Beatrice and I needed some items from the grocery store again today; we have small cupboards, no pantry, and just the top portion of a refrigerator-freezer with built-in ice maker for frozen items. So off I went to the store this morning. I was able to get all but two items on the list, and I had my little granny-shopping cart filled to the brim, with a bag balanced on top, and another 12-pound bag to carry in my hand. Contemplating the 1 1/2 mile walk back to the apartment, I opted to call a local taxi. I made a 'reservation' for immediate pick-up. After waiting for 25 minutes, I received a call back from the company, saying they were still trying to locate a driver, and did I wish to continue waiting for one, while they continued to search? I said "no." As I put the phone away, the local RTD bus that goes by my apartment, drove past the bus stop. Knowing I would have to wait 30 to 45 minutes for the next bus, I decided to walk back home.
I had two choices for my path back: along a very hilly, but 12-foot-wide "multi-use" pathway, or a level sidewalk that varies in width between 8 feet and 3.5 feet wide. I stepped back in the store and used the free weight scale, and found that the cart with all the groceries, minus the 12 pound bag, weighed 90 pounds. I decided to walk on the level route, along US 36, also known as 28th Street. So here I am, 5 feet 1 inch, and very round, with white hair pulled back in a pony-tail, wearing orthopedic white sneakers, baggy blue jeans, and a pale blue T-shirt with a trotting horse outlined in black on it. I'm wearing my thick glasses, and a fuschia Laurel Burch face mask with brightly colored butterflies on it. I really don't think I look mean or nasty, dragging a 90-pound white aluminum cart behind me in my right hand, and a plastic grocery bag stuffed full in my left.
I started walking across the parking lot to reach the sidewalk along 28th Street. I noticed, off to my left, two young women crossing 28th Street at the bus stop. As the cart has a low clearance, I was looking at the ground/surface of where I was headed, and was not doing a huge surveillance of my surroundings - I was in an almost empty part of the parking lot... I became aware that the two young women were approaching me rather quickly and the one in the lead was yelling. I stopped as she stepped within five feet of me. A pretty young lady - curly dark brown hair past her elbows, sparkling brown eyes, nice make-up, wearing printed leggings, a clinging midriff top, a pair of $400 sneakers, and carrying a bright blue skateboard with silver glitter embedded in the polymer coating at an angle over her shoulder, like a cadet carrying a rifle. The wheels of the skateboard looked as if they had never touched the ground before. The second girl looked like a sibling who was 5 or 6 years younger than the first.
The elder was delivering a diatribe of abuse, directed at me. "... You are a fat, stupid old bitchy cow! You lookin' at me cross-eyed? I'll slap you silly! You're going to get your come-uppance, you old cunt!..." and so on and so forth. As soon as I realized what she was saying, I put my right hand in my back pocket, and touched my phone. The two just saw the motion... After a few minutes, during which time, she inched closer and closer while still spewing verbal acid, she finally took a deep breath and said, "You hear what I'm sayin', you bitch? - Are you deaf as well as ugly? What you got to say for yourself? - Hunh?"
I looked at her and the other girl, and I lied through my teeth. I said, "Well. First, I am a retired lawyer. When I put my hand in my back packet, I turned the voice recorder on my phone on. I clearly have you recorded making a verbal assault upon me. If you step closer, I will pull the phone out, and make a video recording of you. If you touch me, in any way, shape, or form, I will immediately call 911. The video will be proof of battery, if you touch me without my consent, and I already have proof of the verbal assault, as the recorder is still doing so. With this proof, the police will arrest you immediately upon my showing it to them. And we will make sure you spend many years in jail without any chance of parole. What do you want to do now?"
The older one yelled, "Fuck!", grabbed the younger girl and marched away - although she was still yelling abuse. I did not see them again - so far today, anyway.
My lie? Of course, I am NOT a retired lawyer. The other lies are that I own a $6.99 cell phone. I can make and receive telephone calls and text messages on it. That is all the little cell phone will do. I did not - could not - record her yelling at me, and I could not take pictures or make a video recording with it. But she had no idea. - I could have called 911 for police assistance; but the rest was nonsense.
Sometimes you need to lie for your own good. I am certain that if I had acted afraid, there would have been trouble from those two....
I do not regret lying to them in the least.
Tuesday, May 5, 2020
Monday, May 4, 2020
Crazy Lines From Trump's Lincoln Memorial "Town Hall" With Fox News - 45 of 'Em!
Source: CNN: The Po!nt by Chris Cillizza, CNN Editor-at-large; Updated at 11:24 am EDT, Monday, 4 May 2020
"The 45 Most Shocking Lines From Donald Trump's Lincoln Memorial Fox Town Hall
With the statue of Abraham Lincoln towering over him, President Donald Trump took questions from two Fox News personalities - and average Americans - about the novel coronavirus, the possibility of a vaccine, and his broader time in office.
**** Note from BND - This was a "virtual" town hall meeting, supposedly, "hosted" by moderators from Fox News, Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum. All questions were chosen by the Fox News team. ****
If you think the historic background constrained Trump, well, you don't know him that well. Below are the most, er, noteworthy lines from his interview.
1. "We never had a more beautiful set than this, did we?"
- Always, always, always a reality TV producer first. - And away we go!
2. "But no, I think you really can have it both ways."
- This is Trump's answer to how to balance the economic need to get people back to work, with the health concerns that COVID-19 is still active and infecting people. And, even my 7-year-old knows you can't "have it both ways." If we send people back to work, more people are almost certain to get sick. If we keep people at home, the economy could sputter into recession or even depression. That's why this is such a hard choice for our elected officials. But Trump would have you believe that he can do both. Which he cannot.
3. "They just want to go back. You see it every day. You see demonstrations all over the country and those are meaningful demonstrations. It's big stuff."
- This would be a good place to condemn some of the anti-Semitism and other intolerance that has been on display at these get-back-to-work rallies around the country. But, no. Instead Trump went with "it's big stuff."
4. "It came from China. It should have been stopped. It could have been stopped on the spot."
- It's not clear how COVID-19 - a highly transmissible disease - could have been "stopped on the spot." That isn't to say China's lack of transparency about the virus and its effects didn't matter - it did. But Trump's repetition of the idea that the disease could have simply been stopped doesn't gibe with what we know about infectious diseases.
5. "They chose not to do it or something happened. Either there was incompetence or they didn't do it for some reason."
- To be clear: There is no available intelligence that China purposely released the novel coronavirus. And yet, Trump feints at that idea during an interview on national television.
