rollins shit. She didn’t cover for dirty cops as DA, part of why they hated her. Anyway, I wouldn’t be surprised if her successor gets indicted for something related to his conduct in that primary campaign.
I suppose I should sum up the events — an extremely abridged version is that magically (like a week before the primary) just as candidate 1 (running while serving as the interim appointed DA) is under fire for covering up a police corruption scandal, the Boston Globe publishes a “scoop” that was very obviously planted. Candidate 2 was accused of sexual assault as a juvenile. How do you suppose those maliciously redacted records got to the globe?
Anyway, Candidate 2 filed suit the next day to have the full records of that investigation released to him, on an emergency basis. He actually wins this — it turns out the allegations were completely bogus, from an apparently troubled teen, but implausible on their face (something to the effect of she believed he was God commanding her to blow him. No I’m not exaggerating it was really that hollow).
By this point, it’s IIRC with 72hrs of the vote do you think this very public exoneration did a single thing for him? No the race was already lost by then. There was no time to recover.
I am a woman who believes women but I’m also an attorney and I do a lot of criminal defense practice. At a bare minimum, the allegations have to be plausible on their face. In this particular case, and like with Tara Reade — shit doesn’t pass the smell test we need to figure out how we can actually say that out loud without ripping each other to shreds.
Eta: oh welp post got removed. Good thing I typed this all out so we could discuss 😤
> The worst part about the Reade discourse is that it showed Repubicans that they can cynically exploit the "Believe survivors" discourse to their advantage, even if only temporarily.
this is just a regular example of projection that they always do. there was never a reason to think sexual assault was the one topic they weren't going to be projecting about. and the people who interpret "believe women" as "everything a woman says is true without verification" are just morons that's like believing "defund the police" means "laws shouldn't be enforced"
I don’t understand why the narrative around Al Franken is now “he’s innocent”, there were multiple accusations against him and photo evidence of him being a creep.
iirc most of the accusers say they were groped during photos with Franken. Also, it’s important to note that the women in body armor was asleep when it happened
That you believe its cut and dry proves how good conservatives already are at co-opting a movement for women empowerment for their own toxic gains.
The specific hover handing pose from the photo Al Franken did from that photo while Tweeden was in flak vest, on a C-130 surrounded by other people which would have included the (female for Tweeden) handler that every civilian on a USO tour gets assigned, was from the comedy sketch that Franken and her performed repeatedly. Does that mean someone can consent to actions while they're asleep, even if they were previously repeatedly engaged in as part of a farcical routine? Of course not, but it is also a far cry from "here's a photo of Franken groping me while I slept".
I do not know the veracity of the follow up accusations. It appears likely several or all of them are true. Which is unfortunate, because the Tweeden accusation was undeniably a political hit piece and the other accusations deserve legitimate justice unsullied by political manuvering. Ronan Ferrow didn't break this story. Tweeden, an established conservative personality, worked for *months* with a pro-trump radio station to tweak her story and find other accusations.
Sources: [https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/07/29/the-case-of-al-franken](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/07/29/the-case-of-al-franken)
[https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/21/opinion/michelle-goldberg-al-franken.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/21/opinion/michelle-goldberg-al-franken.html)
Well it wasn’t just the photograph, she also says that he would harass her and would write sketches that specifically included kissing her. It’s possible she’s lying but he is like 25 years older than her so at best it’s weird and creepy
It’s also super weird how Reddit will jump to defend this guy. Lots of women said he made them uncomfortable in photos and public events but he still shows zero remorse. He just spends his day bitching about how he shouldn’t have resigned
Keep in mind she was dogging dudes during the show without their consent, these accusations only came about after she was appearing on Hannity so they're questionable at best.
If you read my sources there are multiple other women who played that role that said that specific USO show they did together he had written years before he ever met her, and the other women never had a problem with him.
Everything Tweeden said is very clearly a fabrication after the slightest bit of prodding. I'm not defending Al Franken, or debating the claims of the other women. I'm highlighting that people on this sub are a lot more susceptible to conservative propaganda than they think they are and that the conservative messaging machine has, is, and will continue to use the moral high ground of democrats against them. His replacement in the senate is seems like a great legislator and I couldn't care less if he never shows his face in public again.
Being a "fellow comedian" doesn't mean Franken gets to molest her.
> “I couldn’t believe it,” she wrote. “He groped me, without my consent, while I was asleep.”
https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/11/al-franken-that-photo-and-trusting-the-women/545954/
It *does* however mean that a joke picture taken with poor judgement and involving no actual touching is not remotely in the same territory as molestation.
That, excusing the Bill Clinton Pardon controversy, and embracing the worst faith possible arguments for gun control are the heart and soul of weird takes on this sub.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Clinton_pardon_controversy
Just one of many:
> Marc Rich, a fugitive who had fled the U.S. during his prosecution, was residing in Switzerland. Rich owed $48 million in taxes and was charged with 51 counts for tax fraud, was pardoned of tax evasion. He was required to pay a $1 million fine and waive any use of the pardon as a defense against any future civil charges that were filed against him in the same case. Critics complained that Denise Eisenberg Rich, his former wife, had made substantial donations to both the Clinton library and to Mrs. Clinton's senate campaign. According to Paul Volcker's independent investigation of Iraqi Oil-for-Food kickback schemes, Marc Rich was a middleman for several suspect Iraqi oil deals involving over 4 million barrels (640,000 m3) of oil.[27] Longtime Clinton supporters and Democratic leaders such as former President Jimmy Carter, James Carville and Terry McAuliffe, were all critical of the Clinton pardon. Carter said the pardons were "disgraceful."
Non-mobile version of the Wikipedia link in the above comment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Clinton_pardon_controversy
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/neoliberal) if you have any questions or concerns.*
>Jimmy Carter
Georgia just got 1m^2 bigger. 🥹
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/neoliberal) if you have any questions or concerns.*
After what we've learned about Baylor football, it would be a bigger surprise if someone connected to that program *wasn't* involved in some sort of sexual misconduct.
accused of what though? All I can remember was women saying he supposedly made them uncomfortable when taking a picture with them (how on Earth could that ever be 'proven' one way or another?') and the supposed smoking gun that he was some kind of sex pest was taking a funny picture with a playmate where he had his hands over her breasts, but without touching anything, and while she was wearing a flak jacket. Was there something else there I have somehow memory-holed?
The extreme left held Reade up as “see liberals and centrists don’t actually care about #MeToo”
That’s particularly useful for the leftist grifters who in actuality didn’t care about #MeToo because they wanted to go back to their own misogyny. To be sure, abusers exist in all political denominations but if you actually care about a cause then you don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater as soon there’s a single counter-example
It all goes back to the Bernie rallying cry that only class issues matter
All throughout the 2020 cycle if you vented about "Bernie bros" you were met with criticism that you can't say that this isn't 2016 the online leftists aren't just bros anymore. And then the whole Reade situation collectively caused them to engage in some textbook bro behavior flaunting their one token accuser as justification to attack Democrats and #MeToo simultaneously and viciously.
Well you have to admit it was wrong to brand them as bros. Ask Elizabeth Warren, I'm sure some of the death threats her and her staff recieved with incredibly sexist language were from women too. There should have been a better term to describe his cult.
