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MSNBC Spends 4 Minutes Detailing Tara Reade’s Allegations Against Biden, 4 Minutes On Trump Accusers

MSNBC Biden interview Morning Joe

MSNBC’s spotlight shift onto accusations against the president follows a trend among media elites to distract from sexual assault allegations against Biden with Trump ‘whataboutism.’

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Joe Biden denied Tara Reade’s sexual assault allegations during his first TV interview on the matter with MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski on “Morning Joe” Friday. Before bringing Biden on air, however, MSNBC changed the conversation about Biden’s alleged sexual misconduct into discussing allegations against President Donald Trump.

After spending about four minutes detailing the facts of Biden’s alleged assault on former staffer Reade — wherein Reade alleges the then-Delaware senator pushed her up against the wall, reached under her clothes, and penetrated her with his fingers — Brzezinski spent the same amount of time running through a laundry list of allegations made against the current president. She ended with footage from the “Access Hollywood” tape, bringing the Trump coverage to nearly six minutes.

In the Biden interview, Brzezinski pressed the former vice president on his double standard for himself versus Brett Kavanaugh during the then-judge’s confirmation to the Supreme Court. She also doubled down on Biden’s refusal to release his records held at the University of Delaware or to conduct a search of Reade’s name within those records.

The network’s spotlight shift onto Trump, however, follows a trend among media elites to distract from allegations against the presumed Democratic nominee with Trump “whataboutism.”

CNN’s Jake Tapper on Twitter listed the names of Trump’s accusers, saying it’s “now time for President Trump to sit for an interview and take questions like this about allegations.”

CNN political analyst Joe Lockhart, MSNBC contributor Joyce Alene, and others distracted from Biden in similar fashion.

https://twitter.com/neeratanden/status/1256202445115588613

https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1256200680097939456

“I think that so far, the news media has been pretty good on this,” said John Heilemann on “Morning Joe” Friday, “which is to say the New York Times took its time and did a lengthy or rigorous examination of this. … So far, responsible news organizations seem to have been pretty rigorous reporting on this.”

While Reade first publicly accused Biden of sexual assault back on March 25, May 1 marks the first time anyone in corporate media has directly asked Biden about any of the claims.