6. "We're going to do more and everybody wants to do more. It's really - it's actually on that aspect of it, it's very bipartisan."
- The next stimulus package, aimed at state and local governments, is not, in fact, "bipartisan." House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has asked for $1 trillion in the legislation. John Cornyn, the second ranking Republican in the Senate, called that ask "pretty outrageous."
7. "You'll get a job where you make more money, frankly, and I think that's going to happen."
- This is Trump's response to a single mother who lost her job due to the economic slowdown caused by COVID-19. Maybe she will get another job! Maybe it will be a better-paying one! But Trump has zero way of knowing that. He is just telling her what she wants to hear, with no policy to back up his claim.
8. "I have a good feel for this stuff. I've done it for a long time."
- (Trump nods his head slowly)
9. "We built the greatest economy in the world, the greatest economy, frankly, Bret, and you can correct me if you'd like, but you can't because it's fact - the greatest economy that the world has ever seen."
- It is NOT a fact.
10. "Look, we're going to lose anywhere from 75,000, 80,000 to 100,000 people."
- A Donald Trump quote from 20 April 2020: "Now we're going toward 50 - I'm hearing, or 60,000 people. One is too many. I always say that. One is too many, but we're going toward 50 or 60,000 people. That's a t the lower - as you know the lower (end of the projections) was supposed to be 100,000 people."
11. "I see - I was lucky, I never had the flu. Then they came here, they want to give a flu shot. ANd I said, I don't want a flu shot, but they have to give it."
- The President of the United States on getting a flu shot. Totally normal stuff!
12. "Now, I know a lot of people that had the flu. They were never in a coma. This is a very advanced - this is a very horrible thing we're fighting."
- A Donald Trump quote from 26 February 2020: "This is a flu. This is like a flu."
13. "It - it infects - if you have any problem, heart, diabetes, even a little weak heart, a little diabetes, then, look, this thing is vicious, and it - it can take you out. And it can take you out very strongly."
- Dr. Trump, I presume? What is, um, a "little diabetes?" Your guess is as good as mine, but it you have it, COVID-19 will "take you out very strongly?"
14. "New York is a very much different place than Montana or many other states, really, where it's not, you know, really too, too bad. It's always bad. They lose anybody, it's bad."
- Wait. So, it's not "really too, too bad" in Montana? But it is also "always bad?" [head explodes]
15. "You can keep it - you know, you keep the spread, you keep - you stay away from a certain amount."
- Dr. Trump's office hours are right damn now!
16. "That's one of the - if you call losing 80,000 or 90,000 people successful, but it's one of the reasons that we're not at that high end of the plane, as opposed to the low end of the plane."
- He is saying losing 80,00 to 90,000 people is "successful."
17. "I used to say 65,000. And now I'm saying 80,000 or 90,000."
- This is , um, true?
18. "We're building - we're the king of - I say it. We're the king of ventilators."
- Factcheck.org, 1 May 2020 - "Trump Wrong About Ventilators"
19. "She ought to get back to running her state properly."
- The President of the United States to the governor of Michigan. Normal! Nothing to see here!
20. "And we had one governor, Inslee, who is always wanting something. ANd, frankly, he didn't do a very good job on nursing homes, as far as I'm concerned, the state of Washington."
- "Washington Gov. Jay Inslee is what real COVID-19 leadership looks like"
21. "We are very confident that we're going to have a vaccine at the end of the year, by the end of the year, have a vaccine."
- "The timetable for a COVID-19 vaccine is 18 months. Experts say that's risky"
22. "Should have started in the previous administration. They did nothing."
- COVID-19 is a new virus to humans. It didn't exist prior to November 2019. So it would have been literally impossible for the Obama administration to have done something about a vaccine for a virus that didn't exist.
23. "I mean, I could say I have had now essentially board meetings and meetings with governors and other people with, you know using - they call it tele, right, tele."
- A "tele." Right. Got it. Sure.
24. "And I don't want the credit. I don't care about it."
- A Donald Trump quote of 27 March 2020: "I want them to be appreciative."
25. "Biden has now written a letter of apology, because I did the right thing."
- Trumps says here that Joe Biden has sent him an apology for calling his decision to close down travel from China "xenophobic." There is no evidence this letter exists or that Biden has apologized to him.
26. "One January 23, I was told that there could be a virus coming in, but it was of no real import. In other words, it wasn't, 'Oh, we have got to do something, we have got to do something.' It was a brief conversation. And it was on January 23."
- From a CNN report on 3 May 2020: "CNN and other news outlets have reported that the President's daily intelligence briefing included information about the novel coronavirus outbreak in China and its potential spread to the United States as early as January 3."
27. "I don't think it's ever been done, what we're doing tonight, here, and I think it's great for the American people to see, this is a great work of art, aside from the fact that that was a great man, this is a great work of art."
- Everything Trump does is historic. Also, the best.
28. "We - we're winning bigger than we've ever won before, Bret."
- How would one quantify winning "bigger than we've ever won before?" - And what?
29. "With all of that unity we have, in one sense, we have great unity, in another sense, I think they're going to come along, I mean, you know, I certainly hope so, but the main thing I have to do is bring our country back, and I want to get it back to where it was or maybe beyond where it was, you know, we have tremendous stimulus, all the money we've been talking about so far tonight."
- This single sentence is 78 words long. That is all.
30. "I want to sit next to people."
- On this the President and I part ways. **** Note from BND - Nobody wants to sit next to 45. ****
31. "Maybe it's going to be a vaccine, or maybe it's going to be that this virus will pass, it will go. Will it come back? It might. It could. Some people say yes. But it will pass."
- Quote from Laurie Garrett: " I've been telling everybody that my event horizon is about 36 months, and that's my best-case scenario."
32. "Look, the biggest thing we can do to solve every problem is get rid of the plague. I call it the plague."
- "I call it the plague." -The President of the United States
33. "So, in 1917, we had a horrible - in that case it was the flu, right, you remember, the Spanish Flu, so much has been written about it."
- What Trump doesn't know about the Spanish Flue is, well, a lot. - Including the fact that his grandfather died from it.
34. "They always said Lincoln - nobody got treated worse than Lincoln. I believe I am treated worse."
- Lincoln was assassinated, for one thing.
35. "They come at me with questions that are disgraceful, to be honest - disgraceful - their manner of presentation and their words."
- To be clear: Trump uses the term "disgraceful" to describe questions he doesn't like from the media. They are not, in fact, disgraceful in any way, shape, or form.
