Joe Biden on Friday finally addressed a sexual assault allegation leveled against him by former staffer Tara Reade, prompting ‘#IbelieveBiden’ to trend on Twitter. But the messages were far from an endorsement of the Democrat.
“I’m saying unequivocally: it never, never happened,” the presidential hopeful said of the allegations, during a TV interview. It was his first time addressing the matter since Reade filed a criminal complaint with police last month.
The performance was enough to get Democrats to rush to Twitter to talk up their guy and offer their own thoughts on why he is innocent. One nonsensical endorsement read: “Here's why #IBelieveBiden, I stood in a rope line for 45 minutes to meet him before the Nevada Caucus, he treats everybody the same and genuinely cares about others. An old school politician of the best kind.”
However, surprise-surprise, the hashtag soon backfired as slews of messages noted the shakiness of Biden’s answers in the TV interview and claimed that he was fit not to be president. The barrage of messages soon powered the hashtag to top of the US Twitter trending charts.
Another common response noted the stark contrast in Democrats’ willingness to believe Biden, after they had previously advocated believing women amidst the hysteria surrounding the appointment of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.
“The way that same establishment has destroyed #IBelieveWomen and replaced it with #IBelieveBiden is a brutal wake up call for others,” prominent pastor Benjamin Dixon said.
Award-winning journalist Glenn Greenwald also waded into the fray to note that the Democratic party has a long-history of attacking women who make allegations against its prominent politicians.
“#BelieveWomen has now officially been replaced with #IBelieveBiden (another way of saying #ThatWomanIsLying) because that’s who Democrats are,” he said.
“One thing you do not want to be in this world is a woman accusing a prominent and powerful Democratic male politician of sexual misconduct. Going back to the 1990s, few people are treated worse publicly,” he added.
Polling day is still seven months away and already the 2020 US presidential election looks set to be one of the most bitterly contested votes in US history.
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