For media, it’s ‘believe all women unless . . . ’

SORRY, #MeToo: the liberal media had its first major test in the “believe all women” era and, of course, it has failed spectacularly. Vice President Joe Biden, currently on track to be the Democratic nominee for president, has been accused of sexual assault by former staffer Tara Reade. Reade has some corroboration, including audio of her mother calling into the “Larry King Live” show in 1993 and inquiring what a staffer “for a prominent senator” in Washington could do if she had run into “problems.” But the liberal media just gosh darn aren’t sure she’s credible.

It’s hard not to notice that they didn’t have any such qualms about running with the accusations made against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh in 2018.

The main difference, of course, between the accusations against Brett Kavanaugh and Joe Biden is there is evidence Biden’s accuser knew him while no such evidence existed that Kavanaugh had ever met accuser Christine Blasey Ford.

There also don’t exist dozens of pictures of women standing by awkwardly as Brett Kavanaugh sniffed their hair or rubbed their shoulders.

But the key difference is that Kavanaugh was appointed by a Republican president and the Democrats were assisted by their friends in the media in trying to bring him down. Now Democrats suddenly want the due process they never afforded Kavanaugh.

On Thursday, Nancy Pelosi offered up the defense that Joe Biden should be believed because “Joe Biden is Joe Biden.” Well, Brett Kavanaugh was Brett Kavanaugh, an upstanding man who had his reputation casually destroyed because the liberal media wanted to help Democrats squash his nomination.

Mollie Hemingway, co-author of the book “Justice on Trial: The Kavanaugh Confirmation and the Future of the Supreme Court,” told me, “It would be difficult for there to be a greater disparity between how the media engaged in mob-like behavior against Kavanaugh and how much effort they’re putting into helping Biden quietly dispose of Tara Reade’s allegation against him.”

Ben Smith, media columnist for The New York Times and one of the few journalists at mainstream outlets who has been asking why Tara Reade isn’t getting a media hearing, interviewed Dean Baquet, the executive editor of The New York Times, to ask him why it took the newspaper 19 days to report on Reade’s allegations.

For reference, The New York Times covered all accusations of Kavanaugh, even the patently absurd ones, within three days of the accusation being made and often on the same day.

Baquet told Smith that Reade’s low profile is part of the equation. “If you ask the average person in America, they didn’t know about the Tara Reade case.”

Well, yes, it’s hard for the average person in America to have heard of Tara Reade if outlets like The New York Times refuse to cover the story.

On Friday, Biden publicly denied, for the first time, the allegations made by Reade. Appearing on “Morning Joe” on MSNBC, Biden was grilled by Mika Brzezinski, who asked why Biden won’t approve a search of Reade’s name in his records. Biden, who is seeming increasingly lost in interviews, stumbled over his answer before angrily insisting, “There is nothing!”

Of course when Kavanaugh got angry that he was being portrayed as a gang rapist, we got wall-to-wall stories about him his “white male anger,” which The New York Times called borrowing “from Trump’s playbook.” Does Joe Biden have that same “white male anger”?

And on the Vox Web site, senior politics correspondent Andrew Procop saw Kavanaugh’s denial as a problem and, again, a sign he was following Trump’s lead. “Regardless of whether that allegation is true or false, it’s clear how President Donald Trump would want him to respond: by denying everything (which, so far, Kavanaugh has).”

Obviously, that’s bad news for Joe Biden now that he is responding by denying everything.

“Are women to be believed except when it pertains to you?” Brzezinski asked Biden. Biden responded that accusers should be heard but the “circumstances and facts” matter. Welcome to supporting due process, Mr. Vice President. Does it apply to everyone?