President Joe Biden, who launched his reelection campaign last month, will enter the 2024 election carrying some hefty baggage in the post-#MeToo era.
Politico reported this week that Biden is "on the cusp" of hiring confirmed misogynist T.J. Ducklo for a senior communications role on his campaign. Ducklo, the former deputy press secretary in the Biden White House, was forced to resign in February 2021 after threatening to "destroy" a female reporter. He has ties to notorious sex pests such as Chris Dodd, Mark Halperin, and Matt Lauer.
Some Democrats are rightly concerned that Biden would be sending a terrible message by rehiring the abusive aide. "It's hard to believe that in the post-#MeToo, anti-bullying world we live in, that the president's team would be this tone-deaf," Michael LaRosa, the former press secretary for first lady Jill Biden, told Politico. "Hiring former personnel who embarrassed and humiliated him in his first three weeks in office and created an unnecessary distraction in the briefing room and for the first family feels counterintuitive to me."
Biden could also face challenges because one of his closest aides and confidantes, Anita Dunn, gave "damage control" advice to Harvey Weinstein, the disgraced Hollywood mogul and prominent Democratic donor who will spend the rest of his life in prison for rape and sexual assault. Biden's disdain for women is also apparent in his refusal to acknowledge his granddaughter's existence because her mother is a former stripper described by Hunter Biden (the girl's father) as "hardly the dating type."
Then there is Biden himself, who has a long history of inappropriately touching people of all genders and age groups. But let's face it, the #MeToo era died in April 2020, when former Senate aide Tara Reade accused then-candidate Biden of sexual assault. Her accusation was far more credible than Christine Blasey Ford's allegation against then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh in 2018. Nevertheless, journalists were obligated to revise their "believe all women" mantra because Biden was the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee in a race against Donald Trump.
Biden is trying to become the oldest president credibly accused of sexual assault to win reelection.