Biden Accuser Tara Reade Says She’s Defecting to Russia

Tara Reade is defecting to Russia.

On Tuesday, the former Senate aide who had accused President Joe Biden of sexual assault appeared at a Russian state press conference to make the announcement. Flanked by alleged Russian spy Maria Butina, Reade told the press that she no longer feels safe in America.

“I feel very surrounded by protection and safety,” Reade said. “And I just really so appreciate Maria [Butina] and everyone who’s been giving me that at a time when it’s been very difficult to know if I’m safe or not.”

“You have U.S. and European citizens looking for safe haven here,” Reade continued. “And luckily, the Kremlin is accommodating. So we’re lucky.”

Reade’s defection follows reports of Russia apparently being interested in building a special village outside Moscow meant to serve as a refuge for conservative Americans and Canadians.

“To my Russian brothers and sisters, I’m sorry right now that American elites are choosing to have such an aggressive stance,” Reade said during the conference. “Just know that most American citizens do want to be friends and hope that we can have unity again.”

In 2019, Reade spoke out about an alleged workplace culture in Biden’s office rife with abuses of “power and control.” Numerous outlets—including the Associated Press, The Washington Post, and Vox—spoke with her about some of the allegations but declined to report further after finding discrepancies or contradictions.

Then, in 2020, Reade officially accused then-nominee Biden of sexually assaulting her in 1993, when she was a staff assistant in his Senate office. Biden denied the allegations.

Initially, there seemed to be some corroboration. In The New York Times’ initial reporting, one friend was cited as recalling Reade telling her of the allegations at the time. Another friend and Reade’s brother said they had been told of details over time. Even a court document from divorce proceedings in 1996 provided some contemporaneous evidence. “On several occasions petitioner related a problem that she was having at work regarding sexual harassment in U.S. Senator Joe Biden’s office,” read the document. (Reade had divorced her husband, Ted Dronen, after accusing him of being abusive to her and their then-15-month-old daughter. Dronen had acknowledged being violent with her once, but cast doubt on some of her other testimony.)

Meanwhile, according to the Times and elsewhere, others who worked in the office with Reade said they could not attest to such an incident. Staff aides who Reade said she told at the time all said they did not recall the incident. A Politico investigation held that Reade “left a trail of aggrieved acquaintances in California’s Central Coast region who say they remember two things about her—she spoke favorably about her time working for Biden, and she left them feeling duped.”

While not uncommon for survivors, Reade was found to have changed her story numerous times. She also maintained she was fired for retaliation. But a PBS investigation featuring interviews with over 70 former Biden staffers found that Reade lost her job because of poor performance. Reade had written various reasons over the years for why she departed: to pursue acting and writing, out of fatigue at America’s “deception and xenophobia” toward Russia, or to return to the Midwest to be with a boyfriend.

In that vein, Reade has a history of supporting Russia, which makes her defection perhaps a little less surprising. After Russia invaded Ukraine last year, Reade posted a YouTube video praising Russian officials and criticized American censorship of “good news outlets” like state-run network Russia Today. Reade was able to generate such warm relations, she was apparently invited by Russian diplomats to a U.N. Security Council meeting on “weapons diversion”—something she has no expertise on.

Reade told Semafor that she was invited because of her commentary on the invasion. She also called herself a “longtime anti-imperialist” and expressed her frustrations with “Russophobia.”

Presidential hopefuls Vivek Ramaswamy and Ron DeSantis have taken their “war on woke” to the extreme, with featured speaking spots at the second annual Moms for Liberty summit.

Moms for Liberty is a far-right organization that claims it supports parental rights. In reality, it supports erasing any mention of race, racism, and LGBTQ people from school curriculums. The group is hosting a conference in July, and the speaking lineup will feature both 2024 nominees, in a sign of where the party is headed.

“We need elected officials at every level of government to respect that parents should always be involved in the decisions that affect their children—especially while they are at school,” group co-founders Tiffany Justice and Tina Descovich said in a press release about Ramaswamy’s addition to the lineup Tuesday.

Ramaswamy and DeSantis certainly fit that bill. Ramaswamy has hinged his entire campaign on fighting “wokeism,” railing against multiculturalism and gender ideology. DeSantis, meanwhile, has rampaged through Florida’s public school system, banning diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, prohibiting discussion of sexual identity, and removing books from schools.

Moms for Liberty wields a newfound power in the Republican Party, as politicians try to tap into the group’s supporter base. The group has backed bills banning transgender women and girls from playing womens’ sports, encouraged book bans, and featured other extremist speakers.