36. "We've done - we had the biggest tax cut, biggest tax cut in history - all of the things we have done, and yet we have a very hostile press."
- Nope!
37. "When you look - even if you look - Space Force - Space Force."
- Mars Awaits!
38. "We also make all the ventilators."
- See the New York Times, 29 March 2020: "The US Tried to Build a New Fleet of Ventilators. The Mission Failed."
39. "And he actually apologized with a letter on a Friday night saying, 'He made the right move.' It wasn't well-played by the press, but he said I made the right move."
- Again, there is no evidence of a letter of apology from Joe Biden to Trump.
40. "And you're going to have it by the end of the year. I firmly believe it. I may be wrong."
- So, we will definitely have a vaccine by the end of the year! Or maybe we won't! Got it!
41. "I assume the show is a big show, right? It's going to do very well tonight."
- R-a-t-i-n-g-s
42. "Our country, our roads are - excuse me - they're going to hell."
- You're excused.
43. "We're all playing a very complicated game of chess or poker. Name whatever you want to name. But it's not checkers. That I can tell you. We have a very complicated game going."
- [Trump nods his head extremely slowly]
44. "Or they'll go in a field, some field, and there will be - they'll have a good minister, pastor, or it could be a rabbi; it could be - a person of faith. And what happens is, in some places, not in all places - I would say, in most places, they really sympathize."
- Donald Trump on religious services amid the pandemic. This is a real quote.
45. "I mean, everybody wants the rallies."
- "Everybody."
This feels like a good place to end. "
**** Note from BND - Reading this once again proves to me how low our standard for a President of the United States has fallen.... ****
"The 45 Most Shocking Lines From Donald Trump's Lincoln Memorial Fox Town Hall
With the statue of Abraham Lincoln towering over him, President Donald Trump took questions from two Fox News personalities - and average Americans - about the novel coronavirus, the possibility of a vaccine, and his broader time in office.
**** Note from BND - This was a "virtual" town hall meeting, supposedly, "hosted" by moderators from Fox News, Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum. All questions were chosen by the Fox News team. ****
If you think the historic background constrained Trump, well, you don't know him that well. Below are the most, er, noteworthy lines from his interview.
1. "We never had a more beautiful set than this, did we?"
- Always, always, always a reality TV producer first. - And away we go!
2. "But no, I think you really can have it both ways."
- This is Trump's answer to how to balance the economic need to get people back to work, with the health concerns that COVID-19 is still active and infecting people. And, even my 7-year-old knows you can't "have it both ways." If we send people back to work, more people are almost certain to get sick. If we keep people at home, the economy could sputter into recession or even depression. That's why this is such a hard choice for our elected officials. But Trump would have you believe that he can do both. Which he cannot.
3. "They just want to go back. You see it every day. You see demonstrations all over the country and those are meaningful demonstrations. It's big stuff."
- This would be a good place to condemn some of the anti-Semitism and other intolerance that has been on display at these get-back-to-work rallies around the country. But, no. Instead Trump went with "it's big stuff."
4. "It came from China. It should have been stopped. It could have been stopped on the spot."
- It's not clear how COVID-19 - a highly transmissible disease - could have been "stopped on the spot." That isn't to say China's lack of transparency about the virus and its effects didn't matter - it did. But Trump's repetition of the idea that the disease could have simply been stopped doesn't gibe with what we know about infectious diseases.
5. "They chose not to do it or something happened. Either there was incompetence or they didn't do it for some reason."
- To be clear: There is no available intelligence that China purposely released the novel coronavirus. And yet, Trump feints at that idea during an interview on national television.
6. "We're going to do more and everybody wants to do more. It's really - it's actually on that aspect of it, it's very bipartisan."
- The next stimulus package, aimed at state and local governments, is not, in fact, "bipartisan." House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has asked for $1 trillion in the legislation. John Cornyn, the second ranking Republican in the Senate, called that ask "pretty outrageous."
7. "You'll get a job where you make more money, frankly, and I think that's going to happen."
- This is Trump's response to a single mother who lost her job due to the economic slowdown caused by COVID-19. Maybe she will get another job! Maybe it will be a better-paying one! But Trump has zero way of knowing that. He is just telling her what she wants to hear, with no policy to back up his claim.
8. "I have a good feel for this stuff. I've done it for a long time."
- (Trump nods his head slowly)
9. "We built the greatest economy in the world, the greatest economy, frankly, Bret, and you can correct me if you'd like, but you can't because it's fact - the greatest economy that the world has ever seen."
- It is NOT a fact.
10. "Look, we're going to lose anywhere from 75,000, 80,000 to 100,000 people."
- A Donald Trump quote from 20 April 2020: "Now we're going toward 50 - I'm hearing, or 60,000 people. One is too many. I always say that. One is too many, but we're going toward 50 or 60,000 people. That's a t the lower - as you know the lower (end of the projections) was supposed to be 100,000 people."
11. "I see - I was lucky, I never had the flu. Then they came here, they want to give a flu shot. ANd I said, I don't want a flu shot, but they have to give it."
- The President of the United States on getting a flu shot. Totally normal stuff!
12. "Now, I know a lot of people that had the flu. They were never in a coma. This is a very advanced - this is a very horrible thing we're fighting."
- A Donald Trump quote from 26 February 2020: "This is a flu. This is like a flu."
13. "It - it infects - if you have any problem, heart, diabetes, even a little weak heart, a little diabetes, then, look, this thing is vicious, and it - it can take you out. And it can take you out very strongly."
- Dr. Trump, I presume? What is, um, a "little diabetes?" Your guess is as good as mine, but it you have it, COVID-19 will "take you out very strongly?"
14. "New York is a very much different place than Montana or many other states, really, where it's not, you know, really too, too bad. It's always bad. They lose anybody, it's bad."
- Wait. So, it's not "really too, too bad" in Montana? But it is also "always bad?" [head explodes]
15. "You can keep it - you know, you keep the spread, you keep - you stay away from a certain amount."
- Dr. Trump's office hours are right damn now!
16. "That's one of the - if you call losing 80,000 or 90,000 people successful, but it's one of the reasons that we're not at that high end of the plane, as opposed to the low end of the plane."
- He is saying losing 80,00 to 90,000 people is "successful."
17. "I used to say 65,000. And now I'm saying 80,000 or 90,000."
- This is , um, true?
18. "We're building - we're the king of - I say it. We're the king of ventilators."
