In April 2019, a woman named Tara Reade reached out to me with a clear, consistent story to tell about her experience as a staffer in Joe Biden’s Senate office in 1993. I spent hours on the phone with her, and many more tracking down possible witnesses and documents, trying to confirm her account.

Reade told me that a senior aide told her Biden liked her legs and that he wanted her to serve cocktails at a fundraiser for him, a request she found demeaning and declined. When she later complained to others in the office that Biden would put his hands on her shoulder, neck, and hair during meetings in ways that made her uncomfortable, she says she was blamed and told to dress more conservatively. Within a few months, she said, her responsibilities had been stripped and she felt she was being pushed out of the job. She went back home to California deflated.

Reade told me that she wanted me to think of this story as being about abuse of power, “but not sexual misconduct.” Her emphasis was on how she was treated in Biden’s office by Senate aides, who she said retaliated against her for complaining about how Biden touched her in meetings. “I don’t know if [Biden] knew why I left,” she said. “He barely knew us by name.”

She sent me an email that evening with an essay she’d written. Her local paper in California, the Union, published a similar version a few weeks later with a line she’d sent to me, too: “This is not a story about sexual misconduct; it is a story about abuse of power. It is a story about when a member of Congress allows staff to threaten or belittle or bully on their behalf unchecked to maintain power rather than modify the behavior.” 

Last year, Reade encouraged me to speak with a friend of hers who counseled her through her time in Biden’s office in 1992 and 1993. The friend was clear about what had happened, and what hadn’t.

“On the scale of other things we heard, and I feel ashamed, but it wasn’t that bad. [Biden] never tried to kiss her directly. He never went for one of those touches. It was one of those, ‘sorry you took it that way.’ I know that is very hard to explain,” the friend told me. She went on: “What was creepy was that it was always in front of people.” 

I wanted to break this story. Badly. About half a dozen women had stepped forward around the time I spoke with Reade to say they were bothered by how Biden had touched them at events. I wrote a column praising them for staring down the political media that had given him a pass for all those years. Reade’s story took these complaints further — showing how even lower-grade inappropriate conduct can have real consequences for a woman’s career, an important subject that we still don’t talk about nearly enough.

I knew I wasn’t the only reporter Reade was talking to. The New York Times had three reporters on the story, she told me. On April 3, the day after we first spoke, she texted me four times. She wanted to know when I planned to publish, and she warned me that other outlets were getting ready to do so.

That day, the Union published an article with her story. This happens sometimes. It’s happened to me, many times. You fight for a story that would be explosive if you could prove it, but you can’t. I continued reporting on her story for a few more weeks after the story broke, but I didn’t get enough. Vox did not publish anything about Reade in 2019. Neither did the major outlets that I know were pursuing the story, including the Times, the Washington Post, and the Associated Press.

In March 2020, Reade resurfaced with a new allegation, which she told on The Katie Halper Show. In addition to her account of her experience with office staff, Reade said that in 1993, Biden forced an unwanted sexual encounter on her. She said Biden pushed her against a wall on the Capitol grounds, kissed her, and then digitally penetrated her — all against her will.

Biden’s campaign did not respond publicly to Reade’s claims in 2019. On May 1, Biden answered questions about the allegations for the first time on MSNBC’s Morning Joe. He denied all of Reade’s claims and underscored his denial of the sexual assault allegation. “I’m saying unequivocally, it never, never happened,” he told host Mika Brzezinski.

Three aides whom Reade said she approached about her complaints in 1993 told the New York Times that they also dispute her account. “I never once witnessed, or heard of, or received, any reports of inappropriate conduct, period — not from Ms. Reade, not from anyone,” said Marianne Baker, Biden’s longtime executive assistant. “I have absolutely no knowledge or memory of Ms. Reade’s accounting of events, which would have left a searing impression on me as a woman professional, and as a manager.”

When Reade’s story reemerged in a new form, I went through my reporting notes and interview transcripts from a year ago. I spoke with Reade last week for several hours over the course of multiple interviews. Reade and I have had a good rapport. She’s optimistic and idealistic, even, as one friend told me, to a fault. When she tells her account, she becomes emotional. She seems sincere.

If I were an old friend of Reade’s and she told me this same story privately over the course of a year, I doubt I would question her account. The brain processes traumatic experiences differently, making it difficult for some survivors to share them as a linear narrative. And the personal nature of a sexual assault can saddle victims with feelings of shame and doubt. It’s not easy to talk about. Many sexual assault survivors never speak of the experience at all.

But I’m not an old friend. I’m a journalist. Reade came to me because she wanted to share her story with the world, not just with me. It was clear in our conversations that she understood the difference. I listened to her, I interviewed relevant sources, and I returned to her many times in an attempt to get more information to help me find more corroboration.

Reade’s latest allegation is far more serious and comes in a far more fraught political context. The story that both she and her corroborating witnesses are telling has changed dramatically. This leaves me — all of us — in an agonizing place. I’ve written many articles through the Me Too era. It’s unrealistic to demand “perfect” victims. And, like most who come forward with allegations of sexual misconduct or assault, Reade has suffered for speaking out. In several exchanges this year and last year, she’s shown me disturbing messages she’s received online.

