Team Trump Debated How to Weaponize Biden Assault Allegation
As the primary winds down and former Vice President Joe Biden, the party’s presumptive nominee, pivots to the general election, a claim that he sexually assaulted a former staffer in the early 1990s is already popping up on the virtual campaign trail from Democrats and Republicans alike.
Biden’s pledge to select a female running mate to round out the Democratic ticket has recently put several of the top women thought to be considered for that role in a tough spot: how to respond to the decades-old allegation against him by Tara Reade.
In President Donald Trump’s vast network, the Reade assault allegation had already piqued the interest of some of the president’s top operatives, as well as the president himself. For weeks, the claim has been the subject of a quiet deliberation within the 2020 Trump campaign and the broader Trump re-election project about how much, and how aggressively, to promote the accuser and her story, according to three sources with knowledge of the various deliberations.