- Factcheck.org, 1 May 2020 - "Trump Wrong About Ventilators"
Trump, Baier and MacCallum at the Lincoln Memorial
19. "She ought to get back to running her state properly."
- The President of the United States to the governor of Michigan. Normal! Nothing to see here!
20. "And we had one governor, Inslee, who is always wanting something. ANd, frankly, he didn't do a very good job on nursing homes, as far as I'm concerned, the state of Washington."
- "Washington Gov. Jay Inslee is what real COVID-19 leadership looks like"
21. "We are very confident that we're going to have a vaccine at the end of the year, by the end of the year, have a vaccine."
- "The timetable for a COVID-19 vaccine is 18 months. Experts say that's risky"
22. "Should have started in the previous administration. They did nothing."
- COVID-19 is a new virus to humans. It didn't exist prior to November 2019. So it would have been literally impossible for the Obama administration to have done something about a vaccine for a virus that didn't exist.
23. "I mean, I could say I have had now essentially board meetings and meetings with governors and other people with, you know using - they call it tele, right, tele."
- A "tele." Right. Got it. Sure.
24. "And I don't want the credit. I don't care about it."
- A Donald Trump quote of 27 March 2020: "I want them to be appreciative."
25. "Biden has now written a letter of apology, because I did the right thing."
- Trumps says here that Joe Biden has sent him an apology for calling his decision to close down travel from China "xenophobic." There is no evidence this letter exists or that Biden has apologized to him.
26. "One January 23, I was told that there could be a virus coming in, but it was of no real import. In other words, it wasn't, 'Oh, we have got to do something, we have got to do something.' It was a brief conversation. And it was on January 23."
- From a CNN report on 3 May 2020: "CNN and other news outlets have reported that the President's daily intelligence briefing included information about the novel coronavirus outbreak in China and its potential spread to the United States as early as January 3."
27. "I don't think it's ever been done, what we're doing tonight, here, and I think it's great for the American people to see, this is a great work of art, aside from the fact that that was a great man, this is a great work of art."
- Everything Trump does is historic. Also, the best.
28. "We - we're winning bigger than we've ever won before, Bret."
- How would one quantify winning "bigger than we've ever won before?" - And what?
29. "With all of that unity we have, in one sense, we have great unity, in another sense, I think they're going to come along, I mean, you know, I certainly hope so, but the main thing I have to do is bring our country back, and I want to get it back to where it was or maybe beyond where it was, you know, we have tremendous stimulus, all the money we've been talking about so far tonight."
- This single sentence is 78 words long. That is all.
30. "I want to sit next to people."
- On this the President and I part ways. **** Note from BND - Nobody wants to sit next to 45. ****
31. "Maybe it's going to be a vaccine, or maybe it's going to be that this virus will pass, it will go. Will it come back? It might. It could. Some people say yes. But it will pass."
- Quote from Laurie Garrett: " I've been telling everybody that my event horizon is about 36 months, and that's my best-case scenario."
32. "Look, the biggest thing we can do to solve every problem is get rid of the plague. I call it the plague."
- "I call it the plague." -The President of the United States
33. "So, in 1917, we had a horrible - in that case it was the flu, right, you remember, the Spanish Flu, so much has been written about it."
- What Trump doesn't know about the Spanish Flue is, well, a lot. - Including the fact that his grandfather died from it.
34. "They always said Lincoln - nobody got treated worse than Lincoln. I believe I am treated worse."
- Lincoln was assassinated, for one thing.
35. "They come at me with questions that are disgraceful, to be honest - disgraceful - their manner of presentation and their words."
- To be clear: Trump uses the term "disgraceful" to describe questions he doesn't like from the media. They are not, in fact, disgraceful in any way, shape, or form.
36. "We've done - we had the biggest tax cut, biggest tax cut in history - all of the things we have done, and yet we have a very hostile press."
- Nope!
37. "When you look - even if you look - Space Force - Space Force."
- Mars Awaits!
38. "We also make all the ventilators."
- See the New York Times, 29 March 2020: "The US Tried to Build a New Fleet of Ventilators. The Mission Failed."
39. "And he actually apologized with a letter on a Friday night saying, 'He made the right move.' It wasn't well-played by the press, but he said I made the right move."
- Again, there is no evidence of a letter of apology from Joe Biden to Trump.
40. "And you're going to have it by the end of the year. I firmly believe it. I may be wrong."
- So, we will definitely have a vaccine by the end of the year! Or maybe we won't! Got it!
41. "I assume the show is a big show, right? It's going to do very well tonight."
- R-a-t-i-n-g-s
42. "Our country, our roads are - excuse me - they're going to hell."
- You're excused.
43. "We're all playing a very complicated game of chess or poker. Name whatever you want to name. But it's not checkers. That I can tell you. We have a very complicated game going."
- [Trump nods his head extremely slowly]
44. "Or they'll go in a field, some field, and there will be - they'll have a good minister, pastor, or it could be a rabbi; it could be - a person of faith. And what happens is, in some places, not in all places - I would say, in most places, they really sympathize."
- Donald Trump on religious services amid the pandemic. This is a real quote.
45. "I mean, everybody wants the rallies."
- "Everybody."
This feels like a good place to end. "
**** Note from BND - Reading this once again proves to me how low our standard for a President of the United States has fallen.... ****
Sunday, May 3, 2020
Skepticism About Sexual Assault Claim Against Joe Biden, Probable Democratic Presidential Candidate
First, here is a Facebook and Twitter post regarding Tara Reade, the woman accusing Vice President Joe Biden of sexual assault 27 years ago....
"Why I'm Skeptical About Reade's Sexual Assault Claim Against Biden: Ex-Prosecutor
If we must blindly accept every allegation of sexual assault, the #MeToo movement is just a hit squad. And it's too important to be no more than that.
During 28 years as a state and federal prosecutor, I prosecuted a lot of sexual assault cases. The vast majority came early in my career, when I was a young attorney at a prosecutor's office outside of Detroit.
A year ago, Tara Reade accused former Vice President Joe Biden of touching her shoulder and neck in a way that made her uncomfortable, when she worked for him as a staff assistant in 1993. Then last month, Reade told an interviewer that Biden stuck his hand under her skirt and forcibly penetrated her with his fingers. Biden denies the allegation.