As my colleague Anna North writes, there has long been an ambiguity in the Me Too movement. The rallying cry has been to “believe women.” But the acts of journalism that have driven the movement forward have been built on extraordinary amounts of evidence: They usually include not just consistent corroboration but oftentimes multiple stories, stacked on top of each other. Taking on powerful men over these issues was unthinkable just a few years ago. It’s required herculean effort.

Holding powerful men accountable takes a mountain of evidence

Reporters who’ve succeeded in forcing powerful men to be held to account relied on an incredible amount of reporting to do it.

For example, Irin Carmon, who, along with Amy Brittain, exposed Charlie Rose for an alleged decades-long pattern of sexual harassment, had pursued the story for years. When their exposé appeared in the Washington Post, it was built on accusations from eight women, three on the record. Carmon and Brittain found consistency across the women’s stories and strong corroboration of each account:

There are striking commonalities in the accounts of the women, each of whom described their interactions with Rose in multiple interviews with The Post. For all of the women, reporters interviewed friends, colleagues or family members who said the women had confided in them about aspects of the incidents.

Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein fell in 2017 after Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey of the New York Times published the accounts of dozens of women who said Weinstein had assaulted or harassed them over the previous 30 years. Ronan Farrow published another story shortly after in the New Yorker, an account that included 13 accusations of sexual assault, three of them rape. All three reporters have gone on to write books about the incredible lengths they went to in order to get the story.

Eight women have now said they’ve been made uncomfortable by Biden in public settings. Reade is the lone woman to accuse him of sexual assault. This is a situation out of her control, but it means that reporters can’t build a story about Biden around a pattern of behavior, where multiple accusers boost one another’s story. Instead, reporters are looking at Reade’s account in isolation — and that account has changed.

When we spoke a year ago, Reade told me the only named sources she could give me were her deceased mother and the friend I spoke to. A recently uncovered tape of her mom on Larry King Live appears to corroborate Reade’s claim that she was struggling in Biden’s office in 1993, but does not include an assault allegation. When I reconnected with the friend I spoke to last year, who had previously told me Biden had not assaulted Reade, she told me a version of the story that matched Reade’s latest account.

This year, Reade said to Halper that she also told her brother about the alleged assault and harassment. He later told the Washington Post in an interview that he remembers his sister was upset in 1993 about Biden touching her neck and shoulders. He followed up with a Post reporter a few days later over text message to say Reade also said Biden “put his hands under her clothes.”

Since then, a former neighbor of Reade’s, Lynda LaCasse, has come forward in an interview with Business Insider. She said Reade spoke about the harassment and assault claims in 1995. I asked Reade why she hadn’t mentioned LaCasse to me a year ago, or to Halper, or to the first few reporters she told about her assault allegation, including the New York Times, which was working on a deep dive into her story at the same time. She said LaCasse hadn’t seemed like a relevant source because she’d talked to her two years after the alleged incident took place. Reade added that she told reporters about two other anonymous friends later who hadn’t seemed relevant to her either. When asked a similar question by the Associated Press, which had been working on the story, too, Reade didn’t respond.

If Reade had told a consistent story and shared all of her corroborating sources with reporters, if those sources had told a consistent story, if the Union piece had shaken loose other cases like hers, or if there were “smoking gun” evidence in Biden’s papers, her account might have been reported on differently in mainstream media a year ago. It is not fair to an individual survivor that their claims require an extraordinary level of confirmation, but it’s what reporters have found is necessary for their stories to hold up to public scrutiny and successfully hold powerful men accountable. So we are here.

The media took Reade seriously. She wanted more.

When Halper asked Reade why she didn’t mention the assault allegation originally, she responded by blaming the media:

Well, I was going to tell the whole thing … the whole history with Biden. … But the way I was being questioned, it made me so uncomfortable that I didn’t trust it. And no offense to the reporters out there, it’s just maybe that’s something that can be learned, how to talk to somebody who got. … Because I just really got shut down. … And the narrative [they] really wanted it to be was that it wasn’t a sexual thing. Like don’t say it’s sexual. And so I was like, okay, I guess I can’t really say the whole story. …

But that wasn’t the narrative I wanted. I wanted the truth. And I certainly had no qualms about the accusations being of sexual misconduct. Reporters at many outlets, including the reporters Reade spoke to, have not shied away from reporting on detailed sexual assault allegations. In the Me Too era, reporters have been aggressive in uncovering stories of powerful men who, for far too long, have abused and assaulted women with no consequences.

In the interview with Halper and in her most recent conversations with me, Reade was critical of how major outlets treated her story. For example, in the interview with Halper, Reade said she contacted “someone at the Washington Post and then they never really followed up.”

The Washington Post says that it interviewed Reade “on multiple occasions — both this year and last — as well as people she says she told of the assault claim and more than a half-dozen former staffers of Biden’s Senate office,” a fact Reade conceded to me in an interview.

