House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) defended former Vice President Joe Biden Thursday during her weekly press conference, snapping at a reporter who challenged her reluctance to believe his sexual assault accuser Tara Reade.
A woman at the press conference asked Pelosi about how differently she was treating Biden compared to then-Supreme Court Justice nominee Brett Kavanaugh when he faced uncorroborated allegations of sexual assault in 2018.
“I don’t need a lecture or a speech,” Pelosi responded defiantly. “I have complete respect for the whole MeToo movement.”
“There is a lot of excitement around the idea that women will be heard and listened to,” she added. “There is also due process and the fact that Joe Biden is Joe Biden.”
Pelosi also went on to defend Biden by discussing former employees who worked under Biden’s leadership who have defended the former vice president amid the sexual assault allegations that have been placed against him:
There has been statements from his campaign, not his campaign, but his former employees who ran his offices and the rest, that there was never any record of this. There was never any record. Nobody ever came forward or nobody came forward to say something about it apart from the principal involved.
Pelosi then made it abundantly clear that she will remain in Biden’s corner, saying the “happiest day” for her this week was when she endorsed Biden for president.
“I am so proud, the happiest day for me this week was to support Joe Biden for president of the United States,” Pelosi said. “He’s a person of great integrity, of great concern for the American people, he authored the Violence Against Women Act.”
“I believe that he will be a great president of the United States,” Pelosi continued as she offered endless praise for Biden. “He is the personification of hope and optimism, and authenticity for our country, a person of great values.”
Author Tara Reade has alleged that Biden assaulted her while the two were in the basement of a Capitol Hill building in 1993.
“He was whispering to me and trying to kiss me at the same time, and he was saying, ‘Do you want to go somewhere else?’” Reade recalled in an interview with the Associated Press. “I remember wanting to say stop, but I don’t know if I said it out loud or if I just thought it. I was kind of frozen up.”
Upon moving away from Biden during the encounter, Reade alleges that Biden said, “Come on, man, I heard you liked me.”
Biden has yet to address the controversy on his own, and his campaign has denied the allegation.
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