Jake Tapper Grills Gretchen Whitmer on Tara Reade’s Allegations: ‘Why Do You Believe Biden and Not Kavanaugh?’

CNN’s Jake Tapper pressed Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer (D) on whether she has a double standard for the sexual assault allegations that have been raised against former Vice President Joe Biden and Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

In a remote interview with Whitmer (which had to contend with some visual difficulties), Tapper asked for her thoughts on Tara Reade’s accusations against Biden while he continues running for president. At the same time, Tapper noted how Whitmer said she believed Christine Blasey Ford’s allegations against Kavanaugh back in 2018, even though Ford did not have as many contemporaneous accounts as Reade to back her up.

“You have spoken movingly about how you’re a survivor of assault yourself. Why do you believe Biden and not Kavanaugh?” Tapper asked. “Are they not both entitled to the same presumption of innocence regardless of their political views?”

“I’ll say this. We need to give people an opportunity to tell their story, but then we have a duty to vet it, and just because you’re a survivor doesn’t mean that every claim is equal. It means we give them the ability to make their case and the other side as well, and then to make a judgment that is informed,” Whitmer answered. “I have read a lot about this current allegation. I know Joe Biden, and I’ve watched his defense, and there’s not a pattern that goes into this. And I think for these reasons, I’m very comfortable that Joe Biden is who he says he is.”

Biden personally addressed Reade’s new allegations last week, saying “it is not true, I’m saying unequivocally it never never happened. And it didn’t. It never happened.”

As Whitmer continued to speak about the allegations on CNN, she told Tapper “I really resent the fact that every time a case comes up, all of us survivors have to weigh in. It is reopening wounds and it is ‘you know take us at our word, ask us for our opinion and let’s move on.'”

Tapper responded that he asked her about it since she was the only Democrat he was interviewing on Sunday. To that, Whitmer clarified that she wasn’t trying to criticize the CNN host, but make a broader point.

“I’m just sharing I think some of the simmering, you know, anger that we survivors have every time, that we’ve got to confront this from someone else’s behavior that we weren’t a party to,” she said. “What I think is this: we owe it to every woman who has a story, to listen to that story, and then to vet that story, ask the questions and be critical thinkers and then make the judgment based on all of those pieces. I’ve done that in this instance. And I’ll tell you this, I don’t believe that it’s consistent with the Joe Biden that I know, and I do believe Joe.”

Watch above, via CNN.