I Feel, Therefore I Am by Mark Goldblatt

Author:Mark Goldblatt [Goldblatt, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781637582862
Publisher: Post Hill Press
Published: 2022-10-29T00:38:24+00:00

Chapter Three

#Me-Also

Believe Women (Sometimes)

Tara Reade now qualifies as a footnote to history. But for several weeks during the spring of 2020, as Democrats were selecting their nominee to run against Donald Trump, Reade roiled the US presidential race. Former Vice President Joe Biden was by then the clear front-runner for the nomination. So there was significant hand-wringing when Reade claimed that in 1993, when she was a junior staffer in Biden’s office, he’d shoved her against a wall in the basement of a building, forcibly kissed her, slid his fingers underneath her clothes, and penetrated her vagina. After she pulled away, according to Reade, Biden looked shocked and said, “Come on, man, I heard you liked me.” Moments later, he added, “You’re nothing to me, nothing,” but then he clasped her shoulders and said, “You’re okay, you’re fine.”65

Once Biden walked off, Reade rushed to the restroom to collect herself, then, sobbing, headed home. She told her mother, her brother, and a close friend what had happened. Her mother advised her to file a police report. Rather than go that route, Reade complained to Biden’s executive assistant and two of his senior aides. Nothing happened. She filed a written complaint with the Senate Personnel Office. Again, no action against Biden was taken. Soon afterward, however, she was stripped of most of her duties and reassigned to an office without a window. Finally, she was advised by one of the senior Biden aides to whom she’d complained that she was no longer a good fit for the staff and was given a month to find another job. She didn’t find one, and she never worked in DC again.

That was Reade’s story.

Biden, who had a richly documented history of awkward and unwanted hair sniffing, hugging, and shoulder massaging of young women, adamantly denied that the incident with Reade took place. The members of his staff to whom Reade said she’d complained also denied her accusations, and no record of her written complaint to the Senate Personnel Office could be found.

On the other hand, Reade’s brother came forward to confirm that she’d told him about the incident. So did two of Reade’s friends; one said that she’d told her about an incident with Biden around the time it occurred; the other said that Reade had told her about it in 2008. Reade’s mom, whom Reade said was the first person she’d told, was deceased by the time the story broke in 2020. But Reade claimed that her mom had once mentioned the incident on-air during a call-in segment of CNN’s Larry King Live about the toxic workplace culture in Washington. Sure enough, a tape was dug up from an August 11, 1993, episode of the program—five days after Reade was fired—in which a caller from San Luis Obispo, California, where Reade’s mom resided, asks: “I’m wondering what a staffer would do besides go to the press in Washington? My daughter has just left there, after working for a prominent senator, and could not get

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