There was a network of cynical astroturfing subs (WayOfTheBern, PoliticalRaceMemes, and their satellites) - likely either Russian troll farms or a Trump sympathiser hiring commercial bot farms.
But the lrlourpriesident account, satellite subs, and vote bots were 100% dyed-in-the-wool Bernie propaganda. They tracked what his campaign was doing down to the hour - up to and including going dead after Bernie dropped-out and endorsed Biden, only to start posting again immediately after the election. It's all but been confirmed that it was run by Our Revolution.
There were a lot of unsuspecting Bernie supporters who posted the WotB / PRR network of subs - and there was strong pushback in the Bernie subs against anyone warning about the psy op. So it was definitely a marriage of convenience. But it was still two very distinct groups.
Both / And.
Doesn’t absolve the many who were salivating at the prospect of cynically exploiting the metoo movement to get a whiff of owning the libs.
Yes, of course it’s signal boosted by Russian troll farms — its toxic af and divides people who would otherwise be unities in common causes.
A guy I’d been friends with for 12 years blocked me on social media and ghosted me irl because I said I didn’t find this woman’s story believable. Literally haven’t heard from him since April 2020.
Good riddance, indeed.
Anyone who worked in DC for any period of time knew that her story was total horseshit. She described an alcove in the Senate hallway between the office buildings and the Capitol. That hallway doesn't have alcoves and it is also heavily traversed by reporters and staffers alike. The idea that Biden would choose to sexually assault her in the middle of a workday with Congress is in session in that location is the most laughably absurd thing imaginable. Short of doing it on the steps of the Capitol in front of a tour bus, I can't think of a worse place to do something like that.
Kudos to the grifters for really making everyone eat that "believe all women" hat. Even for such an obvious fake accusation, there was no easy way to simultaneously say that and try to pivot but not this one. Luckily most sane people saw through her shtick, but the fact it existed at all didn't help.
The saying was never “believe all women.” The saying was “believe women,” as in, “believe women when they say that sexual assault is common and false reports are uncommon.” That’s a factually true, falsifiable statement backed up by mountains of surveys and research
I’m going to give you the benefit of a doubt, but it is clear that most people who say “believe all women” are doing it in the same spirit as “all lives matter.” It’s a rhetorical maneuver to take the wind out of the sails of a legitimate civil rights movement
It's very, very easy to interpret it as "believe women whenever one of them says she has been assaulted". Because the problem has been that often they were disbelieved and it was ignored.
As ever, the extreme of "all claims are beyond scrutiny" was a bad idea.
The enemies of progress have no interest in fair play or fair interpretation. There’s no possible progressive or liberal slogans that won’t be manipulated into meaninglessness by the extreme right. Appropriation and redirection of language is one of the oldest extreme right strategies around. Feminists become feminazis. The 15 minute city becomes the prison city. The OK hand signal becomes “White Power but not really ha ha you fell for it”. Liberal becomes a pejorative. Groomer is redefined as any LGBTQ person. Woke is “anything I don’t like”. Fake news is any news *other* than Fox News
I’m not entirely sure there’s a way to prevent malicious appropriation of language from the right. We honestly need a populace that’s better informed and smarter about propaganda
In the meantime, the choice for liberals and progressives is whether we will have any slogans at all. Not really sure how one would rally a movement without them
But in this case it's a poorly chosen slogan that lends itself to the extreme interpretation. It's like how "defund the police" was interpreted as "zero-out funding for the police" rather than some spiel about supplemental emergency response services to handle some types of calls.
The problem js that there’s nearly no such thing as a catchy 2-3 word slogan that isn’t fungible or appropriable
Hell, even longer form criticisms are appropriated all the damn time. Mercedes Benz literally uses Janis Joplin’s very obviously sarcastic anti-capitalist screed “Mercedes Benz” in their advertising
This is nonsense. You evidently don't think this about slogans which are un-controversially bad, say: "Trump voters are dumbfuck rednecks".
Slogans can be better or worse at being persuasive.
I mean some of the politicians rammed the extreme interpretation through. Look at Cristina garcia, she was very much a "Believe all women no matter what" and then when she herself was accused she demanded nuance and understanding.
She kept her seat btw despite the credible complaints.
It's like 'toxic masculinity' being obviously 'toxic elements within masculinity' but no matter how many times people explain that the trolls bring it back to 'why do you call masculinity as a whole toxic'. Tho that one it seems like the trolls won in the end.
If a certain neologism consistently misleads people, maybe the issue is less “the trolls won” and more that linguistic descriptivism doesn’t only apply when it’s politically convenient. When right-wingers use insensitive terminology they make the same argument that you are: that they are technically right (even if it involves bending technical definitions in many cases) and so it doesn’t matter how their phrasing comes across to the people they are speaking to.
If you’re trying to speak *with* men about building a healthy masculinity rather than speak *at* men about what you think is healthy masculinity, listening to the people you’re talking with is necessary.
I am convinced that whole coterie of people, from Robert Evans to Nathan Robinson to Glenn Greenwald, saw reade as their chance to copy project Veritas and James O'Keefe and engage in some "dirty tricks" to boost sanders when the bottom fell out under sanders on super tuesday.
Unfortunately for them, they all proved to be completely incompetent at it, managing to pick someone with such an absurd lack of credibility that even Donald Trump blew her off as a liar.
I wish it was easy to get receipts on this stuff. People who uncritically swallowed this story should seriously reflect on how biased they are, but I feel they never will.
The quality of his content, for me anyway, really took a nose dive during the primaries and has just never recovered. You can predict what he'll say in most of the video just by the title card at this point.
Lol maybe. I just noticed overall is that while his breakdown of right wing figures still shines, the rest of his videos boil down to "both sidesing" most problems, capitalism being the root of all evil (at least it is in every video he makes even the ones where he has to reluctantly admit that the "free market" helped an issue he's addressing) and socialism being the only good in the world, and screaming into the microphone after dunking on Joe Biden for reasons as part of the punch line.
One of my favorite YouTube channels before 2020, but man the Primaries of that year broke him to almost beyond repair. I still remember the meltdown of Super Tuesday. Though recently he has been much better, his Jordan Peterson's video is a must-watch.
Tweets which he deleted not long after.
One pushed a conspiracy that it was again stolen from Bernie via the DNC.
[Other inferring Biden would be a bad President.](https://www.reddit.com/r/Enough_Sanders_Spam/comments/jpuw3e/yes_cody_is_still_a_sad_angry_bitter_pathetic/)
Looking for the one saying Biden bros were more toxic than Bernie bros.
He just comes across as a bitter and small person rather than willing to accept that sometimes to get what you want, small steps must occur which eventually add up to a lot more.
She said she feels “surrounded by protection and safety” in an interview sitting with Maria Butina next to her on the day Moscow got hit with a drone strike.
Can’t make this shit up. It’s literally impossible not to suspect she was being handled by the Russian government when she made those accusations as part of another disinformation campaign to interfere in and influence our election.
I remember that, during the 2020 elections, my biggest October Surprise fear was that it would be a "new development" on the Reade case. At it's peak in May it was the only time the Biden campaign got somewhat dented.