When women make allegations of sexual assault, my default response is to believe them. But as the news media have investigated Reade's allegations, I've become increasingly skeptical. Here are some of the reasons why:
* Delayed reporting ... twice. Reade waited 27 years to publicly report her allegation that Biden sexually assaulted her. I understand that victims of sexual assault often do not come forward immediately because recounting the most violent and degrading experience of their lives, to a bunch of strangers, is the proverbial insult to injury. That so many women were willing to wait in my dreary government office, as I ran to the restroom to pull myself together after listening to their stories, is a testament to their fortitude.
Even so, it is reasonable to consider a 27-year reporting delay when assessing the believability of any criminal allegation. More significant perhaps, is Reade's decision to sit down with a newspaper last year and accuse Biden of touching her in a sexual way that made her uncomfortable - but neglect to mention her claim that he forcibly penetrated her with his fingers.
As a lawyer and victims' rights advocate, Reade was better equipped than most to appreciate that dramatic changes in sexual assault allegations severely undercut the accuser's credibility -especially when the change is from an uncomfortable shoulder touch to vaginal penetration.
* Implausible explanation for changing story. When Reade went public with her sexual assault allegation in March, she said she wanted to do it with The Union newspaper in California last April. She said the reporter's tone made her feel uncomfortable and "I just really got shut down" and didn't tell the whole story.
It's hard to believe a reporter would discourage this kind of scoop. Regardless, it's also hard to accept that it took Reade 12 months to find another reporter eager to break that bombshell story. This unlikely explanation damages her credibility.
* People who contradict Reade's claim. After the alleged assault, Reade said she complained about Biden's harassment to Marianne Baker, Biden's executive assistant, as well as to top aides Dennis Toner and Ted Kaufman. All three Biden staffers recently told The New York Times that she made no complaint to them.
And they did not offer the standard, noncommittal "I don't remember any such complaint." The denials were firm. "She did not come to me. If she had, I would have remembered her," Kaufman said. Toner made a similar statement. And from Baker: "I never once witnessed, or heard of, or received, any reports of inappropriate conduct (by Biden), period." Baker said such a complaint, had Reade made it, "would have left a searing impression on me as a woman professional, and as a manager."
* Missing formal complaint. Reade told The Times she filed a written compalint against Biden with the Senate personnel office. But The Times could not find any complaint. When The Times asked Reade for a copy of the compalint, she ssaid she did not have it. Yet she maintained and provided a copy of her 1993 Senate employment records.
It is odd that Reade kept a copy of her employment records but did not keep a copy of a complaint documenting criminal conduct by a man whose improprieties change "the trajactory" of her life. It's equally odd The Times was unable to find a copy of the alleged Senate complaint.
* Memory lapse. Reade has said that she cannot remember the date, time, or exact location of the alleged assault, except that it occurred in a "semiprivate" area in corridors connecting Senate buildings. After I left the Justice Department, I was appointed by the federal court in Los ANgeles to represent indigent defendants. The first thing that comes to my mind from my defense attorney perspective is that Reade's amnesia about specifics makes it impossible for Biden to go through records and prove that he could not have committed the assault, because he was somewhere else at the time.
For instance, if Reade alleged Biden assaulted her on the afternoon of June 3, 1993, Biden might be able to prove he was on the Senate floor, or at the dentist. Her memory lapses could easily be perceived as bulletproofing a false allegation.
* The lie about losing her job. Reade told The Union that Biden wanted her to serve drinks at an event. After she refused, "she felt pushed out and left Biden's employ," the newspaper said last April. But Reade claimed this month in her Times interview that after she filed a sexual harassment complaint with the Senate personnel office, she faced retaliation and was fired by Biden's chief of staff.
Leaving a job after refusing to serve drinks at a Biden fundraiser is vastly different than being fired as retaliation for filing a sexual harassment complaint with the Senate. The disparity raises questions about Reade's credibility and account of events.
* Compliments for Biden. In the 1990s, Biden worked to pass the Violence Against Women Act. In 2017, on multiple occasions, Reade retweeted or "liked" praise for Biden and his work combating sexual assault. In the same year, Reade tweeted other compliments of Biden, including: "My old boss speaks truth. Listen." It is bizarre that Reade would publicly laud Biden for combating the very thing she would later accuse him of doing to her.
* Rejecting Biden, embracing Sanders. By this January, Reade was all in for presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. Her unwavering support was accompanied by an unbridled attack on Biden. In an article on Medium, Reade referred to Biden as "the blue version of Trump." Reade also pushed a Sanders/Elizabeth Warren ticket, while complaining that the Democratic National Committee was trying to "shove" Biden "down Democrat voters throats."
Depsite her effusive 2017 praise for Biden's efforts on the behalf of women, after pledging her support to Sanders, Reade turned on Biden and contradicted all she said before. She claimed that her decision to publicly accuse Biden of inappropriately touching her was due to "the hypocrisy that Biden is supposed to be the champion of women's rights."
* Love of Russia and Putin. During 2017 when Reade was praising Biden, she was condemning Russian leader Vladimir Putin's efforts to hijack American democracy in the 2016 election. This changed in November 2018, when Reade trashed the United States as a country of "hypocrisy and imperialism" and "not a democracy at all but a corporate autocracy."
Reade's distaste for America closely tracked her new infatuation with Russia and Putin. She referred to Putin as a "genius" with an athletic prowess that "is intoxicating to American women." Then there's this gem: "President Putin has an alluring combination of strength with gentleness. His sensuous image projects his love for life, the embodiment of grace while facing adversity."
In March 2019, Reade essentially dismissed the idea of Russian interference in the 2016 Presidential election as hype. She said she loved Russia and her Russian relatives - and "like most women across the world, I like President Putin ... a lot, his shirt on or shirt off."
* Believe all women? Now that Reade has accused Joe Biden of sexual assault, never mind.
Pivoting again this month, Reade said that she "did not support Putin, and that her comments were pulled out of context from a novel she was writing," according to The Times. The quotations above, however, are from political opinion pieces she published, and she did not offer any other "context" to The Times.
Reade's writings shed light on her political alliance with Sanders, who has a long history of ties to Russia and whose stump speech is focused largely on his position that American inequality is due to corporate autocracy. But at a very minimum, Reade's wild shifts in political ideology and her sexual infatuation with a brutal dictator of a foreign adversary raise questions about her emotional stability.
* Suspect timing. For 27 years Reade did not publicly accuse Biden of sexually assaulting her. But then Biden's string of March primary victories threw Sanders off his seemingly unstoppable path to the Democratic nomination. On March 25, as Sanders was pondering his political future, Reade finally went public with her claim. The confluence of Reade's support of Sanders, distaste for the traditional American democracy epitomized by Biden, and the timing of her allegation should give pause to even the most strident Biden critics.
