Joe Biden On Tara Reade: ‘It Never Happened’

On MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” former Vice President Joe Biden pointedly denied the accusations by former staffer Tara Reade that he sexually assaulted her in 1993.

Mika Brzezinski began an interview with Biden by launching directly into the allegations in a hardhitting interview, saying, “Please excuse the graphic nature of this, but I want to make sure there is no question as to what we are talking about.”

“She says in 1993, Mr. Vice President, that you pinned her against the wall and reached under her clothing and penetrated her with your fingers,” Brzezinksi said. “Would you please go on the record with the American people, did you sexually assault Tara Reade?”

Biden’s answer was clear and direct, “No, it is not true. I’m saying unequivocally, it never, never happened. And it didn’t, it never happened.”

Brzezinki pressed further, “Do you remember her? Do you remember any types of complaints that she might have made?”

“I don’t remember any type of complaint she may have made,” Biden responded. “It was 27 years ago and I don’t remember – nor does anyone else that I’m aware of – and the fact is that I don’t remember. I don’t remember any complaint ever having been made.”

Brzezinksi then asked if Biden or members of his campaign had “reached out” to Reade.

“No, I have not reached out to her,” Biden said. “It was 27 years ago, this never happened, and when she first made the claim we made it clear that it never happened and it’s as simple as that.”

Brzezinski then questioned Biden on a statement that his campaign released saying that there was “only one place” that Reade’s original complaint could be found: The National Archives. The statement asks the Secretary of the Senate to identify any relevant records in the Archive and to release them.

“Are you preparing us for a complaint that might be revealed in some way?” Brzezinski asked. “Are you confident there is nothing?

“I’m confident there’s nothing,” Biden replied. “No one ever brought it to the attention of me 27 years ago, this or any assertion at all. No one that I’m aware of in my campaign, my Senate office at the time, is aware of any such request or any such complaint, and so I’m not worried about it all. If there is a complaint, that’s where it would be. That’s where it would be filed. And, if it’s there, put it out, but I’ve never seen it. No one has that I’m aware of.”

“Since you want to set the record straight,” Brzezinski probed, “why limit this to Tara Reade? Why not release any complaints that have been made against you during your Senate career?

“I’m prepared to do that,” Biden answered. “To the best of my knowledge, there have been no complaints against me in terms of my Senate career and my office and how things have been run. Look, this is an open book. There’s nothing for me to hide. Nothing at all.”

Brzezinksi then backtracked to the Kavanaugh hearings and Biden’s statement at the time that “you’ve got to start off with the presumption that at least the essence of what she is talking about is real, whether or not she forgets the facts, whether or not it’s been made worse or better over time.”

“Should we not start off with the presumption that the essence of what she said is real?” Brzezinski asked. “She says you sexually assaulted her.”

“Look,” Biden said. “From the very beginning I’ve said believing women means taking the woman’s claim seriously when she steps forward and then vet it. Look into it. That’s true in this case as well. Women have a right to be heard and the pressure to vigorously investigate claims that they make. I’ll always uphold that principle, but in the end, in every case, the truth is what matters and, in this case, the truth is that the claims are false.”

“Is it possible these claims are in an NDA [nondisclosure agreement]?” Brzezinksi asked. “Do you have any NDAs that have been signed by women who were employed by you?”

“There is no NDA signed,” Biden answered. “I’ve never asked anyone to sign an NDA. There are no NDAs. Period. In my case, none.”

Brzezinski then asked about Biden’s Senate documents which held at the University of Delaware. The university says the papers are still being curated, a process that is expected to continue until 2021. The papers are due to be released two years after Biden’s retirement. Brzezinksi alleged that access to the documents had been changed and asked if Biden would release the documents in the interests of “complete transparency.”

“They weren’t supposed to be revealed,” Biden answered, refuting the claim that the schedule for release had been altered. “I gave them to the university and the university said it’s going to take them time to go through all the boxes. They said it wouldn’t be before 2020 that that occurred. Or 2021. I can’t remember the year that they said.”