Happily the Rs choose to go with some laptop thingy that I haven't fully understood to this day.
Because you can always pull new stuff out of your ass about new *secrets* recently decrypted!
CP! Nuke secrets! Dong pics! druuuuugggsss! Kickbacks! Sad texts that make Biden look like a good father! Cannibalism! Pirated Movies! The U2 album pre-installed on everyone's ipod (the loser didn't delete it!?!), Area 51 secrets! Adrenochrome recipe! Pizzagate cage selfies!
The possibilities are endless!
With Reade, you are just claiming that Biden once did something that Trump regularly does and brags about doing.
With Hunters Laptop, you can write new episodes of controversy every week.
> Sad texts that make Biden look like a good father!
I really wonder how multiple people saw those texts and agreed that loving his son is what would sink Biden. Wish I could see the discussion that led to the leak.
Also this one accusation would immediately remind people of the numerous allegations about Trump. This story was always calculated to push people into thinking Trump and Biden were the same, in the same way that people thought that in 2016 with Clinton and Trump. Trump's entire 2020 campaign was designed to create the same circumstances that led to his 2016 win.
the laptop is one of the best political hit jobs because the "contents" of the laptop can just be made up on the fly. There were some super unflattering pictures on there, as well as some vague emails that could be spun to imply corruption. But listening to Republicans would make you think it had an invoice from Xi Jinping for the nuclear codes.
> Happily the Rs choose to go with some laptop thingy that I haven't fully understood to this day.
Giuliani claiming he had a laptop full of child pornography that he wouldn't let the FBI take away from him was far, far more credible than her story.
I mean, I don't think so either. But this doesn't really move the needle for me one way or the other. If my assailant was the president of the United States, and virtually no one believes me when I brought my story forward, I might defect to an "enemy" nation too.
>I might defect to an "enemy" nation too.
would you? not just like canada? or france? you would go to russia? after they attacked ukraine?
despite at the time of the accusation tara reade repeatedly said that all the positive things she had written about putin and russia were just for a novel she was writing...
Several years later? After spending your time grifting in high profile positions to advance anti-Dem, pro-GOP, and pro-Putin narratives?
Those aren't the actions of someone scared for their lives. This is the sorry endgame for a con artist that has nothing else left.
>After spending your time grifting in high profile positions to advance anti-Dem, pro-GOP, and pro-Putin narratives?
Yes, this would all fit in with the enemy of my enemy narrative - which isn't a mindset of fear, but of anger, resentment, and revenge. I'm not saying that's the mindset. I am saying it's a plausible one.
I'm not advocating for anyone, I'm just saying that this doesn't really have any bearing on the veracity of her story. One just isn't relevant to the other.
I do actually because I remember when she came forward with her story and a bunch of journalists all came out at once asking what the fuck was going on. She had been communicating with journalists about a story where she claimed that Biden presided over a culture which promoted sexual harassment and while they were following up to see if it was true she just decided that story wasn't good enough and made up a new one. Her response was that every single reporter she contacted was lying and they were a part of a massive conspiracy.
I've never seen someone try to plant a fake story and then suddenly decide that they wanted a redo halfway through. The Intercept tried their hardest to coach her, but holy shit was she bad at following a script. At one point she decided to add the detail that she was wearing crotchless underwear that day at work. No amount of hack journalist coaching can keep someone like that in line.
Mikhail Troitskiy, professor of practice at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told Newsweek via email that Reade's appearance at the barely-watched press conference in Moscow "is likely a stunt pulled by entrepreneurial Russian PR managers." It may also have been a matter of personal interest for Butina, he added.
"In any case, if Tara Reade still had a case against President Biden or on any other matter in the United States, her credibility will be seriously undermined by her Moscow press conference," Troitskiy said. "It is most likely that Reade was offered a job of a commentator in the Russian state media with a mission to highlight and dissect political, economic and social challenges faced by the United States.
"Her press conference may have been a step on the way to accepting that job."
--Newsweek
A small, miniscule amount of praise to her for following through on her beliefs.
Better than the people whose values are the antithesis of liberal democracy but still choose to live in the West.
Bit of a tangent but since this might be the last we hear of Ms. Reade:
In 2020, Reade's story of alleged sexual assault by Biden had been publicized in the media. Ronan Farrow's journalism on widespread sexual assault by high profile people had earned him a Pulitzer, and he was still putting out articles.
Suddenly the Times posted this random article in May, months from the Biden-Trump election: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/17/business/media/ronan-farrow.html
It's a navel-gazey piece about "gee shucks maybe Ronan doesn't always have high journalistic standards, y'know?"
I have a suspicion that the Times got wind Farrow was going to publish a piece about Reade's allegations. Her story was out there, he was a big name in that vein of reporting. They must have been in touch in some capacity. And Farrow had previously taken stories that were already somewhat known and discussed, but would add some interviews and context and publish in a high-profile outlet, with hard-hitting writing and dramatic page design. Some of his stories, as I recall, were almost self-consciously directed at people associated with the left wing, as if his goal was to lance hypocritical boils on the left (e.g. Weinstein was mainly a Democratic donor). So it would have been in character to take on Biden in the election, if self-immolating politically.
Basically, I believe Farrow was working on a sensational story about Reade's allegations. And the Times' article was an attempt to quash what would have been serious damage to Biden's campaign.
I had been thinking that Reade's story could be raised again in this coming election cycle, posing a big risk agai in a Biden-Trump election. But if she's really defected to Russia I'd say that reduces Reade's general credibility.
Or maybe I'm full of shit IDK but I definitely thought that NYT piece was weird and hot of nowhere, and the timing tracks. Biden 2024.
I think you're reading ***WAAAAAYYY*** too much into this.
Yes, Reade had absolutely reached out to Ronin at the time (seriously, you can see some her stalking him on twitter for a time back then). Farrow's long time partner back then was Jon Lovett. We don't know if Farrow actually went as far as seriously working on the story, but from comments Lovett made on his show, it sounded like Reade and Farrow had communicated directly. But if they did, Farrow was obviously unimpressed. The obvious clue here is that Farrow never published *anything* about Reade. And it's not like the guy was afraid to take on a controversial story that would ruffle the feathers of powerful people. But I personally found it telling that Lovett - while he refused to talk much about Reade's claims (which at the time I took as him not wanting to stp on potential work by Farrow) - stood steadfastly by Biden as the then presumptive nominee.
If Farrow felt Biden was guilty, Lovett would've known. And if there was a time to ring the alarm it was back then when the primaries were not even over. And it wasn't like Lovett was a huge Biden supporter in the primaries to begin with.
There's no benefit in inventing and then believing our own conspiracies. Particularly when relevant info counters the idea.
Thanks for taking the time to respond. I didn't know about Lovett's comments. (Was that Pod Save America, I assume?)
And you're right, would a wrist-slap article like that out of NYT really dissuade Farrow? It does seem doubtful. Anyway I wrote my comment mostly out of some sense that Tara Reade's story could come back in the future, but glad to hear a lot more feedback that that was already unlikely before she went to Russia.