Ramaswamy and DeSantis embracing Moms for Liberty shows that they aren’t just fighting “wokeness.” The two men are ready to stamp out entire communities.

Donald Trump announced Tuesday that if he is elected president, he will end birthright citizenship as part of an attempt to stop undocumented immigration to the United States.

Undoing the Fourteenth Amendment would be a lengthy and complicated process, which the former president does not seem to understand.

“As part of my plan to secure the border, on day one of my new term in office, I will sign an executive order making clear to federal agencies that under the correct interpretation of the law, going forward the future children of illegal aliens will not receive automatic U.S. citizenship,” Trump said in a video posted on his Truth Social platform.

The Fourteenth Amendment was ratified in 1868 to help guarantee rights to Black Americans after the end of slavery. The measure grants citizenship to anyone “born or naturalized in the United States” and guarantees them “equal protection under the laws.”

Trump had initially suggested ending birthright citizenship in 2018, telling Axios he was under the (false) impression that it was possible to do so via executive order, instead of by constitutional amendment. If he were to issue an executive order, it would most likely be immediately challenged in court.

The president does not have the power to unilaterally overturn a constitutional amendment, legal experts warned at the time. While some conservative scholars argue that the Fourteenth Amendment only refers to children born in the U.S. to lawful permanent residents, the general consensus is that you can’t just stop applying that part of the law.

Trump-appointed Judge James C. Ho argued at the time that the U.S. legal system has to follow its own laws, which means applying them equally to foreign visitors (except diplomats) and immigrants. “Opponents of illegal immigration cannot claim to champion the rule of law and then, in the same breath, propose policies that violate our Constitution,” he wrote in a 2011 op-ed for The Wall Street Journal.

Meanwhile, the actual process to amend the constitution is lengthy and complicated. One of the many steps requires a two-thirds vote from both the House and Senate—an unlikely event, given how divided Congress has become. So Trump’s proposal is just another empty promise.

A Twitter account pretending to be Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a big fan of Elon Musk—and it seems the attraction is mutual.

The real Ocasio-Cortez tweeted Tuesday that an account pretending to be her press office was sharing fake information and going viral.

“The Twitter CEO has engaged it, boosting visibility,” she said. “I am assessing with my team how to move forward. In the meantime, be careful of what you see.”

The fake account, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Press Release, identifies itself as a parody account, but that hasn’t stopped everything it posts from going viral. (Part of that may be because the account has a blue check and pays for Twitter Blue, the Musk-pushed subscription plan that provides perks such as increased visibility.)

All of the recent tweets have mentioned popular right-wing talking points, like transphobia and gas stoves, and mocked Ocasio-Cortez. But the account has also posted multiple favorable tweets about Musk.

“This might be the wine talking, but I’ve got a crush on @elonmusk,” the account said on Sunday.

The Twitter CEO responded a day later, replying with a fire emoji.

As Ocasio-Cortez pointed out herself, Musk engaging with the fake account both legitimizes it and helps boost its visibility on the platform. But Musk’s joking is also indicative of the right wing’s weird obsession with the New York representative.

Republicans hate Ocasio-Cortez and are quick to blame her for just about anything. But they also all seem to find her attractive, creating a bizarre dynamic that leaves the rest of us baffled.

One Republican congressman outright admitted his frustration that, if the debt ceiling gets resolved, the Republican presidential nominee won’t be able to run in 2024 on the chaos that would come if the country defaults.

“And what does the device of two years do?” North Carolina Representative Dan Bishop posed incredulously on Tuesday, flanked by far-right colleagues like Lauren Boebert and Byron Donalds. “It removes the issue from the national conversation during the presidential election to come. How could you more successfully kneecap any Republican president than to take that issue out of his or her hands?”

As Congress approaches a Wednesday vote to avoid the nation defaulting on its debt, far-right House Republicans have complained that a bill making the IRS more ineffective, imposing work requirements on more people, and ensuring military spending remains high is not enough.

Their intransigence apparently was not just about cutting as much as they could but also about carrying water for the eventual nominee—which, for most far-right members like Bishop, means Donald Trump. Republicans voted three times to raise the debt ceiling under the twice-impeached, criminally indicted, and liable-for-sexual-abuse former president.

The admission by Bishop follows Matt Gaetz’s acknowledgment last week that the debt limit talks were just about holding the government (and America) “hostage.”

All this to say, if there is any guiding principle or through line between Republicans threatening economic disaster, then complaining about America avoiding it, all while having voted to avoid such disasters in the past—it’s simply: Live and die at Trump’s beck and call.