MSNBC anchor Nicolle Wallace argued that “the right is running a smear campaign against Joe Biden” as the former vice president faces an allegation of sexual assault from former Senate staffer Tara Reade.
Wallace, a staunch critic of President Trump, made her comments while reacting to Biden’s interview earlier Friday with MSNBC colleague Mika Brzezinski, in which he denied the allegation. Biden also issued a statement saying the alleged assault did not happen.
Top Democrats including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) have defended Biden, saying they do not believe the allegations are true, while Republicans and the Trump campaign and conservative party leaders have accused Democrats and the media of a double standard when it comes to Biden and Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who faced sexual misconduct allegations during his confirmation hearings in 2018.
Trump has also faced several sexual assault accusations, including columnist E. Jean Carroll, who accused him of raping her in a Manhattan department store in the 1990s, but he has strongly denied the allegations.
“Let me just say this to you having once been a part of the Republican party. The right isn’t running an intellectually honest operation to get to the bottom of whether Tara Reade was victimized. The right is running a smear campaign against Joe Biden,” Wallace opined.
“The right wants to create some sort of equal playing field on which Donald Trump’s more than two dozen, or nearly two dozen accusers sort of have some company on the other side,” she added.
“The right is not running the same operation that the Democrats are running which is to try to … have some consistency around statements that I think just about every elected Democrat has made about women in the context of the #MeToo movement,” she also said.