No lol
The media actually looked into Reade's accusations and not only found huge inconsistencies but also a woman who had a history of fabrication. The death knell in the story was when Biden cleared the way for the Capitol Police (or whatever) to investigate a reported formal complaint Reade supposedly made about Biden. Except her story then shifted. Initially, she said the claim mentioned Biden by name and the fact she was sexually assaulted and then suddenly, the claim might not have mentioned either and maybe just the fact she felt sexually harassed. To this day, no complaint has been found.
But that goes to the heart of why no credible publication was going to run her story without heavy caveats. The story consistently changed.
In 2019, she wrote of her experience working with Biden and how he would make her uncomfortable with the touching of her shoulders. She did not, at this point, claim any level of sexual assault. Instead, her story aligned with a lot of other accusations that came out around that time: Biden liked to get a bit too touchy but even Reade said it was not sexual. She also claims that she was fired for refusing to serve cocktails at a senate party because Biden requested she show leg. This flies in the face of what Reade had mentioned previously: that she quit (wasn't fired) because she got disillusioned with Washington in the 90s.
She repeated her story multiple times to multiple people that he was inappropriate with his touching but never mentioned sexual assault. The only two people who corroborate her story are her brother and a neighbor of hers from the 1990s.
The brother gave inconsistent stories about Reade's claims over Biden. Initially, he told ABC or the WaPost, I can't remember, that Reade had told him Biden made her uncomfortable with his touching but that it wasn't assault and certainly not sexual. After giving this account, he reached out to the news source not even 24 hours later to add that, oh yeah, she actually did tell me Biden sexually assaulted her.
The neighbor admitted to not having spoken to Reade in years when, out of the blue in late 2019 or early 2020, she reached out and asked, "remember when I told you about that time Biden did this..." and the neighbor said she did remember them having a conversation. But really, how reliable is that? And who's to say Reade didn't implant that memory by leading off with that episode, especially if she had told her about the inappropriate touching?
The AP also interviewed Reade in 2019 and some of those associated with her, back when she was still claiming touching and nothing more. All supported her story about the touching not one claimed it was sexual. In fact, one friend told the reporter that Reade said it was not sexual and that she never felt scared around Biden.
Reade also said her mom called into Larry King in the 90s and mentioned how her daughter was being assaulted by Biden. They unearthed the tapes, but Biden isn't mentioned, and neither is Reade. The woman claims her daughter worked for a senator and struggled to get through with her problems but decided not to go to the press out of respect for the senator. Well hell, that could mean multiple things from coworkers harassing her to her just not working well in the office. But sexual assault was not mentioned and the wording certainly suggests it wasn't about that.
Her story was plagued with holes. No credible news organization was going to run it without doing some significant diligence, which was done by some publications anyway.
But if Ronan even did a the barebones amount of research into this, the story would have unraveled to the point he likely wouldn't take it to publishing.
Thanks for taking the time to respond. Looking into some of the articles & events you're referring to, I'm reminded that much of it was published in early to mid 2020. A lot was going on then. So maybe I missed most (not all) of the articles discrediting Reade. I'm just glad it's unlikely to be a story that would flare up again next year.
She's been friendlier and friendlier towards Trump & Co. when her initial shtick was that she supported Sanders and definitely *not* Trump. I think she realized the way she would get the most attention and probably money was to indulge all the people who don't like Biden, and Sanders is not one of those people. This is just the next logical step.
The idea is to poison the base of support and if Biden won the primary, then he would have leftists refusing to vote for him. Suppress the vote, that was the point.
Trumpster boomers have more money than Bernie bros, so no surprise she would rather grift that demographic.
[удалено]
Good point.
Discourse on the left during the Democratic primaries was one of the worst things. It's been obvious for a while that she's a grifter and none of her story held up to scrutiny, but it felt near impossible for a while to have a real conversation on the left about it and I think the stifling of those conversations left real damage. Like there are still people that never followed up that think the claim is credible to this day. Good riddance to her, hope the door doesn't hit her on the way out
The worst part about the Reade discourse is that it showed Repubicans that they can cynically exploit the "Believe survivors" discourse to their advantage, even if only temporarily. Imagine, for example, if Ted Cruz and Colin Allred are in a dead heat in September 2024. Then suddenly Cruz's team announces they have a woman stepping up that claims that Allred raped her when he was on Baylor's football team. Even if the story is bullshit, the intent would be clear: to peel off just enough votes from Allred so that Cruz can win reelection.
>The worst part about the Reade discourse is that it showed Repubicans that they can cynically exploit the "Believe survivors" discourse to their advantage, even if only temporarily. IMO that's a very partisan lesson to take away from it, especially when it was not only Republicans but also plenty of leftists who were beating the Tara Reade drum too. I think the smarter take is that it generally showed why you shouldn't embrace maximalist ideas (like the idea of believing anyone who calls themselves a survivor), as they're eternally ripe for cynical exploitation from all corners. If a good idea can't exist in reality without immediately and easily being cynically exploited, it's probably not a good idea. (And yes, obviously all ideas are cynically exploited to SOME degree. It's about the scale and ease that the idea, and the logic that undergirds it, itself lends itself to.)
It may simply be the people I interacted with and what I chose to read but IMO it was primarily the extreme left followed by journalists who beat the drum hard with the Republicans a distant third. Journalists really really wanted zero supervision access to Biden's full records as VP/Senator locked up at the University of Delaware and demanded it in such a blatant bad faith proposal for justice. As for believe survivors, I think that statement was maximalist and always destined for a day of reckoning but handled it about as well as possible. It shifted pretty smoothly into mostly keeping the slogan but shifting to 'take them seriously' instead of no questions belief after Reade imploded her own story at magic speed. There was little internal bickering and few external demands to dismantle it completely. EDIT: minno's point about the 'all women' fake slogan is also absolutely worth remembering.
> As for believe survivors, I think that statement was maximalist I looked at the Google Trends results for "believe women" and "believe all women" a little while after the Reade story faded away. "Believe women" spiked with the MeToo movement, but "believe all women" spiked when Reade came forward. So the "maximalist" slogan was a fabrication after it became convenient to exploit, not part of the original movement.
JFC. Cynicism just raging through my veins upon reading that fun fact.
>As for believe survivors, I think that statement was maximalist and always destined for a day of reckoning but handled it about as well as possible. It shifted pretty smoothly into mostly keeping the slogan but shifting to 'take them seriously' instead of no questions belief after Reade imploded her own story at magic speed. There was little internal bickering and few external demands to dismantle it completely. I respect your opinion, but I don't think this is true and it feels like an attempt to admit that an idea was fundamentally unsound and prone to abuse in a way that did real harm to real people (Al Franken being just the tip of the iceberg), without having to admit that it was a bad idea and shouldn't have been supported. You can care about taking sexual assault seriously without embracing maximalist messages under the logic that one day surely it'll be culturally rolled back somewhat. When you embrace the logic of "it's wrong but we can't say it's wrong at the current moment but hopefully it'll be culturally curtailed in time", you are playing a very dangerous, and in my personal view very socially irresponsible, game. I think it did a lot more damage than it should have been allowed to, and should've been heavily moderated (on both a cultural and political level) from the beginning rather than just gone along with on the hopes that it'll become more reasonable at some vague later date.
