The news about Joe Biden has taken on a completely surreal quality. For a long time, the headlines were about his declining mental state, which is becoming hard to ignore. This was bizarre enough in a presumptive Democrat candidate for the presidency.

Then, Tara Reade dropped a bombshell, alleging that the same politician known for publicly groping and sniffing women and children had sexually assaulted her. The media assiduously ignored Reade's allegations as long as they could and eventually reported on them only to dismiss both Reade and the allegations.

The media's worst nightmare came true, though, when corroborating evidence about Reade's allegations started piling up. It was easy enough to downplay corroboration when it came from her brother and a friend. Of course they'd side with her. But when a phone call from Reade's mother to The Larry King Show in 1993 — a time contemporaneous with the event — popped up and Mom was talking about her daughter's problems with a "prominent senator," things got dicey.

The nightmare reached Stephen King proportions yesterday, when two women who knew Reade in the mid-1990s, not long after the alleged assault, reported that Reade had told them about the assault. While the fact that she told them shortly after she left Biden's office does not prove that he attacked her, it certainly proves that she's not creating the story out of whole cloth today for some nefarious purpose. By contrast, Christine Blasey Ford, a pro-abortion fanatic, first started telling the story about Brett Kavanaugh when he was touted as a possible Supreme Court nominee during the Bush presidency, decades after the event had allegedly happened.

Lynda LaCasse, who intends to vote for Biden no matter what he did, was Reade's neighbor and friend in 1995 or 1996. She told Business Insider that she remembers Reade telling her about Biden's conduct two or three years before:

LaCasse told Insider that in 1995 or 1996, Reade told her she had been assaulted by Biden. "I remember her saying, here was this person that she was working for and she idolized him," LaCasse said. "And he kind of put her up against a wall. And he put his hand up her skirt and he put his fingers inside her. She felt like she was assaulted, and she really didn't feel there was anything she could do." LaCasse said that she remembers Reade getting emotional as she told the story. "She was crying," she said. "She was upset. And the more she talked about it, the more she started crying. I remember saying that she needed to file a police report." LaCasse said she does not recall whether Reade supplied any other details, like the location of the alleged assault or anything Biden may have said. "I don't remember all the details," LaCasse said. "I remember the skirt. I remember the fingers. I remember she was devastated."

As if that's not enough, Lorraine Sanchez, with whom Reade worked from 1994 to 1996, also heard from Reade that something happened in D.C.:

"[Reade said] she had been sexually harassed by her former boss while she was in DC," Sanchez said, "and as a result of her voicing her concerns to her supervisors, she was let go, fired." Sanchez said she does not recall if Reade offered details about the sort of harassment she allegedly suffered, or if she named Biden. "What I do remember," Sanchez said, "is reassuring her that nothing like that would ever happen to her here in our office, that she was in a safe place, free from any sexual harassment."

Michelle Goldberg, a New York Times writer known for using different standards for Biden and Kavanaugh, says the new evidence is a "nightmare" — not because a woman suffered at Biden's hands, but because it hurts Biden's chances at the White House:

This is the most persuasive corroborating evidence that has come out so far. What a nightmare. https://t.co/u4yPbEElaf — Michelle Goldberg (@michelleinbklyn) April 27, 2020

Goldberg is frightened, but the Washington Post is still valiantly spinning, this time claiming that these new facts are merely partisan amplification of “efforts” to “question” Biden’s behavior:

Developments in allegations against Biden amplify efforts to question his behavior https://t.co/OWXvnKzvvN — Post Politics (@postpolitics) April 28, 2020

What does amplify the problem is that someone remembered a video from last year in which Kamala Harris said she believes those Biden accusers who complained about unwanted touching. Scratch her off Biden's list of possible female choices for vice president. Maybe Biden can expand his explorations by looking at so-called transgender women.

So far, though, Biden's response to the allegation has simply been to deny it in a formal statement. The media have refrained from asking him any questions about it.

Meanwhile, Biden's latest campaign video gives more fuel to the speculation that he is so lost in dementia that he can no longer speak for himself. He doesn’t even look like Jill Biden's ventriloquist dummy here because his lips aren't moving. Instead, he just looks like a dummy: