Feminist author says she’d vote Biden even if he 'boiled babies and ate them', dismisses sexual assault claims
A 70-year-old feminist magazine columnist, Katha Pollitt, reportedly brushed off sexual assault allegations against former Vice President Joe Biden, saying she would vote for him even if "he boiled babies and ate them."
Pollitt, in her column, wrote that she was so desperate to get President Donald Trump out of the White House that she would vote for Biden, who is the presumptive Democratic nominee, despite the sexual assault allegations against him. A former staffer of Biden, Tara Reade, has alleged that the then-senator sexually assaulted her in 1993. She was a 29-year-old at the time and Biden was 50. The columnist, while writing in The Nation, wrote: "I would vote for Joe Biden if he boiled babies and ate them."
"I cannot believe that a rational person can grasp the disaster that is Donald Trump and withhold their support from Biden because of Tara Reade," the author added. "I would say this even if I had no problems with Reade's account."
Politt is widely known for her writings on feminist discourse and has written multiple books, including 'Reasonable Creatures: Essays on Women and Feminism', and 'Subject to Debate: Sense and Dissents on Women, Politics, and Culture'
The author, in her latest column, published on May 20, acknowledged that she would generally "take women's accusations very seriously." However, while talking about Reade, she wrote: "To believe Reade, you have to believe that Biden put her up against a wall and penetrated her with his fingers on the spur of the moment in a hallway in the Capitol complex, where she says she was looking for him to give him his gym bag."
Shortly after her column was published, Politt received heavy criticism for it, with political pundit Krystal Ball calling Pollitt's column "deranged." Ball in her tweet on Thursday, May 21, tweeted: "This is deranged. A writer for The Nation says she would vote for Joe Biden even if he ate boiled babies. This is what many in the Democratic Party have collapsed to in the Trump era. A willingness to abandon all principle and justify literally anything if it will hurt Trump."
Pollitt, however, later responded to the criticism by tweeting: "Most of the negative comments about my Tara Reade piece are from tender souls horrified by the boiled babies in the lede. Some ppl don't appreciate dark humor and comic overstatement. They must have a hard time in this fallen world."
The columnist is a liberal who generally focuses on various issues on politics, abortion, feminism, and welfare reform. Pollitt, in 1991, had coined the phrase The Smurfette Principle, where the author compared herself to the "lone female" in a group of men, according to the Daily Mail.
Reade, earlier this month, had shared how traumatized she was by the alleged assault. The 56-year-old told former Fox News and NBC News host Megyn Kelly that she would sometimes wake up yelling "stop," adding that the alleged attack "shattered" her. The former vice president, however, has publicly denied the allegations laid by Reade.