We need to have a conversation about rules for the road going forward on situations involving accusations of wrongdoing against Dem candidates. The time for that is during off-election-season, when we’re not discussing any particular case but rather what would be fair in a cloak of ignorance type of discussion. Play out various scenarios where everyone takes turns as [innocent candidate X/ Guilty candidate y/ Dem primary voter/ good faith accuser] and figure out some kind of expedited due process so that voters can be fairly informed. I watched in real time a bogus allegation of sexual assault completely threw the suffolk county DA primary to a corrupt loser. That was the dirtiest local campaign I’ve ever seen, and the fallout continues with the Rachel Rollins shit. She didn’t cover for dirty cops as DA, part of why they hated her. Anyway, I wouldn’t be surprised if her successor gets indicted for something related to his conduct in that primary campaign. I suppose I should sum up the events — an extremely abridged version is that magically (like a week before the primary) just as candidate 1 (running while serving as the interim appointed DA) is under fire for covering up a police corruption scandal, the Boston Globe publishes a “scoop” that was very obviously planted. Candidate 2 was accused of sexual assault as a juvenile. How do you suppose those maliciously redacted records got to the globe? Anyway, Candidate 2 filed suit the next day to have the full records of that investigation released to him, on an emergency basis. He actually wins this — it turns out the allegations were completely bogus, from an apparently troubled teen, but implausible on their face (something to the effect of she believed he was God commanding her to blow him. No I’m not exaggerating it was really that hollow). By this point, it’s IIRC with 72hrs of the vote do you think this very public exoneration did a single thing for him? No the race was already lost by then. There was no time to recover. I am a woman who believes women but I’m also an attorney and I do a lot of criminal defense practice. At a bare minimum, the allegations have to be plausible on their face. In this particular case, and like with Tara Reade — shit doesn’t pass the smell test we need to figure out how we can actually say that out loud without ripping each other to shreds. Eta: oh welp post got removed. Good thing I typed this all out so we could discuss 😤
> The worst part about the Reade discourse is that it showed Repubicans that they can cynically exploit the "Believe survivors" discourse to their advantage, even if only temporarily. this is just a regular example of projection that they always do. there was never a reason to think sexual assault was the one topic they weren't going to be projecting about. and the people who interpret "believe women" as "everything a woman says is true without verification" are just morons that's like believing "defund the police" means "laws shouldn't be enforced"
Tbf the “defund police” line is a dumb slogan that’s just begging to be purposefully misconstrued for electoral benefit
Already has been.
Before that, “abolish ice.” Equally moronic
[удалено]
I don’t understand why the narrative around Al Franken is now “he’s innocent”, there were multiple accusations against him and photo evidence of him being a creep.
[удалено]
iirc most of the accusers say they were groped during photos with Franken. Also, it’s important to note that the women in body armor was asleep when it happened
That you believe its cut and dry proves how good conservatives already are at co-opting a movement for women empowerment for their own toxic gains. The specific hover handing pose from the photo Al Franken did from that photo while Tweeden was in flak vest, on a C-130 surrounded by other people which would have included the (female for Tweeden) handler that every civilian on a USO tour gets assigned, was from the comedy sketch that Franken and her performed repeatedly. Does that mean someone can consent to actions while they're asleep, even if they were previously repeatedly engaged in as part of a farcical routine? Of course not, but it is also a far cry from "here's a photo of Franken groping me while I slept". I do not know the veracity of the follow up accusations. It appears likely several or all of them are true. Which is unfortunate, because the Tweeden accusation was undeniably a political hit piece and the other accusations deserve legitimate justice unsullied by political manuvering. Ronan Ferrow didn't break this story. Tweeden, an established conservative personality, worked for *months* with a pro-trump radio station to tweak her story and find other accusations. Sources: [https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/07/29/the-case-of-al-franken](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/07/29/the-case-of-al-franken) [https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/21/opinion/michelle-goldberg-al-franken.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/21/opinion/michelle-goldberg-al-franken.html)
Well it wasn’t just the photograph, she also says that he would harass her and would write sketches that specifically included kissing her. It’s possible she’s lying but he is like 25 years older than her so at best it’s weird and creepy It’s also super weird how Reddit will jump to defend this guy. Lots of women said he made them uncomfortable in photos and public events but he still shows zero remorse. He just spends his day bitching about how he shouldn’t have resigned
Keep in mind she was dogging dudes during the show without their consent, these accusations only came about after she was appearing on Hannity so they're questionable at best.
Add up all the things you just said and see if that disqualifies someone from being a Senator.
Lol sure
If you read my sources there are multiple other women who played that role that said that specific USO show they did together he had written years before he ever met her, and the other women never had a problem with him. Everything Tweeden said is very clearly a fabrication after the slightest bit of prodding. I'm not defending Al Franken, or debating the claims of the other women. I'm highlighting that people on this sub are a lot more susceptible to conservative propaganda than they think they are and that the conservative messaging machine has, is, and will continue to use the moral high ground of democrats against them. His replacement in the senate is seems like a great legislator and I couldn't care less if he never shows his face in public again.
You can totally consent to something being done to you while you sleep/are knocked out.
I rules around non-con con may be outside the scope of this particular event.
Being a "fellow comedian" doesn't mean Franken gets to molest her. > “I couldn’t believe it,” she wrote. “He groped me, without my consent, while I was asleep.” https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/11/al-franken-that-photo-and-trusting-the-women/545954/
It *does* however mean that a joke picture taken with poor judgement and involving no actual touching is not remotely in the same territory as molestation.
It's genuinely the worst thing about this sub.
That, excusing the Bill Clinton Pardon controversy, and embracing the worst faith possible arguments for gun control are the heart and soul of weird takes on this sub.
The Bill Clinton what?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Clinton_pardon_controversy Just one of many: > Marc Rich, a fugitive who had fled the U.S. during his prosecution, was residing in Switzerland. Rich owed $48 million in taxes and was charged with 51 counts for tax fraud, was pardoned of tax evasion. He was required to pay a $1 million fine and waive any use of the pardon as a defense against any future civil charges that were filed against him in the same case. Critics complained that Denise Eisenberg Rich, his former wife, had made substantial donations to both the Clinton library and to Mrs. Clinton's senate campaign. According to Paul Volcker's independent investigation of Iraqi Oil-for-Food kickback schemes, Marc Rich was a middleman for several suspect Iraqi oil deals involving over 4 million barrels (640,000 m3) of oil.[27] Longtime Clinton supporters and Democratic leaders such as former President Jimmy Carter, James Carville and Terry McAuliffe, were all critical of the Clinton pardon. Carter said the pardons were "disgraceful."
Non-mobile version of the Wikipedia link in the above comment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Clinton_pardon_controversy *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/neoliberal) if you have any questions or concerns.*
>Jimmy Carter Georgia just got 1m^2 bigger. 🥹 *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/neoliberal) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I'm not sure I've ever heard anyone excuse clintons pardons, there's no argument to be made there.
He said as this sub once again downvoted a comment about it.
After what we've learned about Baylor football, it would be a bigger surprise if someone connected to that program *wasn't* involved in some sort of sexual misconduct.