* The Larry King call. Last week, new "evidence" surfaced: a recorded call by an anonymous woman to CNN's "Larry King Live" show in 1993. Reade says the caller was her mother, who's now deceased. Assuming Reade is correct, her mother said: "I'm wondering what a staffer would do besides go to the press in Washington? My daughter just left there after working for a prominent senator, and could not get through with her problems at all, and the only thing she could have done was go to the press, and she chose not to do it out of respect for him."
As a prosecutor, this would not make me happy. Given that the call was anonymous, Reade's mother should have felt comfortable relaying the worst version of events. When someone is trying to obtain someone's assistance, people typically do not downplay the seriousness of the incident. They exaggerate it. That Reade's mother said nothing about her daughter being sexually assaulted would lead many reasonable people to conclude that sexual assault was not the problem that prompted the call to King.
Reade's mother also said her daughter did not got to the press with her problem "out of respect" for the senator. I've never met a woman who stayed silent out o f "respect" for the man who sexually assaulted her. And it is inconceivable that a mother would learn of her daughter's sexual assault and suggest that respect for the assailant is what stands between a life of painful silence and justice.
The "out of respect" explanation sounds more like an office squabble with staff that resulted in leaving the job. Indeed, in last year's interview withThe Washington Post, Reade laid the blame on Biden's staff for "bullying" her. She also said, "I want to emphasize: It's not him. It's the people around him."
* Statements to others. Reade's brother, Collin Moulton, told The Post recently that he remembers Reade telling him Biden had inappropriately touched her neck and shoulders. He said nothing about a sexual assault until a few days later, when he tested The Post that he remembered Reade saying Biden put his hand "under her clothes."
That Reade's brother neglected to remember the most important part of her allegation initially could lead people to believe he recounted his Post interview to Reade, was told he left out the most important part, and texted it to The Post to avoid discussion about why he failed to mention it in the first place.
In interviews with The Times, one friend of Reade's said Reade told her she was sexually assaulted by Biden. Another friend said Reade told her that Biden touched her inappropriately. Both friends insisted that The Times maintain their anonymity.
On Monday, Business Insider published an interview with a friend of Reade's who said that in 1995 or 1996, Reade told her she was assaulted by Biden. Insider called this friend, Lynda LaCasse, the "first person to independently corroborate, in detail and on record, that Reade had told others about her assault allegations contemporaneously."
But Reade alleged she was assaulted in 1993. Telling a friend two or three years later is not contemporaneous. Legal references to a contemporaneous recounting typically refer to hours or days - the point being that facts are still fresh in a person's mind and the statement is more likely to be accurate.
The Insider also quoted a colleague of Reade's in the mid-1990s, Lorraine Sanchez, who said Reade told her she had been sexually harassed by a former boss. Reade did not mention Biden by name and did not provide details of the alleged harassment.
In prior interviews, Reade gave what appeared to be an exhaustive list of people she told about the alleged assault. Neither of the women who talked to Business Insider were on that list.
The problem with statements from friends is that the information they recount is only as good as the information given to them. Let's say Reade left her job because she was angry about being asked to serve drinks or because she was fired for a legitimate reason. If she tried to save face by telling friends that she left because she was sexually assaulted, taht's all her friends would know and all they could repeat.
Prior statements made by a sexual assault victim can carry some weight, but only if the accuser is credible. In Reade's case, the statements coming from her friends are only of value if people believe Reade can be relied on to tell the truth, regardless of the light in which it paints her.
* Lack of other sexual assault allegations. Last year, several women claimed that Biden made them uncomfortable with things like a shoulder touch or a hug. (I wrote a column critical of one such allegation by Lucy Flores.) The Times and Post found no allegation of sexual assault against Biden except Reade's.
It is possible that in his 77 years, Biden committed one sexual assault and it was against Reade. But in my experience, men who commit a sexual assault are accused more than once ... like Donald Trump, who has more than a dozen allegations of sexual assault leveled against him and who was recorded bragging about grabbing women's genitalia.
* What remains. There are no third-party eyewitnesses or videos to support Tara Reade's allegation that she was assaulted by Vice President Joe Biden. No one but Reade and Biden know whether an assault occurred. This is typical of sexual assault allegations. Jurors, in this case the voting public, have to consider the facts and circumstances to assess whether Tara Reade's allegation is credible. To do that, they have to determine whether Reade herself is believable.
I've dreaded writing this piece because I do not want it to be used as a guidebook to dismantling legitimate allegations of sexual assault. During almost three decades as a prosecutor, I can remember dismissing two cases because I felt the defendant had not committed the charged crime. One of those cases was a rape charge.
The facts of that case made me question the credibility of the woman who claimed she was raped. In the end, she acknowledged that she fabricated the allegation after her boyfriend caught her with a man with whom she was having an affair.
I know that "Believe Women" is the mantra of the new decade. It is a response to a century of ignoring and excusing men's sexual assaults against women. But men and women alike should not be forced to blindly accept every allegation of sexual assault for fear of being labeled a misogynist or enabler.
We can support the #MeToo movement and not support allegations of sexual assault that do not ring true. If these two positions cannot coexist, the movement is no more than a hit squad. That's not how I see the #MeToo movement. It's too important, for too many victims of sexual assault and their allies, to be no more than that."
Vice President Biden has categorically denied the allegation, and has asked the National Archives and Senate historians to go through any and all records regarding the year that Tara Reade says the assault occurred - and to provide any and all records to the public at large, as well as the media - if they exist.
Tara Reade does not have any copies of the complaint she claims she made. She now claims that she didn't report the incident as a sexual assault, just that then-Senator Biden made her feel uncomfortable. She was scheduled to give an in-depth interview with a Fox News reporter Friday evening, with the airing scheduled for this, Sunday, morning. She cancelled that interview less than an hour before she was supposed to arrive.
Following is an opinion-editorial piece that was published in the USA Today newspaper on 29 April 2020 in the evening; it was updated at 9:49 am EDT on 30 April 2020. The author of the op-ed is Michael J. Stern, who has 30 years experience as a litigator: 25 years as a Federal Prosecutor for the US Department of Justice, 3 years as an Assistant District Attorney, and 2 years as a Defense Counsel.
