Home » Latest » Politics » Biden’s accuser says he should drop out of White House race

Biden’s accuser says he should drop out of White House race

4

InfoSearched 73 0 Politics, Twitter

8.7

SaveSavedRemoved 11

A former Senate aide goes on camera and tells Joe Biden to get out of the race.

Tara Reade, who worked as a staff assistant in Joe Biden’s Senate office in the early 1990s, sat down with journalist Megyn Kelly this month and said the presumptive Democratic nominee should withdraw from the 2020 presidential race. Reade alleges that in 1993, inside a Capitol Hill hallway, Biden pushed her against a wall, reached under her skirt, and assaulted her. Biden has flatly denied it, and his campaign is showing no sign of stepping back.

• Reade told Megyn Kelly that Biden “should not be running on character for the president of the United States” and called for him to withdraw.
• She said she’s willing to testify under oath, take a polygraph if Biden takes one too, and submit to cross-examination.
• Biden said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on May 1 that the assault “never, never happened,” and asked the National Archives to search for any complaint Reade might have filed at the time.

Evolution of the Allegation

Reade’s account didn’t arrive fully formed. She first came forward in 2019 describing inappropriate touching by Biden, a claim that fit alongside several other women’s complaints about the then-candidate’s habit of touching and getting close to women in ways they found uncomfortable. Then in March 2020, she went further, telling reporters the encounter included digital penetration — an allegation of sexual assault, not just an unwanted hug or kiss on the head.

That escalation is what turned a campaign-trail annoyance into a story with staying power. By early May, Reade was doing sit-down interviews making the explicit case that Biden’s conduct disqualifies him from the office he’s seeking, tying her personal account directly to the broader argument Biden has made about his own policy platform and his standing to lead on issues of accountability.

“He should not be running on character for the president of the United States.”

Biden’s Denial

Biden addressed the allegation head-on during his May 1 appearance on “Morning Joe,” telling co-host Mika Brzezinski that the assault “never, never happened” and that he has no memory of any such encounter with Reade. He went further than a simple denial, asking the National Archives to search its records for any formal complaint Reade might have lodged through Senate channels at the time — a move meant to signal he isn’t hiding a paper trail.

It was Biden’s most direct, on-camera response since the allegation resurfaced, and it came after weeks of the campaign largely deflecting the story through written statements rather than putting the candidate himself in front of a camera to answer it.

Democratic Leadership Stands Firm

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other senior Democrats rejected calls for Biden to suspend his campaign, backing him publicly even as Reade’s media appearances multiplied. That closing of ranks matters politically: with the primary effectively over and Biden the party’s presumptive nominee heading toward the general election against President Trump, Democratic leadership has shown little appetite for reopening the nominating process over the allegation.

The party’s calculation stands in some contrast to how it handled other harassment allegations in recent years, a comparison critics on the right have been quick to draw as they press the “believe women” standard Democrats applied to figures like Brett Kavanaugh.

Evidence Provided by Reade

Reade’s pitch to Kelly wasn’t just an accusation — it was a proposal for how to test it. She said she’d testify under oath, sit for cross-examination, and take a polygraph test if Biden agreed to take one himself. It’s an offer designed to put pressure back on the campaign: if Biden’s denial is as solid as he says, her logic goes, there should be no reason to avoid a side-by-side test of credibility.

Biden’s campaign hasn’t taken her up on the polygraph challenge, and with the general election campaign already underway, there’s no sign the two sides are heading toward that kind of showdown. What happens next likely runs through the National Archives search Biden himself requested — if records turn up nothing, expect his team to point to that as the closing argument; if Reade produces contemporaneous corroboration first, this story isn’t going anywhere before November.