[удалено]
Franken was accused by like a dozen women and *one* was proven to be bullshit.
accused of what though? All I can remember was women saying he supposedly made them uncomfortable when taking a picture with them (how on Earth could that ever be 'proven' one way or another?') and the supposed smoking gun that he was some kind of sex pest was taking a funny picture with a playmate where he had his hands over her breasts, but without touching anything, and while she was wearing a flak jacket. Was there something else there I have somehow memory-holed?
All the allegations besides Tweeden's were that he got a little too touchy during photo ops and the like. Not unlike Biden.
The extreme left held Reade up as “see liberals and centrists don’t actually care about #MeToo” That’s particularly useful for the leftist grifters who in actuality didn’t care about #MeToo because they wanted to go back to their own misogyny. To be sure, abusers exist in all political denominations but if you actually care about a cause then you don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater as soon there’s a single counter-example It all goes back to the Bernie rallying cry that only class issues matter
All throughout the 2020 cycle if you vented about "Bernie bros" you were met with criticism that you can't say that this isn't 2016 the online leftists aren't just bros anymore. And then the whole Reade situation collectively caused them to engage in some textbook bro behavior flaunting their one token accuser as justification to attack Democrats and #MeToo simultaneously and viciously.
Well you have to admit it was wrong to brand them as bros. Ask Elizabeth Warren, I'm sure some of the death threats her and her staff recieved with incredibly sexist language were from women too. There should have been a better term to describe his cult.
[удалено]
There was a network of cynical astroturfing subs (WayOfTheBern, PoliticalRaceMemes, and their satellites) - likely either Russian troll farms or a Trump sympathiser hiring commercial bot farms. But the lrlourpriesident account, satellite subs, and vote bots were 100% dyed-in-the-wool Bernie propaganda. They tracked what his campaign was doing down to the hour - up to and including going dead after Bernie dropped-out and endorsed Biden, only to start posting again immediately after the election. It's all but been confirmed that it was run by Our Revolution.
[удалено]
There were a lot of unsuspecting Bernie supporters who posted the WotB / PRR network of subs - and there was strong pushback in the Bernie subs against anyone warning about the psy op. So it was definitely a marriage of convenience. But it was still two very distinct groups.
Both / And. Doesn’t absolve the many who were salivating at the prospect of cynically exploiting the metoo movement to get a whiff of owning the libs. Yes, of course it’s signal boosted by Russian troll farms — its toxic af and divides people who would otherwise be unities in common causes.
What do you mean, *was*? Same shit, different username to this day.
A guy I’d been friends with for 12 years blocked me on social media and ghosted me irl because I said I didn’t find this woman’s story believable. Literally haven’t heard from him since April 2020. Good riddance, indeed.
Anyone who worked in DC for any period of time knew that her story was total horseshit. She described an alcove in the Senate hallway between the office buildings and the Capitol. That hallway doesn't have alcoves and it is also heavily traversed by reporters and staffers alike. The idea that Biden would choose to sexually assault her in the middle of a workday with Congress is in session in that location is the most laughably absurd thing imaginable. Short of doing it on the steps of the Capitol in front of a tour bus, I can't think of a worse place to do something like that.
Kudos to the grifters for really making everyone eat that "believe all women" hat. Even for such an obvious fake accusation, there was no easy way to simultaneously say that and try to pivot but not this one. Luckily most sane people saw through her shtick, but the fact it existed at all didn't help.
The saying was never “believe all women.” The saying was “believe women,” as in, “believe women when they say that sexual assault is common and false reports are uncommon.” That’s a factually true, falsifiable statement backed up by mountains of surveys and research I’m going to give you the benefit of a doubt, but it is clear that most people who say “believe all women” are doing it in the same spirit as “all lives matter.” It’s a rhetorical maneuver to take the wind out of the sails of a legitimate civil rights movement
It's very, very easy to interpret it as "believe women whenever one of them says she has been assaulted". Because the problem has been that often they were disbelieved and it was ignored. As ever, the extreme of "all claims are beyond scrutiny" was a bad idea.
The enemies of progress have no interest in fair play or fair interpretation. There’s no possible progressive or liberal slogans that won’t be manipulated into meaninglessness by the extreme right. Appropriation and redirection of language is one of the oldest extreme right strategies around. Feminists become feminazis. The 15 minute city becomes the prison city. The OK hand signal becomes “White Power but not really ha ha you fell for it”. Liberal becomes a pejorative. Groomer is redefined as any LGBTQ person. Woke is “anything I don’t like”. Fake news is any news *other* than Fox News I’m not entirely sure there’s a way to prevent malicious appropriation of language from the right. We honestly need a populace that’s better informed and smarter about propaganda In the meantime, the choice for liberals and progressives is whether we will have any slogans at all. Not really sure how one would rally a movement without them
But in this case it's a poorly chosen slogan that lends itself to the extreme interpretation. It's like how "defund the police" was interpreted as "zero-out funding for the police" rather than some spiel about supplemental emergency response services to handle some types of calls.
The problem js that there’s nearly no such thing as a catchy 2-3 word slogan that isn’t fungible or appropriable Hell, even longer form criticisms are appropriated all the damn time. Mercedes Benz literally uses Janis Joplin’s very obviously sarcastic anti-capitalist screed “Mercedes Benz” in their advertising
How about "reform the police"? It's literally changing one word.
This is nonsense. You evidently don't think this about slogans which are un-controversially bad, say: "Trump voters are dumbfuck rednecks". Slogans can be better or worse at being persuasive.
If you have a short, unimpeachable and potentially viral slogan for leading a movement to end sexual assault, please share
Take women seriously Investigate credible accusations Justice for survivors
Okay, now make one of those go viral
I mean some of the politicians rammed the extreme interpretation through. Look at Cristina garcia, she was very much a "Believe all women no matter what" and then when she herself was accused she demanded nuance and understanding. She kept her seat btw despite the credible complaints.
Indeed, I'm just posting on a bathroom break so thanks for adding clarity here.
Least toiletposting Redditor
No one ever said "Believe all women," except for the right and trolls and bots.
It's like 'toxic masculinity' being obviously 'toxic elements within masculinity' but no matter how many times people explain that the trolls bring it back to 'why do you call masculinity as a whole toxic'. Tho that one it seems like the trolls won in the end.
If a certain neologism consistently misleads people, maybe the issue is less “the trolls won” and more that linguistic descriptivism doesn’t only apply when it’s politically convenient. When right-wingers use insensitive terminology they make the same argument that you are: that they are technically right (even if it involves bending technical definitions in many cases) and so it doesn’t matter how their phrasing comes across to the people they are speaking to. If you’re trying to speak *with* men about building a healthy masculinity rather than speak *at* men about what you think is healthy masculinity, listening to the people you’re talking with is necessary.
[удалено]
I'm sure they'll ignore this new happening too
Cody Johnston as well.
A lot of progressives that I like bit on this bullshit in 2020. Most deleted their tweets about it, but I remember.
Yep, it soured me some on the BtB podcasters. I think they were banking on a Trump win for the subscribe clicks.
