Fox News chief political anchor Bret Baier noted on Monday that there is a “disparity” in the coverage of sexual assault allegations against former Vice President Joe Biden and those made against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh in 2018.
Top Democrats, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Minority leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., have remained silent on the claims leveled against Biden by former staffer Tara Reade.
“I think they haven’t commented in part because I’m pretty sure they haven’t been asked,” Baier told “Outnumbered Overtime“. “From what I’ve seen, I haven’t seen the question asked to either the former vice president or to any of his surrogates or top Democrats.”
On Sunday, two female potential running mates for Biden – former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams and Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn. – appeared on three national political shows, but were not asked about the explosive allegations against the presumptive Democratic nominee.
In a statement to Fox News, Reade said, “ … It’s shocking that this much time has passed and that he is an actual nominee for president and they’re not asking the questions … If this were Donald Trump, would they treat it the same way? If this were Brett Kavanaugh did they treat it the same way? In other words, it’s politics and political agenda playing a role in objective reporting and asking the question.”
“Obviously you saw The New York Times do kind of a self-reflection about its coverage of Brett Kavanaugh … and what happened with those allegations and the coverage of it and what is happening now,” Baier said. “The disparity is pretty stark.
“I think questions are fair,” he continued. “I haven’t heard them, and I don’t think I’ve heard them answered.”
When Christine Blasey Ford publicly accused Kavanaugh of sexual assault in a September 2018 interview with The Washington Post, prominent Democrats and media organizations rushed to the story — demanding answers and, in many cases, the end of Kavanaugh’s career.
In the weeks after Reade publicly charged in a podcast released March 25 that Joe Biden sexually assaulted her in 1993, however, those same politicians and outlets have become either silent or equivocal — even as mounting video and testimonial evidence from several sources corroborates Reade’s claim, where Ford presented no contemporaneous support for her allegations.
The New York Times remained silent for 19 days before publishing a story on Reade’s allegations, which Biden strongly denies. And The Washington Post, after interviewing Reade starting last year, declined to run a story — until the paper decided to follow the Times a day later.
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“If you look at the facts, there is more here than there were to some of the allegations that got a ton of coverage in the Brett Kavanaugh case,” Baier said. “ … Whether you can find out the truth by asking questions, you can at least ask the questions.”
Fox News’ Bret Baier, Brian Flood, Howard Kurtz and Gregg Re contributed to this report.