“But look, a record like this can only be one place,” he continued. “It would not be at the University of Delaware. My archives do not contain personal files. My documents contain – and when I say ‘personal’ I mean ‘personnel’ files, they don’t contain any personnel files. They are public records. My speeches, my papers, my position papers, and, if that document exists, it would be stored at the National Archives where documents from the office she claims to have filed a complaint with are stored. That’s where they are stored. The Senate controls those archives. So, I’m asking the Secretary of the Senate today to identify whether any such document exists. If it does, make it public.”

When asked why he thought Reade was making the allegations, Biden anwered, “I’m not going to question her motive, I’m not going to get into that at all. I don’t know why she’s saying this. I don’t know why, after 27 years, all of a sudden this gets raised. I don’t understand it, but I’m not going to go in and question her motive, I’m not going to attack her.”

“She has a right to say whatever she wants to say,” he added, “but I have a right to say, ‘Look at the facts, check it out. Find out whether any of what she has said or asserted is true.'”

“That was not the atmosphere in my office at all,” Biden continued. “No one has ever said anything like this.

The interview did become contentious when Brzezinksi pressed the issue of a search of the University of Delaware files for Tara Reade’s name. Biden maintained that the files did not pertain to the case, but that they did contain other confidential records of meetings with presidents and other heads of state. When Biden pressed on how such a search would be conducted, Brzezinski was at a loss.

Joe Biden’s forceful and direct answers to difficult questions will help his campaign. He makes a credible case that Reade’s claims are false. That will be enough for his campaign to move forward.

The matter will hinge on whether the Senate archives produce the original complaint that Reade allegedly filed in 1993. If she is telling the truth, this document should still be on record. Regardless, the rumors will likely be kept alive by Biden’s political opponents.

Biden helped himself in another way in the interview as well. He appeared rational and lucid throughout the exchange. This is in contrast with allegations by the Trump campaign that Biden is suffering from age-related mental problems. Although there were a few stumbles, the candidate appeared as normal as anyone in a live, high-stakes interview. It may be that Biden is clumsy at reading from a teleprompter but is more smooth and direct when speaking from the heart.

Don’t expect the accusations to go away after this interview, but unless Tara Reade can produce more evidence that her encounter with Biden actually happened, the matter will begin to fade into the background.

Originally published on The Resurgent

#MeToo: North Korean Cheer Squads Are Really Sex Slaves

[WARNING: GRAPHIC] It was only a week or so ago that the mainstream media went gaga for the North Korean Olympic cheer squads. The beautiful women, who outnumbered the country’s Olympic athletes by 10 to one, performed routines in perfect sync and captivated journalists and audiences alike. Now  North Korean defectors tell that the party leaders’ treatment of the cheerleaders would put Harvey Weinstein to shame.

Some critics of the North Korean regime pointed out that the possibility of having your family killed if you embarrass your country is a powerful incentive to perform well, but the reality is much worse than just the potential threat of death. A former North Korean military musician who defected in 2008 says that a secondary role of the cheer squads is to act as sex slaves for the elites of North Korea’s ruling communist party.

Lee So Yeon described to Bloomberg how the women, informally called the “Pleasure Squad,” are compelled to perform sex acts on party leaders. “They go to the central Politburo party’s events, and have to sleep with the people there, even if they don’t want it,” she said. “Those sorts of human-rights infringements take place, where women have to follow what they are told to do with their bodies.”

The UK Metro reports that the women are constantly monitored to prevent defection. They are not even allowed to make a trip to the bathroom without a teammate and a South Korean government monitor. 

Mi-Hyang, who defected in 2010, described how she was kidnapped from her school at age 15 and pressed into service as a sex slave for Kim Jong-Il. She spent 10 years catering to the sexual desires of Kim and his associates.