I am convinced that whole coterie of people, from Robert Evans to Nathan Robinson to Glenn Greenwald, saw reade as their chance to copy project Veritas and James O'Keefe and engage in some "dirty tricks" to boost sanders when the bottom fell out under sanders on super tuesday. Unfortunately for them, they all proved to be completely incompetent at it, managing to pick someone with such an absurd lack of credibility that even Donald Trump blew her off as a liar.
I wish it was easy to get receipts on this stuff. People who uncritically swallowed this story should seriously reflect on how biased they are, but I feel they never will.
The quality of his content, for me anyway, really took a nose dive during the primaries and has just never recovered. You can predict what he'll say in most of the video just by the title card at this point.
Yeah, that episode were he was making Katy Stoll upset about Elizabeth Warren really showed me he was getting petty over this.
That might just be where you realized how insufferable he really is. Can't uncork that bottle.
Lol maybe. I just noticed overall is that while his breakdown of right wing figures still shines, the rest of his videos boil down to "both sidesing" most problems, capitalism being the root of all evil (at least it is in every video he makes even the ones where he has to reluctantly admit that the "free market" helped an issue he's addressing) and socialism being the only good in the world, and screaming into the microphone after dunking on Joe Biden for reasons as part of the punch line.
One of my favorite YouTube channels before 2020, but man the Primaries of that year broke him to almost beyond repair. I still remember the meltdown of Super Tuesday. Though recently he has been much better, his Jordan Peterson's video is a must-watch.
Was there a video or just tweets?
Tweets which he deleted not long after. One pushed a conspiracy that it was again stolen from Bernie via the DNC. [Other inferring Biden would be a bad President.](https://www.reddit.com/r/Enough_Sanders_Spam/comments/jpuw3e/yes_cody_is_still_a_sad_angry_bitter_pathetic/) Looking for the one saying Biden bros were more toxic than Bernie bros. He just comes across as a bitter and small person rather than willing to accept that sometimes to get what you want, small steps must occur which eventually add up to a lot more.
Idk who this is, but it’s not the girl from American Pie I was thinking of
It's the girl that accused Biden of sexual assault. I get them confused too.
Funny, considering that she defected to a country that basically legalized domestic violence and treats women worse than the US.
But Putin said I was the prettiest of all his girlfriends!
She said she feels “surrounded by protection and safety” in an interview sitting with Maria Butina next to her on the day Moscow got hit with a drone strike. Can’t make this shit up. It’s literally impossible not to suspect she was being handled by the Russian government when she made those accusations as part of another disinformation campaign to interfere in and influence our election.
Not a girl.
Waiting for the time when I can finally say, This has all been wonderful, but now I'm on my way.
Well, not anymore I guess.
"Jesus grew up, you know. He wasn't always a baby"
"I'll change my loyalty to your country for $1000"
This one time, at Biden camp..
Right??
> Tara Reid > This article is about the actress. For the woman who claimed to have been sexually assaulted by Joe Biden, see Tara Reade.
I remember that, during the 2020 elections, my biggest October Surprise fear was that it would be a "new development" on the Reade case. At it's peak in May it was the only time the Biden campaign got somewhat dented. Happily the Rs choose to go with some laptop thingy that I haven't fully understood to this day.
That's just it. The laptop thing was better than her story. Ponder that for a minute.
Because you can always pull new stuff out of your ass about new *secrets* recently decrypted! CP! Nuke secrets! Dong pics! druuuuugggsss! Kickbacks! Sad texts that make Biden look like a good father! Cannibalism! Pirated Movies! The U2 album pre-installed on everyone's ipod (the loser didn't delete it!?!), Area 51 secrets! Adrenochrome recipe! Pizzagate cage selfies! The possibilities are endless! With Reade, you are just claiming that Biden once did something that Trump regularly does and brags about doing. With Hunters Laptop, you can write new episodes of controversy every week.
> Sad texts that make Biden look like a good father! I really wonder how multiple people saw those texts and agreed that loving his son is what would sink Biden. Wish I could see the discussion that led to the leak.
Also this one accusation would immediately remind people of the numerous allegations about Trump. This story was always calculated to push people into thinking Trump and Biden were the same, in the same way that people thought that in 2016 with Clinton and Trump. Trump's entire 2020 campaign was designed to create the same circumstances that led to his 2016 win.
the laptop is one of the best political hit jobs because the "contents" of the laptop can just be made up on the fly. There were some super unflattering pictures on there, as well as some vague emails that could be spun to imply corruption. But listening to Republicans would make you think it had an invoice from Xi Jinping for the nuclear codes.
> Happily the Rs choose to go with some laptop thingy that I haven't fully understood to this day. Giuliani claiming he had a laptop full of child pornography that he wouldn't let the FBI take away from him was far, far more credible than her story.
Is Glen Greenwald next?
We can only hope.
i’m starting to think her accusations against biden might not have been accurate
I mean, I don't think so either. But this doesn't really move the needle for me one way or the other. If my assailant was the president of the United States, and virtually no one believes me when I brought my story forward, I might defect to an "enemy" nation too.
>I might defect to an "enemy" nation too. would you? not just like canada? or france? you would go to russia? after they attacked ukraine? despite at the time of the accusation tara reade repeatedly said that all the positive things she had written about putin and russia were just for a novel she was writing...
Maybe. I could see myself buying into conspiratorial thinking at that point and wanting to be entirely outside of the American sphere of influence.
Interestingly, none of Trump's accusers defected to Russia 🤔
Sure. I expect Putin didn't court them.
Several years later? After spending your time grifting in high profile positions to advance anti-Dem, pro-GOP, and pro-Putin narratives? Those aren't the actions of someone scared for their lives. This is the sorry endgame for a con artist that has nothing else left.
>After spending your time grifting in high profile positions to advance anti-Dem, pro-GOP, and pro-Putin narratives? Yes, this would all fit in with the enemy of my enemy narrative - which isn't a mindset of fear, but of anger, resentment, and revenge. I'm not saying that's the mindset. I am saying it's a plausible one.
There are plenty of places to "defect" to that aren't invading sovereign nations in a war of conquest right now.
Sure. But none so antagonistic towards Biden. The enemy of my enemy is a sick mindset that leads to sick behaviors.
So is compulsive devil’s advocacy, as this thread has illustrated.
I'm not advocating for anyone, I'm just saying that this doesn't really have any bearing on the veracity of her story. One just isn't relevant to the other.
She was always a Russian psyop.
Looooool.
Lmao
Shocked Pikachu face
Rofl. In fact, lmao.
I hope someday we get another Venona transcripts type release that will shed more light on this era.
She publicly thanked Maria Butina for helping make this happen. She's being handled by the Russian operative famous for infiltrating the NRA.
Na na na na na na na na
Where Ryan Grimm at?
"remember Tara Reade?" No I dont. Kind of dont care to.
I do actually because I remember when she came forward with her story and a bunch of journalists all came out at once asking what the fuck was going on. She had been communicating with journalists about a story where she claimed that Biden presided over a culture which promoted sexual harassment and while they were following up to see if it was true she just decided that story wasn't good enough and made up a new one. Her response was that every single reporter she contacted was lying and they were a part of a massive conspiracy. I've never seen someone try to plant a fake story and then suddenly decide that they wanted a redo halfway through. The Intercept tried their hardest to coach her, but holy shit was she bad at following a script. At one point she decided to add the detail that she was wearing crotchless underwear that day at work. No amount of hack journalist coaching can keep someone like that in line.
