Two prominent, female Democratic vice-presidential front-runners appeared on three national political shows Sunday morning and neither were asked about explosive allegations against their potential running mate Joe Biden.
A now-infamous clip from a 1993 episode of CNN’s “Larry King Live” resurfaced on Friday, appearing to include the mother of Tara Reade — who has accused Biden of past sexual assault while in the Senate — alluding to “problems” her daughter faced while working as a staffer for the then-U.S. senator from Delaware. Reade later confirmed to Fox News that it was her mother on the call, and the allegations against Biden reclaimed the spotlight.
However, CNN’s Jake Tapper interviewed former candidate for governor in Georgia Stacey Abrams about her ambitions to Biden’s running mate on “State of the Union” and failed to ask about the allegations.
NBC’s “Meet the Press” host Chuck Todd also gave Abrams a pass during an interview on Sunday.
CNN’s Jake Tapper, ABC’s George Stephanopoulos and NBC’s Chuck Todd failed to ask Joe Biden’s potential running mates about sexual assault allegations against the 2020 Democratic frontrunner.
“Joe Biden is going to be the president of the United States,” Abrams told Todd while the Peacock Network host ignored the allegation.
Abrams wasn’t the only potential Biden running mate to appear on television on Sunday – less than 48 hours after the Media Research Center found the clip of Reade’s mother calling into CNN.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar appeared on ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos,” but the Bill Clinton staffer-turned-ABC News anchor didn’t ask about the claims against Biden, either.
Biden’s campaign has adamantly denied the allegations, calling the claim concerning the purported incident decades ago “false.”
BIDEN SKATES THROUGH TV INTERVIEWS AS ANCHORS AVOID QUESTIONS ABOUT TARA READE’S ASSAULT CLAIM
There is growing anger from conservatives, progressive Democrats and supporters of the #MeToo movement about the lack of response from Democratic leaders toward the allegations, with many noting how it has differed from the response given to Supreme Court Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s accuser Christine Blasey Ford during his confirmation hearings.
Reade’s story first resurfaced in an article in The Intercept on March 24. Podcast host Katie Halper then interviewed Reade, who said that in 1993 a more senior member of Biden’s staff asked her to bring the then-senator his gym bag near the U.S. Capitol building, which led to the encounter in question.
“He greeted me, he remembered my name, and then we were alone. It was the strangest thing,” Reade told Halper. “There was no like, exchange really. He just had me up against the wall.”
Reade said that she was wearing “a business skirt,” but “wasn’t wearing stockings — it was a hot day.”
She continued: “His hands were on me and underneath my clothes, and he went down my skirt and then up inside it and he penetrated me with his fingers and he was kissing me at the same time and he was saying some things to me.”
Reade claimed Biden first asked if she wanted “to go somewhere else.”
“I pulled away, he got finished doing what he was doing,” Reade said. “He said: ‘Come on, man. I heard you liked me.’”
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Reade said she tried to share her story last year, but nobody listened to her. Earlier this month, she filed a criminal complaint against Biden with police in Washington, D.C.
Fox News’ Joseph A. Wulfsohn and Andrew O’Reilly contributed to this report.