Lee Il-Nam, a relative of the Kim family who defected in 1982 and was assassinated in 1997 described the Pleasure Squad in his book, “Kim Jong-Il’s Royal Family.” The women were featured at parties for Kim’s closest associates that lasted into the wee hours and “included eating, drinking and dancing, but usually ended with erotic games.”

“A favorite was a game in which the losers had to take off clothes one by one. It was enforced, regardless of men or women,” he wrote. “If they got heavily drunk, the also played a hair-shaving game. If men lost, part of their head hair was shaved, as if it was mown. For women, their pubic hair was shaved.” At times, Kim had orgies devoted entirely to sex.

When the women get old, they are retired into marriage with elite guards, but remain sworn to secrecy about their activities. Women who break the vow of silence are immediately executed.

Even if they perform perfectly, the women and athletes still face punishment when they return to North Korea. When North Koreans return from abroad, they face the prospect of re-education to deprogram any ideas that the outside world is more attractive than home.

“North Korea makes an effort to plant an idea in their head, that everything that they saw in South Korea wasn’t that wonderful,” said Kim Jung-bong, a former South Korean intelligence official. “And then they are sent to a political school, or a political education system from one to three months for what they call ‘moral education.”’

While American sexual predators are being denounced for far less egregious activities, the members of the Pleasure Squad would face unspeakable punishments if they spoke out. Those of us in the free world should speak up on their behalf.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Romantic Comedies Are Really About Sexual Harassment

Looking back on 2017’s sexual harassment denunciations and purges, I realized that what Hollywood preaches is not what it puts on screen. Like railing against gun violence while making a mint off violent movies at the same time, what Hollywood movies say about sexual harassment is very different than what Hollywood figures say in the post-Weinstein era.

Under many of the definitions going around these days, the women of romantic comedies are actually victims of sexual harassment. While these women are not physically abused or raped, they are subjected to unwanted attention from men. The EEOC’s definition of sexual harassment includes the phrase “unwelcome sexual advances” which would describe the plot of most romantic comedies.

Think about the romantic comedy genre. These movies typically have a plot where boy meets girl, boy falls for girl, girl can’t stand boy, boy persists despite being rejected by girl and boy finally wins girl. If the man in the movie persists after being rejected and told “no” then isn’t that sexual harassment by definition?

If merely pursuing a woman who doesn’t fall into your arms at first sight is sexual harassment then a great many men – and also a great many women – are harassers. Who knows how many happy marriages are built upon behavior that many now seek to criminalize? I’ve heard many stories of couples who didn’t hit it off at first, but who eventually fell in love and created a happy life together.

There are limits of course. It is clearly wrong for a man in a position of power like Harvey Weinstein to force women to have sex with him in order to work in Hollywood. It’s also wrong to grab the butt of a stranger or fondle someone’s breast uninvited.

When the unwanted activity involves mere words and flirting, the lines are less distinct, however, and even in cases of consensual sex, there can be a gray area. Rebecca Reid of the UK Metro recently wrote that, as a teen, she “had a threesome, also because I didn’t want to be rude.” Many of the women who had sex with Weinstein also gave consent in order to get work. Is consent still consent even if given under duress? Don’t women also have a responsibility to say “no” if they don’t want to have sex? If a woman says “yes” and means “no,” how is a man to know the difference unless he has the ability to read her mind?

There seem to be two solutions to the problem. One way is to criminalize romantic comedies. We could simply make it illegal for people to have any unwanted contact. The result of this strategy would probably be lots of lonely people as men become afraid to woo women for fear of being sued or arrested or having their reputations ruined.

A second solution would be a return to traditional sexual values in which couples wait to have sex until marriage. Without the expectation of casual sex, fewer men would harass women and fewer women would be compelled to have sex out of politeness. It would also help men and women find more fulfilling and longer-lasting relationships.

