Friday on Fox News Channel, “Fox News Sunday” anchor Chris Wallace said presumptive Democratic nominee former Vice President Joe Biden gave a skillful answer to the sexual assault allegations made by former U.S. Senate staffer Tara Reade.
Thursday on MSNBC, Biden said voters who believe Reade’s allegation, “should vote their heart. If they believe Tara Reade, they probably shouldn’t vote for me. I wouldn’t vote for me if I believe Tara Reade.”
Wallace said, “Well, I think it’s a pretty skillful answer, Sandra, in the sense that on the one hand, he wants to absolutely flatly deny the truth of the allegation, the very damaging allegation, shocking allegation that Tara Reade is making against him that he sexually assaulted her in the halls of Congress. But on the other hand, while he wants to deny her allegation, he doesn’t want in any way to dismiss the allegations of women in general. So you heard him there as he was beginning to say it didn’t happen and then said I don’t want to question her motives and then say if you believe her, vote against me. It’s one of those things of, I flatly deny the accusation, but I’m not in any way going to go after the accuser.”
Host Sandra Smith asked, “Does this issue go away for him, or does this linger on a through 20 election day?”
Wallace replied, “I think as it now stands, it goes away in the sense that he has told her story, it’s a shocking story, a disturbing story, but she doesn’t have any real evidence of it. So it’s a classic he said, she said. Now, if she is able to find something that provides more backing to her case or if somebody else were to come out and tell a similar story, it’s worth pointing out nobody else has come out and told a similar story. Yes, there were stories in 2019 about him touching women’s shoulders and getting too close to them, and they were feeling uncomfortable but nothing anywhere close to the level of sexual assault. If there were another case or two of that, it would add a lot of weight to it, but I don’t think in this story by itself continues on for another almost six months. They are either has to be more substantiation of this one or another case of a separate woman telling a similar story.”
He added, “Let’s also be clear, President Trump does not come in with clean hands on this either. There’ve obviously been a number of women who have accused him of sexual assault. So I don’t know that people that are upset by even the allegation of sexual assault will say that’s it, I’m not going for Biden, I’ll go for President Trump instead, who has also denied similar allegations.”
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