Major media and other supporters of Joe Biden have worked very hard to bury, downplay, or otherwise dispose of the sexual assault allegation levied against him by Tara Reade. It is a far cry from their shared attempt to destroy the life and reputation of Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearings for the Supreme Court.
One interesting distinction between the two cases is in how the accuser’s parents responded.
Reade claimed that she told multiple people about the alleged assault at the time it happened. Some of those people have come forward to corroborate her claim that she discussed the incident at the time it happened.
While Reade claimed she told her mother, her mother has since died. Reade said her mother had once called into Larry King’s show to discuss the topic. Sure enough, there is audio and video evidence of that call:
KING: San Luis Obispo, California, hello.
CALLER: Yes, hello. 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 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.
KING: In other words, she had a story to tell but, out of respect for the person she worked for, she didn’t tell it?
CALLER: That’s true.
Reade’s mother was upset enough about whatever happened with Biden to call into a national television show to discuss it.
Compare that with the Kavanaugh situation. First off, can you imagine how the media would have handled audio and video evidence of Blasey Ford or her parents calling into the Phil Donahue show in 1983?
In any case, while the media downplayed it dramatically, Christine Blasey Ford’s family was conspicuously quiet during the Kavanaugh ordeal. The Washington Post addressed the issue in order to dispose of it in “Christine Blasey Ford’s family has been nearly silent amid outpouring of support.”
Blasey Ford’s father told a reporter the family supported her. Privately, however, the extended family had significant doubts about the unsubstantiated allegation. Carrie Severino and I go into details in our book Justice on Trial: The Kavanaugh Confirmation and the Future of the Supreme Court. We also reported that within days of Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court, Kavanaugh’s father was approached by Ford’s father at a golf club, where they are both members.
Ralph Blasey offered Ed Kavanaugh his support of Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court. “I’m glad Brett was confirmed,” Ralph Blasey told Ed Kavanaugh, shaking his hand. Blasey added that the ordeal had been tough for both families. The conversation between the two men echoed a letter that Blasey had previously sent to the elder Kavanaugh.
While the media had been so eager to report any story that supported the feeding frenzy against Kavanaugh, they were remarkably incurious about the meeting and note between the fathers of Blasey Ford and Kavanaugh.