In spite of jokes about unhappy marriages, for many Americans married life is our Hollywood ending. Rather than going through life alone, we grow old surrounded by people we love. That is our happily-ever-after.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Democrats Seize The Moral High Ground

Republicans have a tendency toward shooting themselves in the foot and this week was no exception. With their abrupt about-face on accused sexual harassers John Conyers (D-Mich.) and Al Franken (D-Minn.), the Democrats have captured the moral high on the issue of sexual misbehavior.

For a while it seemed as though both parties would look equally hypocritical on the issue of sexual misdeeds. For weeks, the lists of officials in both parties who were credibly named by numerous accusers grew longer and longer while partisans promptly excused their allies and condemned their enemies.

That changed this week when the Democratic Party suddenly turned first against Conyers and then against Franken. Conyers announced his retirement on Wednesday. Franken’s resignation came on Thursday after 32 Democratic senators called on him to resign.

The Democrat reversal could not have come at a more inopportune time for Republicans. After tepid support for Roy Moore for several weeks, President Trump endorsed Moore on Monday with a charge to the accused child molester to “Go get 'em, Roy!” The same day Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who had previously called on Moore to drop out of the race, said, “ It'll be up to the people of Alabama to make this decision” and dismissed the possibility that the Senate would refuse to seat Moore if we wins. The Republican National Committee, which had previously severed ties with Moore suddenly made a contribution of $170,000 to Moore’s financially strapped campaign.

Perhaps the Democrats were waiting on the Republicans to go all-in on Moore to offer up Conyers and Franken as sacrificial lambs. Perhaps the timing was coincidental due to new revelations about Conyers and Franken. In any case, the events of the week could not have been better timed for Democrats.

Moore, who has said that he didn’t “generally” date teenage girls when he was in his 30s, seems to retain a slight lead in polling for the Alabama Senate race. This in spite of contradictory statements about the sexual assault allegations and whether he dated his wife while she was still married to her first husband as well as other scandals such as financial improprieties at his charity and his advancement of conspiracy theories.  

It was a classic bait and switch. Republicans took the bait and supported Roy Moore and the Democrats promptly switched to a hardline on sexual misconduct. The result will be that for the remainder of the Alabama campaign, and though the 2018 elections if Moore wins, Democrats will batter Republicans about the head with charges that the party, which claims to be the party of Christian principles and family values, fully supported a candidate who is credibly accused of being a sexual predator of teenage girls.

What’s worse is that the Democrats will be absolutely right. In the 2018 elections, Republicans will already be defending a do-nothing Congress and an erratic and unpopular president. Now, they must justify their support for Roy Moore as well.

The GOP has faced a similar conundrum in the past. In 1991, David Duke, a former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard, won the Republican gubernatorial nomination in Louisiana. In an election that presaged this decade’s races to the bottom, Duke’s opponent was Edwin Edwards, a Democrat who had been tried twice on charges of mail fraud, obstruction of justice, and bribery. Edwards was so disliked by Louisiana Republicans that the outgoing governor, Buddy Roemer, coined the slogan, “Anyone but Edwards.”

That year, unlike recent history, Republicans did not embrace a flawed candidate, claiming that the opposition was worse. Instead, Republicans did the unthinkable. Pushing their partisan tendencies aside, the Louisiana GOP endorsed Democrat Edwards under the slogan, “Vote for the crook. It’s important.”

The question for today’s Republicans is, “What is important?” 

Originally published on The Resurgent

Fifth Woman Accuses Al Franken

A fifth woman has come forward to accuse Senator Al Franken (D-Minn.) of improper sexual conduct. The accusation comes from an army veteran who accompanied Franken on a USO tour in 2003.

The new accuser is Stephanie Kemplin, 41, of Maineville, Ohio. In 2003, Kemplin was deployed to Kuwait where she met Mr. Franken, who was taking pictures with the troops. Kemplin, at the time a 27-year-old fan of “Saturday Night Live,” stood in line to take a photo with Franken.  

“When he put his arm around me, he groped my right breast. He kept his hand all the way over on my breast,” Kemplin said on CNN. “I've never had a man put their arm around me and then cup my breast. So, he was holding my breast on the side.”

