Donald Trump, Joe Biden, and the Politics of Sexual Misconduct

The Intercept Briefing

The Intercept

News, Politics, News Commentary

4.7 • 6.4K Ratings

🗓️ 6 May 2020

⏱️ 84 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Two dozen women have accused Donald Trump of sexual misconduct, harassment and assault, including rape. Trump has responded by denigrating, mocking and attacking his accusers. Eight women have made allegations of misconduct against Biden and one of them has accused him of sexual assault. Biden, who is running on a campaign to restore dignity and honesty to the White House, emphatically denies he assaulted his former staffer Tara Reade and has sought to explain away his conduct toward his other accusers by portraying his unwanted touching as his way of being affectionate. The New Republic’s Melissa Gira Grant discusses Reade’s allegations, Biden’s response and the broader discourse in the media and Democratic Party surrounding the actions of the presumptive nominee toward women. And former Nevada lawmaker Lucy Flores says Joe Biden touched her inappropriately, kissed her head and sniffed her hair when he was campaigning for her. She says she didn’t report it to the Obama White House at the time for fear of retaliation or rejection, but when Biden began to run for president she felt an obligation to speak out. Flores was soon followed by seven other women sharing similar stories. She discusses her experience with Biden, what it means that the Democratic party is standing by him and the impact of a choice between Trump and Biden.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	This is a content warning to our listeners.
0:03.0	This episode of Intercepted contains descriptions of sexual misconduct, sexual harassment,
0:08.0	and graphic descriptions of rape and sexual assault throughout the entirety of the program.
0:13.0	Welcome back to our Fox News virtual town hall, America Together, returning to work.
0:20.0	As president, what do you say to the people who are scared to go back to work?
0:25.0	I don't care. Too bad, it's always bad. And I don't care about it.
0:30.0	We're going to lose anywhere from 75, 80 to 100,000 or 90 or 95.
0:36.0	If you call losing 80 or 90,000 people successful, good.
0:41.0	It's okay with us. The employees have to work.
0:44.0	Now, if they don't want to work, make them work. They're not feeling great.
0:48.0	Our next question for the president comes from Clearwater, Florida. Here it is.
0:51.0	I will eat my neighbors. I'm not letting my kids die. I'm just going to be honest.
0:56.0	Because I'm somebody that thought I could fix this. And I'm starting to think about having to eat my neighbors.
1:02.0	I'll do it.
1:03.0	Okay, I love the question actually because what I did is I was saying it's going to pass.
1:09.0	Not going to be a big deal. People aren't dying from it.
1:12.0	The doctors would say, well, you shouldn't say that. I'll say what I think.
1:16.0	And then one day they said, sir, what's your problem? What is your problem?
1:21.0	This is the president's last thing. What do you tell your kids and grandkids about COVID-19, about this time?
1:28.0	You know, we're all playing a very complicated game of chess or poker.
1:32.0	Name whatever you want to name. Space Force. Space Force. But it's not checkers that I can tell you.
1:38.0	It's called America First. President Trump, thank you very much.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Intercept, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of The Intercept and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.