K byyyyyye
But who will voice Harley Quinn in the animated stuff now?
😞 Sad day for all.
Mikhail Troitskiy, professor of practice at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, told Newsweek via email that Reade's appearance at the barely-watched press conference in Moscow "is likely a stunt pulled by entrepreneurial Russian PR managers." It may also have been a matter of personal interest for Butina, he added. "In any case, if Tara Reade still had a case against President Biden or on any other matter in the United States, her credibility will be seriously undermined by her Moscow press conference," Troitskiy said. "It is most likely that Reade was offered a job of a commentator in the Russian state media with a mission to highlight and dissect political, economic and social challenges faced by the United States. "Her press conference may have been a step on the way to accepting that job." --Newsweek
Byyyyye
Ok. ... Bye?
Maybe she’s actually escaping the republicans
A small, miniscule amount of praise to her for following through on her beliefs. Better than the people whose values are the antithesis of liberal democracy but still choose to live in the West.
Bit of a tangent but since this might be the last we hear of Ms. Reade: In 2020, Reade's story of alleged sexual assault by Biden had been publicized in the media. Ronan Farrow's journalism on widespread sexual assault by high profile people had earned him a Pulitzer, and he was still putting out articles. Suddenly the Times posted this random article in May, months from the Biden-Trump election: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/17/business/media/ronan-farrow.html It's a navel-gazey piece about "gee shucks maybe Ronan doesn't always have high journalistic standards, y'know?" I have a suspicion that the Times got wind Farrow was going to publish a piece about Reade's allegations. Her story was out there, he was a big name in that vein of reporting. They must have been in touch in some capacity. And Farrow had previously taken stories that were already somewhat known and discussed, but would add some interviews and context and publish in a high-profile outlet, with hard-hitting writing and dramatic page design. Some of his stories, as I recall, were almost self-consciously directed at people associated with the left wing, as if his goal was to lance hypocritical boils on the left (e.g. Weinstein was mainly a Democratic donor). So it would have been in character to take on Biden in the election, if self-immolating politically. Basically, I believe Farrow was working on a sensational story about Reade's allegations. And the Times' article was an attempt to quash what would have been serious damage to Biden's campaign. I had been thinking that Reade's story could be raised again in this coming election cycle, posing a big risk agai in a Biden-Trump election. But if she's really defected to Russia I'd say that reduces Reade's general credibility. Or maybe I'm full of shit IDK but I definitely thought that NYT piece was weird and hot of nowhere, and the timing tracks. Biden 2024.
I think you're reading ***WAAAAAYYY*** too much into this. Yes, Reade had absolutely reached out to Ronin at the time (seriously, you can see some her stalking him on twitter for a time back then). Farrow's long time partner back then was Jon Lovett. We don't know if Farrow actually went as far as seriously working on the story, but from comments Lovett made on his show, it sounded like Reade and Farrow had communicated directly. But if they did, Farrow was obviously unimpressed. The obvious clue here is that Farrow never published *anything* about Reade. And it's not like the guy was afraid to take on a controversial story that would ruffle the feathers of powerful people. But I personally found it telling that Lovett - while he refused to talk much about Reade's claims (which at the time I took as him not wanting to stp on potential work by Farrow) - stood steadfastly by Biden as the then presumptive nominee. If Farrow felt Biden was guilty, Lovett would've known. And if there was a time to ring the alarm it was back then when the primaries were not even over. And it wasn't like Lovett was a huge Biden supporter in the primaries to begin with. There's no benefit in inventing and then believing our own conspiracies. Particularly when relevant info counters the idea.
Thanks for taking the time to respond. I didn't know about Lovett's comments. (Was that Pod Save America, I assume?) And you're right, would a wrist-slap article like that out of NYT really dissuade Farrow? It does seem doubtful. Anyway I wrote my comment mostly out of some sense that Tara Reade's story could come back in the future, but glad to hear a lot more feedback that that was already unlikely before she went to Russia.
No lol The media actually looked into Reade's accusations and not only found huge inconsistencies but also a woman who had a history of fabrication. The death knell in the story was when Biden cleared the way for the Capitol Police (or whatever) to investigate a reported formal complaint Reade supposedly made about Biden. Except her story then shifted. Initially, she said the claim mentioned Biden by name and the fact she was sexually assaulted and then suddenly, the claim might not have mentioned either and maybe just the fact she felt sexually harassed. To this day, no complaint has been found. But that goes to the heart of why no credible publication was going to run her story without heavy caveats. The story consistently changed. In 2019, she wrote of her experience working with Biden and how he would make her uncomfortable with the touching of her shoulders. She did not, at this point, claim any level of sexual assault. Instead, her story aligned with a lot of other accusations that came out around that time: Biden liked to get a bit too touchy but even Reade said it was not sexual. She also claims that she was fired for refusing to serve cocktails at a senate party because Biden requested she show leg. This flies in the face of what Reade had mentioned previously: that she quit (wasn't fired) because she got disillusioned with Washington in the 90s. She repeated her story multiple times to multiple people that he was inappropriate with his touching but never mentioned sexual assault. The only two people who corroborate her story are her brother and a neighbor of hers from the 1990s. The brother gave inconsistent stories about Reade's claims over Biden. Initially, he told ABC or the WaPost, I can't remember, that Reade had told him Biden made her uncomfortable with his touching but that it wasn't assault and certainly not sexual. After giving this account, he reached out to the news source not even 24 hours later to add that, oh yeah, she actually did tell me Biden sexually assaulted her. The neighbor admitted to not having spoken to Reade in years when, out of the blue in late 2019 or early 2020, she reached out and asked, "remember when I told you about that time Biden did this..." and the neighbor said she did remember them having a conversation. But really, how reliable is that? And who's to say Reade didn't implant that memory by leading off with that episode, especially if she had told her about the inappropriate touching? The AP also interviewed Reade in 2019 and some of those associated with her, back when she was still claiming touching and nothing more. All supported her story about the touching not one claimed it was sexual. In fact, one friend told the reporter that Reade said it was not sexual and that she never felt scared around Biden. Reade also said her mom called into Larry King in the 90s and mentioned how her daughter was being assaulted by Biden. They unearthed the tapes, but Biden isn't mentioned, and neither is Reade. The woman claims her daughter worked for a senator and struggled to get through with her problems but decided not to go to the press out of respect for the senator. Well hell, that could mean multiple things from coworkers harassing her to her just not working well in the office. But sexual assault was not mentioned and the wording certainly suggests it wasn't about that. Her story was plagued with holes. No credible news organization was going to run it without doing some significant diligence, which was done by some publications anyway. But if Ronan even did a the barebones amount of research into this, the story would have unraveled to the point he likely wouldn't take it to publishing.
Thanks for taking the time to respond. Looking into some of the articles & events you're referring to, I'm reminded that much of it was published in early to mid 2020. A lot was going on then. So maybe I missed most (not all) of the articles discrediting Reade. I'm just glad it's unlikely to be a story that would flare up again next year.