“I remember clenching up and how you just feel yourself flushed," she said. "And I remember thinking -- is he going to move his hand? Was it an accident? Was he going to move his hand? He never moved his hand.”

Kemplin said that she was “embarrassed” by Franken’s behavior, which lasted for about 10 seconds.

“It was long enough that he should have known if it was an accident,” she said. “I'm very confident saying that.”

A photo taken at the time does not show Franken’s hand on Kemplin’s breast. Kemplin is leaning in towards Franken with her head touching his cheek. Franken’s right hand is visible on Kemplin’s back. His left hand appears to hang straight down at his side. Kemplin is smiling in the photo.

Kemplin said that she was stunned when the photo was taken and that she did not say anything to Franken at the time. She does not remember discussing the incident with fellow soldiers at the time, but did tell her sister and ex-boyfriend.

“You're immediately put on the spot. What are you going to do? What are you going to do? Your mind goes a mile a minute,” Kemplin said. “Who was I going to tell?”

“I just remember her telling me that he grabbed her breast and that she was so shocked about it,” Kemplin’s sister said. “My sister is pretty bold and assertive and she said that she didn't know what to do.”

A former boyfriend also verified that Kemplin told him that Franken “went to put his arm around her and copped a feel.”

Kemplin was the allegedly the victim of another sexual assault while deployed as well. She complained about another soldier who shared a tent with her in 2003, shortly after the incident with Franken. An investigation was launched, but the soldier was not charged.

The first accusation against Franken came from Leann Tweeden, a radio personality, who claimed that Franken kissed her and groped her on a different USO tour in 2006. Lindsay Menz accused Franken of feeling her butt while they posed for a photo at the Minnesota State Fair in 2010. An anonymous accuser claimed a similar experience in 2007 and calls Franken a “serial groper.” A second anonymous accuser says that Franken touched her butt and asked her to come to the bathroom with him at a Democrat fundraiser in 2008.  

Franken has said that he does not remember groping the women and denied “proposition[ing] anyone to join me in the bathroom,” according to a statement.

“I'm someone who, you know, hugs people,” Franken said on Minnesota Public Radio. “I've learned from these stories that in some of these encounters I have crossed the line for some women.”

Kemplin, who is Republican, says that she knows not everyone will believe her. “Nobody wants to believe anybody if you don't immediately stand up and say something.”

Originally published on The Resurgent

Hillary: People Are 'Misremembering' How I Attacked Bill's Accusers

According to Hillary Clinton, people are “misremembering” her role in attacking the women who accused Bill Clinton of sexual misconduct. The comments came in an interview last week with radio personality Rita Cosby that was part of Mrs. Clinton’s promotional tour for her book, “What Happened.”

Cosby asked the former First Lady if she had any regrets about not being supportive of the women who accused President Clinton and her role in “sort of attacking the victims.”

Clinton responded with a long, meandering answer that never directly addressed the question posed by Cosby, but implied that Bill Clinton’s accusers were all liars. Clinton began by saying that “every situation has to be judged on its own merits,” but that “people are either misremembering or misinterpreting history.”

“Of course, you should give people who make such allegations the benefit of the doubt, that's what our system does,” Clinton said, “but then you have to investigate them.”

“There were allegations that were disproved,” Clinton claimed. “There were allegations that were absolutely contradicted under sworn testimony.”

In reality, the accusations against Bill Clinton are very similar to the accusations against Donald Trump and Roy Moore.  In many cases, sexual harassment and assault accusations are based largely on the testimony of the parties involved with little or no physical evidence.

In the cases of “he said/she said” in which women accused Bill Clinton, Hillary clearly took her husband’s side. Hillary called the women “bimbos” and “trailer trash” and allegedly threatened to destroy their reputations, notes the Daily Wire.

Despite Hillary’s claim that the allegations against Bill Clinton were disproved, the former president did admit to affairs with Monica Lewinsky and Gennifer Flowers, two of the women that Hillary Clinton had attacked. In other cases, the truth is still elusive. Kathleen Willey, Juanita Broaddrick and Paula Jones still stand by their stories of sexual assault at that hands of Bill Clinton.

Hillary Clinton’s defense of her husband is one more case of sexual hypocrisy. Partisans of both sides are more interested in using abused women as a weapon against their opponents than in helping them find justice. Hillary Clinton is no different. 

Originally published on The Resurgent

Two Quotes That Show How Much The Parties Value Character

The past week laid bare the deepest motivations of many people in American politics. While both parties claim to be the champions of morality and virtue, people paying attention were disabused of the notion that either party is more concerned with character than votes.

On Friday, Kate Harding, a self-described “feminist and the author of a book on rape culture,” wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post offering a partisan defense of Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.). Harding doesn’t defend Franken’s bad behavior. Instead, she defends his political affiliation.

“It would feel good, momentarily, to see Franken resign and the Democratic governor of Minnesota, Mark Dayton, appoint a senator who has not (as far as we know) harmed women,” Harding writes. “If I believed for one second that Franken is the only Democrat in the Senate who has done something like this, with or without photographic evidence, I would see that as the best and most appropriate option. But in the world we actually live in, I’m betting that there will be more. And more after that. And they won’t all come from states with Democratic governors and a deep bench of progressive replacements. Some will, if ousted, have their successors chosen by Republicans.”

Yes, you heard that correctly. Harding is openly admitting that the only reason that she doesn’t want to see Franken punished is that it would set a precedent in which other Democrats, ones who might be replaced by Republicans, might also be forced to resign.

Harding’s position is obviously partisan and hypocritical, particularly from a feminist in the party that five years ago claimed that Mitt Romney and Republicans were waging a “war on women.” What is shocking is how blatant Harding’s hypocrisy is. In her world, political affiliation means more than justice for women who were harassed or abused by Democrats. Republicans rightly denounced the political calculations of Democrats like Harding.

But wait, as they say, there’s more!

The very same day, at the same moment that Republicans were denouncing Kate Harding’s hypocrisy, the Republican governor of Alabama was making a remarkably similar statement. “I believe in the Republican Party, what we stand for, and most important, we need to have a Republican in the United States Senate to vote on things like the Supreme Court justices, other appointments the Senate has to confirm and make major decisions,” Gov. Kay Ivey (R) said on AL.com. “So that's what I plan to do, vote for Republican nominee Roy Moore.”

At the same time, Ivey acknowledged that the allegations made against Moore were credible. “I certainly have no reason to disbelieve any of them,” she said. “The timing is a little curious. But at the same time, I have no reason to disbelieve them.”

Ivey says that she believes in what the Republican Party stands for, but what does the party stand for if it refuses to condemn a man who is credibly accused of molesting a 14-year-old girl and harassing numerous others? It seems that what the new Republican Party stands for is electing Republican candidates at all costs.

Republicans and Democrats finally have found something that they can agree on. They both believe that party politics trumps concerns about character. Unfortunately for the rest of the country, the point of agreement found by the two parties will only serve to further divide the country.

Democrats and Republicans stand united in their hypocrisy. Both seem only too willing to compromise their core beliefs in order to support politicians that represent what they purport to hate. Any man who forces himself on a woman would be rightfully condemned by the left… as long he isn’t a Democrat official. The right would be ready to castrate a 30-year-old man who cruised malls trying to pick up teenage girls… as long as he wasn’t a Republican candidate.

In a perfect world, our politicians would be held to a higher standard than the people they govern. In the real world, the two parties excuse their own members by pointing to the bad behavior of those on the other side. It is a race to the bottom in which both sides claim, “Your pervert is worse than ours.” The truth is that when feminists back misogynists and Christians support an alleged child molester, they have already lost, regardless of whether their candidate wins. 

Originally published on The Resurgent