"Why I'm Skeptical About Reade's Sexual Assault Claim Against Biden: Ex-Prosecutor
If we must blindly accept every allegation of sexual assault, the #MeToo movement is just a hit squad. And it's too important to be no more than that.
During 28 years as a state and federal prosecutor, I prosecuted a lot of sexual assault cases. The vast majority came early in my career, when I was a young attorney at a prosecutor's office outside of Detroit.
A year ago, Tara Reade accused former Vice President Joe Biden of touching her shoulder and neck in a way that made her uncomfortable, when she worked for him as a staff assistant in 1993. Then last month, Reade told an interviewer that Biden stuck his hand under her skirt and forcibly penetrated her with his fingers. Biden denies the allegation.
When women make allegations of sexual assault, my default response is to believe them. But as the news media have investigated Reade's allegations, I've become increasingly skeptical. Here are some of the reasons why:
* Delayed reporting ... twice. Reade waited 27 years to publicly report her allegation that Biden sexually assaulted her. I understand that victims of sexual assault often do not come forward immediately because recounting the most violent and degrading experience of their lives, to a bunch of strangers, is the proverbial insult to injury. That so many women were willing to wait in my dreary government office, as I ran to the restroom to pull myself together after listening to their stories, is a testament to their fortitude.
Even so, it is reasonable to consider a 27-year reporting delay when assessing the believability of any criminal allegation. More significant perhaps, is Reade's decision to sit down with a newspaper last year and accuse Biden of touching her in a sexual way that made her uncomfortable - but neglect to mention her claim that he forcibly penetrated her with his fingers.
As a lawyer and victims' rights advocate, Reade was better equipped than most to appreciate that dramatic changes in sexual assault allegations severely undercut the accuser's credibility -especially when the change is from an uncomfortable shoulder touch to vaginal penetration.
* Implausible explanation for changing story. When Reade went public with her sexual assault allegation in March, she said she wanted to do it with The Union newspaper in California last April. She said the reporter's tone made her feel uncomfortable and "I just really got shut down" and didn't tell the whole story.
It's hard to believe a reporter would discourage this kind of scoop. Regardless, it's also hard to accept that it took Reade 12 months to find another reporter eager to break that bombshell story. This unlikely explanation damages her credibility.
* People who contradict Reade's claim. After the alleged assault, Reade said she complained about Biden's harassment to Marianne Baker, Biden's executive assistant, as well as to top aides Dennis Toner and Ted Kaufman. All three Biden staffers recently told The New York Times that she made no complaint to them.
And they did not offer the standard, noncommittal "I don't remember any such complaint." The denials were firm. "She did not come to me. If she had, I would have remembered her," Kaufman said. Toner made a similar statement. And from Baker: "I never once witnessed, or heard of, or received, any reports of inappropriate conduct (by Biden), period." Baker said such a complaint, had Reade made it, "would have left a searing impression on me as a woman professional, and as a manager."
* Missing formal complaint. Reade told The Times she filed a written compalint against Biden with the Senate personnel office. But The Times could not find any complaint. When The Times asked Reade for a copy of the compalint, she ssaid she did not have it. Yet she maintained and provided a copy of her 1993 Senate employment records.
It is odd that Reade kept a copy of her employment records but did not keep a copy of a complaint documenting criminal conduct by a man whose improprieties change "the trajactory" of her life. It's equally odd The Times was unable to find a copy of the alleged Senate complaint.
* Memory lapse. Reade has said that she cannot remember the date, time, or exact location of the alleged assault, except that it occurred in a "semiprivate" area in corridors connecting Senate buildings. After I left the Justice Department, I was appointed by the federal court in Los ANgeles to represent indigent defendants. The first thing that comes to my mind from my defense attorney perspective is that Reade's amnesia about specifics makes it impossible for Biden to go through records and prove that he could not have committed the assault, because he was somewhere else at the time.
For instance, if Reade alleged Biden assaulted her on the afternoon of June 3, 1993, Biden might be able to prove he was on the Senate floor, or at the dentist. Her memory lapses could easily be perceived as bulletproofing a false allegation.
* The lie about losing her job. Reade told The Union that Biden wanted her to serve drinks at an event. After she refused, "she felt pushed out and left Biden's employ," the newspaper said last April. But Reade claimed this month in her Times interview that after she filed a sexual harassment complaint with the Senate personnel office, she faced retaliation and was fired by Biden's chief of staff.
Leaving a job after refusing to serve drinks at a Biden fundraiser is vastly different than being fired as retaliation for filing a sexual harassment complaint with the Senate. The disparity raises questions about Reade's credibility and account of events.
* Compliments for Biden. In the 1990s, Biden worked to pass the Violence Against Women Act. In 2017, on multiple occasions, Reade retweeted or "liked" praise for Biden and his work combating sexual assault. In the same year, Reade tweeted other compliments of Biden, including: "My old boss speaks truth. Listen." It is bizarre that Reade would publicly laud Biden for combating the very thing she would later accuse him of doing to her.
* Rejecting Biden, embracing Sanders. By this January, Reade was all in for presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. Her unwavering support was accompanied by an unbridled attack on Biden. In an article on Medium, Reade referred to Biden as "the blue version of Trump." Reade also pushed a Sanders/Elizabeth Warren ticket, while complaining that the Democratic National Committee was trying to "shove" Biden "down Democrat voters throats."
Depsite her effusive 2017 praise for Biden's efforts on the behalf of women, after pledging her support to Sanders, Reade turned on Biden and contradicted all she said before. She claimed that her decision to publicly accuse Biden of inappropriately touching her was due to "the hypocrisy that Biden is supposed to be the champion of women's rights."
* Love of Russia and Putin. During 2017 when Reade was praising Biden, she was condemning Russian leader Vladimir Putin's efforts to hijack American democracy in the 2016 election. This changed in November 2018, when Reade trashed the United States as a country of "hypocrisy and imperialism" and "not a democracy at all but a corporate autocracy."
Reade's distaste for America closely tracked her new infatuation with Russia and Putin. She referred to Putin as a "genius" with an athletic prowess that "is intoxicating to American women." Then there's this gem: "President Putin has an alluring combination of strength with gentleness. His sensuous image projects his love for life, the embodiment of grace while facing adversity."
In March 2019, Reade essentially dismissed the idea of Russian interference in the 2016 Presidential election as hype. She said she loved Russia and her Russian relatives - and "like most women across the world, I like President Putin ... a lot, his shirt on or shirt off."
* Believe all women? Now that Reade has accused Joe Biden of sexual assault, never mind.
