 |
| Tong and Blumenthal |
It is not at all surprising that Attorney General William
Tong, who had joined other attorneys general in suits against President Donald
Trump, should have endorsed former Vice President Joe Biden for President. Such
things are expected. When Trump threw his hat into the ring in a Republican presidential
primary and unexpectedly won the endorsement of his party, some leapt on the
Republican bandwagon while others hesitated.
Tong's endorsement was fulsome. “Today, I'm proud to endorse
@JoeBiden for President of the United States. We need Joe to restore the soul
of this nation, to restore our humanity and our grace,” Tong
twittered.
It was not a tweet heard around the world, or even in corners
of Connecticut covered by the state’s media. The media distribution of the
tweet was slight. And some reporters may have wondered why Tong had not jumped
on his usual media stump to broadcast his endorsement more widely. When Tong
earlier had announced that he, along with a knot of other attorneys general, was
joining a suit against President Donald Trump, the announcement ricocheted through
numerous Connecticut media outlets, and Tong took his bows.
Shortly before Tong’s hearty endorsement, Tara Reade, a former
Biden aide, had accused then Senator Biden of having digitally raped her.
Reade had been asked to deliver a gym bag to Biden. The
digital rape happened this way, Reade
recounted in an interview
with Kaite Halper: “It
happened all at once. The gym bag, I don’t know where it went. I handed it to
him. It was gone and then his hands were on me and underneath my clothes. And
then he went down my skirt, but then up inside it, and he penetrated me with
his fingers. And he was kissing me at the same time, and he was saying
something to me.”
According to the
Halper-Reade interview, this is what Biden said to Reade: “I remember him
saying first before, like as he was doing it, ‘do you want to go somewhere
else?’ And then him saying to me when I pulled away, when he got finished doing
what he was doing and I pulled back and he said, ‘come on man, I heard you
liked me.’ And it’s that phrase [that] stayed with me because I kept thinking
what I might’ve said [to make him think that]. And I can’t remember exactly, if
he said ‘I thought,’ or ‘I heard,’ but it’s like
he implied I had done this.”
Over the years, a
sharp edge of the incident scraped her soul, and she couldn’t shake it: “But he
said, when he had me against the wall after he had done, after I pulled away
and he had said, ‘Hey, c’mon, I heard you liked me?’ And I knew he was angry
right after [that because] he took his finger, he just pointed at me and he
said, ‘You’re nothing to me.’ And then he, he just looked at me and he goes, ‘You’re
nothing, nothing.’ And then I must have reacted. And I think he only said it
twice… but I just heard the word nothing. And…and I must’ve reacted
because that’s when he took me by the shoulders and he said, you know, you’re
okay, you’re fine. You’re okay.”
Reade's account, if true, does not describe an uncomfortable hug. Women who have experienced such things will recognize the pathology. This is digital rape as PUNISHMENT. YOU’RE NOTHING, NOTHING! The “humanity and grace” that Tong is convinced Biden as president will bring to the nation is nowhere in evidence here.
Biden has denied the
incident ever occurred. But there are in the public record shards of evidence
supporting Reade’s account. She told her mother of the incident shortly after
it had occurred. Her mother advised her to file a police report, which Reade declined
to do. Her mother later referred to the incident in a contemporaneous call to Larry
King, a
clip recently found by a student interested in pursuing Reade’s claim.
The clip dates from 1993, the same year in which the digital rape was said to
have occurred. Most recently, a neighbor of Reade’s during the same time,
remembers Reade telling her of the incident. Like Reade, the neighbor is a
woman of the left – Reade initially supported the candidacy of socialist Bernie
Sanders – and the neighbor, while confirming Reade’s account, never-the-less
still plans to vote for Biden as president, the alternative being Trump.
Pressure is being
brought against Biden from both the right and the left. Katie Halper herself is
a woman of the left, and a much more principled leftist than Tong. Although she
may believe Biden as president will be a considerable improvement on Trump, the
reader will not find her blowing Tong’s trumpet. The incident points to a dark
corner of Biden’s soul in which grace could not enter without laughing uncontrollably.
Comments