So maybe for the Times, news being “fit to print” depends on its political convenience, but at least they’re in good company. As far as I can tell, there have been a total of two professional articles written about Reade’s allegations. Granted, we can’t be sure they’re true, and there is reason to be circumspect in our judgment.

Zero billionaire donors. Zero sexual harassment allegations. Almost zero aging since this photo of him marching for women's rights sometime during the 20th century.

Since Elizabeth Warren dropped out, Reade has backed Bernie Sanders, giving her allegations a potential political motive. Then again, the veracity of her account would all but ensure her support for the only remaining candidate that didn’t sexually assault her.

A few years ago, Reade wrote a blog post praising Russian political leadership. In her interview on Rising, Reade explained that she had been misinformed while participating in a writing class with a Russian-American who had been xenophobically smeared. Of course, that could also be a lie. How could we possibly hope to discern the truth?

Enter journalism. Organizations like CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times and The Washington Post are legitimacy’s gatekeepers. Under the administration of a president whose casual relationship with truth consists of an occasional impulse to grab its metaphorical pussy, we rely on journalists to help us figure out what is real. That charge demands they do one of two things right now:

Publish a compelling reason why Reade’s allegations are significantly less credible than Blasey’s

Publish a full investigations of Reade’s allegations

Coming from a nobody like me, maybe that sounds like a lot to ask. But I’ve got friends in high places:

“For a woman to come forward in the glaring lights of focus, nationally, you’ve got to start off with the presumption that at least the essence of what she’s talking about is real.” — Joe Biden, the Kavanaugh Hearings, 2018

But wouldn’t it be easier if, just this one time, we maybe… didn’t?

Well, by destroying what’s left of their credibility when 77% of Americans already believe the mainstream media publishes “fake news,” they’re legitimizing Trump’s dismissal of their actual attempts to do their job. By the end of the COVID-19 pandemic, there is no doubt the president will have blood on his hands, but so will outlets like CNN who slice their journalistic hamstrings at the first sign of a threat to the status quo. The paranoia our president has weaponized in service of his political ends is a byproduct of the objectivity our media has bargained in service of theirs.

To Faust’s journalistic analogues,

If you don’t want Donald Trump to piss all over you every time you try to hold him accountable, stop dressing up like a urinal cake for Joe Biden.

If unlike Trump, golden showers aren’t your thing, I can put it more concretely in terms of your failed attempts to rally Sanders supporters around Biden. Fair warning, I’m going to be a little rough on your friend Joe here, but fear not — if you bear with me, you may yet manufacture my consent. That being said, as one of the millennials for whom Biden has “no empathy,” I do not like him.

I do not like that earlier in the “no empathy” clip, Biden cites MLK as one of his heroes despite having called our politics “good for the South, good for the N*gro” ten years after King dreamed of a nation in which whites and blacks would band arms in defense of justice. Like the vast majority of young people, I’d rather vote for the candidate who was arrested doing just that. Dr. King, a self-proclaimed democratic socialist, sought “a better distribution of wealth within this country for all God’s children.” Biden’s pleas to a roomful of wealthy donors struck a markedly different tone:

“No one’s standard of living will change, nothing will fundamentally change … I need you very badly. I hope if I win this nomination, I won’t let you down” — Joe Biden, 2019

I do not like that since JFK told us in 1962 to do what “most of the countries of Europe did years ago” by guaranteeing healthcare to their citizens, more Americans have been killed by healthcare lobbyists like the one chairing Biden’s campaign than by every war in U.S. history combined. When Biden calls a right that other countries have guaranteed since he was a toddler a “pie in the sky,” it’s an insult to the nation where JFK pointed to what may as well have been an actual pie in the sky and vowed to plant a flag in it.

This ad makes it glaringly obvious why Trump thinks “Bernie would be tougher.”

I do not like Joe Biden for these reasons and many others I learned not from a news media utterly unwilling to vet the candidate for whom Trump is already licking his lips, but because my privilege enabled me to investigate him on my own. If you haven’t had your fill, I’ve learned a lot more, almost none of which you’ve covered.

If Biden were running against Mitt Romney or John McCain, I’d turn on #VoteBlue faster than Biden on gay marriage when it hit 50% in the polls. Lucky for you, we live in an unprecedented time, and Donald Trump is singularly despicable. All I ask is to leave the ballot box on November 3 and confidently declare I voted for the candidate who wasn’t a rapist.

79% of the U.K. trusts BBC. No major news outlet in the U.S. breaks 50%. Trump is a virus that can only survive amid the deepest mistrust. Objectivity is his vaccine, and the choice is yours to make. If you had made it five years ago, Trump likely wouldn’t have been elected in the first place. If you make it today — if you tell us the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, starting with Tara Reade — you just might stop him in 2020.

Until then, #IBelieveTara. For me to be #VoteBlueNoMatterWho, you need to be

#MeTooNoMatterWho