OPINION | This article contains opinion. This site is licensed to publish this content.
🚨 POLL: Should Biden Drop Out?
[mo-optin-form id=”eTeQvgsXSI”]
2008 Magazine Column In ‘CounterPunch’ Accuses Joe Biden Of ‘Loutish Sexual Advances to Staffers, Interns’
🚨 POLL: Should Biden Drop Out?
💥 Click To Text Your Answer 👇
A 2008 far-left magazine called CounterPunch, accused Joe Biden of “loutish sexual advances” in the U.S. Senate, according to Breitbart News.
The article has created a lightning rod in the debate over Biden and his former staffer Tara Reade’s allegations of sexual assault.
The article was written by the late Alexander Cockburn, who lamented Obama’s choice of Biden as his running mate in August of 2008.
Cockburn’s opinion of Biden was that he an empty and worthless swamp creature who was purely chosen to improve Obama’s electoral odds.
In the original article, Cockburn openly accused his of harassing women who worked in the Senate, even while he was supposedly grieving over the loss of his wife.
“Biden is a notorious flapjaw. His vanity deludes him into believing that every word that drops from his mouth is minted in the golden currency of Pericles. Vanity is the most conspicuous characteristic of US Senators en bloc, nourished by deferential acolytes and often expressed in loutish sexual advances to staffers, interns and the like. On more than one occasion CounterPunch’s editors have listened to vivid accounts by the recipient of just such advances, this staffer of another senator being accosted by Biden in the well of the senate in the weeks immediately following his first wife’s fatal car accident. [emphasis added]”
CounterPunch republished Cockburn’s piece this Tuesday, framing it around the much-shared passage with a new title: “Biden the Lout.” Editor Jeffrey St. Clair added a note to the beginning of the post (emphasis added): “We reprint the story today because it makes clear that the allegations of sexual misconduct against senate staffers has been swirling around Biden for many years, dating back to his first years in the senate.”
Hours after CounterPunch republished Cockburn’s column, Buzzfeed pushed a story that contained the apparent party line on Reade’s accusation:
“Biden believes that all women have the right to be heard and to have their claims thoroughly reviewed,” the talking points read, according to a copy sent to two Democratic operatives. “In this case, a thorough review by the New York Times has led to the truth: this incident did not happen.”
“Here’s the bottom line,” they read. “Vice President Joe Biden has spent over 40 years in public life: 36 years in the Senate; 7 Senate campaigns, 2 previous presidential runs, two vice presidential campaigns, and 8 years in the White House. There has never been a complaint, allegation, hint or rumor of any impropriety or inappropriate conduct like this regarding him — ever.”
More from Breitbart:
These three sentences have gone viral as the former VP, now the presumptive Democrat presidential nominee, is trying to discredit Tara Reade, a woman who briefly worked for Biden’s office in the early 1990s.
Reade says Biden pushed her against a wall and digitally penetrated her. She is now calling for him to release his congressional papers, which could include personnel files that may corroborate her claim to have filed a sexual harassment complaint — which, in her recollection, omitted the alleged assault.
The magazine’s reporting contradicts a talking point reportedly shared within the Biden campaign.
The final sentence — “There has never been a complaint, allegation, hint or rumor of any impropriety or inappropriate conduct like this regarding him — ever” — is clearly refuted by Cockburn’s column, printed more than a decade before this current scandal.