Pivoting again this month, Reade said that she "did not support Putin, and that her comments were pulled out of context from a novel she was writing," according to The Times. The quotations above, however, are from political opinion pieces she published, and she did not offer any other "context" to The Times.
Reade's writings shed light on her political alliance with Sanders, who has a long history of ties to Russia and whose stump speech is focused largely on his position that American inequality is due to corporate autocracy. But at a very minimum, Reade's wild shifts in political ideology and her sexual infatuation with a brutal dictator of a foreign adversary raise questions about her emotional stability.
* Suspect timing. For 27 years Reade did not publicly accuse Biden of sexually assaulting her. But then Biden's string of March primary victories threw Sanders off his seemingly unstoppable path to the Democratic nomination. On March 25, as Sanders was pondering his political future, Reade finally went public with her claim. The confluence of Reade's support of Sanders, distaste for the traditional American democracy epitomized by Biden, and the timing of her allegation should give pause to even the most strident Biden critics.
* The Larry King call. Last week, new "evidence" surfaced: a recorded call by an anonymous woman to CNN's "Larry King Live" show in 1993. Reade says the caller was her mother, who's now deceased. Assuming Reade is correct, her mother said: "I'm wondering what a staffer would do besides go to the press in Washington? My daughter just left there after working for a prominent senator, and could not get through with her problems at all, and the only thing she could have done was go to the press, and she chose not to do it out of respect for him."
As a prosecutor, this would not make me happy. Given that the call was anonymous, Reade's mother should have felt comfortable relaying the worst version of events. When someone is trying to obtain someone's assistance, people typically do not downplay the seriousness of the incident. They exaggerate it. That Reade's mother said nothing about her daughter being sexually assaulted would lead many reasonable people to conclude that sexual assault was not the problem that prompted the call to King.
Reade's mother also said her daughter did not got to the press with her problem "out of respect" for the senator. I've never met a woman who stayed silent out o f "respect" for the man who sexually assaulted her. And it is inconceivable that a mother would learn of her daughter's sexual assault and suggest that respect for the assailant is what stands between a life of painful silence and justice.
The "out of respect" explanation sounds more like an office squabble with staff that resulted in leaving the job. Indeed, in last year's interview withThe Washington Post, Reade laid the blame on Biden's staff for "bullying" her. She also said, "I want to emphasize: It's not him. It's the people around him."
* Statements to others. Reade's brother, Collin Moulton, told The Post recently that he remembers Reade telling him Biden had inappropriately touched her neck and shoulders. He said nothing about a sexual assault until a few days later, when he tested The Post that he remembered Reade saying Biden put his hand "under her clothes."
That Reade's brother neglected to remember the most important part of her allegation initially could lead people to believe he recounted his Post interview to Reade, was told he left out the most important part, and texted it to The Post to avoid discussion about why he failed to mention it in the first place.
In interviews with The Times, one friend of Reade's said Reade told her she was sexually assaulted by Biden. Another friend said Reade told her that Biden touched her inappropriately. Both friends insisted that The Times maintain their anonymity.
On Monday, Business Insider published an interview with a friend of Reade's who said that in 1995 or 1996, Reade told her she was assaulted by Biden. Insider called this friend, Lynda LaCasse, the "first person to independently corroborate, in detail and on record, that Reade had told others about her assault allegations contemporaneously."
But Reade alleged she was assaulted in 1993. Telling a friend two or three years later is not contemporaneous. Legal references to a contemporaneous recounting typically refer to hours or days - the point being that facts are still fresh in a person's mind and the statement is more likely to be accurate.
The Insider also quoted a colleague of Reade's in the mid-1990s, Lorraine Sanchez, who said Reade told her she had been sexually harassed by a former boss. Reade did not mention Biden by name and did not provide details of the alleged harassment.
In prior interviews, Reade gave what appeared to be an exhaustive list of people she told about the alleged assault. Neither of the women who talked to Business Insider were on that list.
The problem with statements from friends is that the information they recount is only as good as the information given to them. Let's say Reade left her job because she was angry about being asked to serve drinks or because she was fired for a legitimate reason. If she tried to save face by telling friends that she left because she was sexually assaulted, taht's all her friends would know and all they could repeat.
Prior statements made by a sexual assault victim can carry some weight, but only if the accuser is credible. In Reade's case, the statements coming from her friends are only of value if people believe Reade can be relied on to tell the truth, regardless of the light in which it paints her.
* Lack of other sexual assault allegations. Last year, several women claimed that Biden made them uncomfortable with things like a shoulder touch or a hug. (I wrote a column critical of one such allegation by Lucy Flores.) The Times and Post found no allegation of sexual assault against Biden except Reade's.
It is possible that in his 77 years, Biden committed one sexual assault and it was against Reade. But in my experience, men who commit a sexual assault are accused more than once ... like Donald Trump, who has more than a dozen allegations of sexual assault leveled against him and who was recorded bragging about grabbing women's genitalia.
* What remains. There are no third-party eyewitnesses or videos to support Tara Reade's allegation that she was assaulted by Vice President Joe Biden. No one but Reade and Biden know whether an assault occurred. This is typical of sexual assault allegations. Jurors, in this case the voting public, have to consider the facts and circumstances to assess whether Tara Reade's allegation is credible. To do that, they have to determine whether Reade herself is believable.
I've dreaded writing this piece because I do not want it to be used as a guidebook to dismantling legitimate allegations of sexual assault. During almost three decades as a prosecutor, I can remember dismissing two cases because I felt the defendant had not committed the charged crime. One of those cases was a rape charge.
The facts of that case made me question the credibility of the woman who claimed she was raped. In the end, she acknowledged that she fabricated the allegation after her boyfriend caught her with a man with whom she was having an affair.
I know that "Believe Women" is the mantra of the new decade. It is a response to a century of ignoring and excusing men's sexual assaults against women. But men and women alike should not be forced to blindly accept every allegation of sexual assault for fear of being labeled a misogynist or enabler.
We can support the #MeToo movement and not support allegations of sexual assault that do not ring true. If these two positions cannot coexist, the movement is no more than a hit squad. That's not how I see the #MeToo movement. It's too important, for too many victims of sexual assault and their allies, to be no more than that."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
-
Newton Jasper Earp was born 7 October 1837 in Hartford, Kentucky; the only surviving child of Nicholas Earp and Abigail Storm, who died on ... -
"Donald John Trump has been impeached by the House of Representatives of the United States Congress. He will be, forever , an imp...