In a recent conversation, I asked Reade why she would say the media was shutting her down when she was initially so adamant with me (and other outlets) that this wasn’t a misconduct story. The only answer she gave was that she was speaking about the response to her claims “collectively.” And in her opinion, the added details still fit her construct that “this is not a story about sexual misconduct,” because, she told me, sexual assault itself is about power.

I spoke with Reade’s friend again this week. She said that Reade had told her about the alleged assault the week it happened in 1993. I asked the friend why, then, did she volunteer so explicitly that Biden “never tried to kiss her” or touch her inappropriately. “It just organically rolled out that way,” the friend said. “[Reade] and I had many conversations a year ago about what her degree of comfort was. She wanted to leave a layer there, and I did not want to betray that. It just wasn’t my place.”  

The missing complaint

Reade told me last year that she gave a supervisor a written statement voicing her complaints about how she’d been treated in the office. The complaint was limited to the harassment allegation, not the misconduct allegation, she told me this year.

I helped Reade in 2019 request documents from a few offices to try to find the record. (Personnel files wouldn’t be released to a third party, like a reporter.) First, she put in a request with the Senate secretary’s office, which maintains some employment records. That office provided a copy of her payroll history, which confirmed her dates of employment and salary.

We next tried the Office of Personnel Management, which maintains federal records of employment, but the office was not able to track down a file in its electronic system. I then checked with a source who worked in a warehouse across the country where it would most likely have ended up to see if there was a physical file stashed there. He couldn’t find one.

One place the complaint could have landed is back in the Senate office, though that wouldn’t be proper protocol. Biden is now under pressure to check files maintained by the University of Delaware. He gave the university his Senate documents in 2012 under the condition they’d remain sealed until two years after his time in office. The time frame was extended when he decided to run for president.

When asked on Morning Joe if he would have the documents reviewed, Biden said he would not, maintaining a personnel file wouldn’t be there and that the files are about his policy decision-making, speechwriting, etc.

Biden says that if a complaint exists, it would be held by the National Archives and they should release any relevant documents. He also sent a letter to the Senate secretary’s office asking for any relevant records, a request the office declined because any records that might exist are “strictly confidential.”

Reade herself says the complaint didn’t include the assault accusation, so finding the complaint — or failing to find it — would neither corroborate nor debunk the most serious allegation.

The complaint could corroborate Reade’s claims of sexual harassment, which Biden also denies. But it’s well established that Biden has over the years touched women in a way that some have said made them uncomfortable, and Biden has acknowledged this publicly. Whether or not one finds his apology for that adequate, it’s the assault accusation that has made Reade the center of attention. All parties agree that the complaint wouldn’t speak to that.

Where this leaves us

All of this leaves me where no reporter wants to be: mired in the miasma of uncertainty. I wanted to believe Reade when she first came to me, and I worked hard to find the evidence to make certain others would believe her, too. I couldn’t find it. None of that means Reade is lying, but it leaves us in the limbo of Me Too: a story that may be true but that we can’t prove.

There’s another issue at play, which Biden supporters and critics of Reade have pointed to in response to her allegation. A year ago, Reade went to mainstream, national outlets including the Times, the Post, and the Associated Press. It was in the middle of a competitive Democratic primary. She had no obvious connection to any candidate. And if voters or the party pushed Biden out, it was unclear who would benefit.

This year, Reade has emerged as an ardent Bernie Sanders supporter, with a much more damaging story to tell about Biden, who is now the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee. She went public with the rape accusation on a podcast sympathetic to Sanders and followed up with Ryan Grim of the Intercept, an outlet that has been consistently critical of Biden.

A few weeks before Reade spoke to Halper, she replied to a tweet from Grim seeming to tease that a story was coming. Reade declined to elaborate on what she meant in the tweet, directing me to a spokesperson. Grim said he hadn’t noticed the reply when she sent it, and he didn’t speak with her for the first time until March 8, almost a week later.

Reade’s supporters on the left see the Democratic establishment’s response to her accusation as hypocritical, particularly compared to how party leaders rallied around Christine Blasey Ford when she testified in the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearings. In Ford’s case, there was near-universal support for her. Critics on the left say that Democrats should stand up for Reade, and that the “believe women” rallying cry should apply even when it’s not politically convenient.

But Democrats have largely lined up behind Biden. Top Barack Obama alumni have said that they vetted Biden fully in 2008 and found no evidence of the kind of behavior Reade describes. Rising Democratic star Stacey Abrams recently said, “I believe Joe Biden.” Sen. Elizabeth Warren penned an op-ed with Biden. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, seen as a Me Too leader for her push to oust Sen. Al Franken after he was accused of sexual misconduct, headlined an event for Biden this week.

Many liberals have said now and during the Franken saga that the Democratic Party has held itself to a ridiculous standard. Donald Trump has admitted on tape to what Reade accuses Biden of doing and still denies the accounts of more than 20 women who have accused him of sexual misconduct. And given that the goal of beating Trump is paramount this fall, some see dwelling on an accusation that has yet to be definitively proven as a damaging distraction.

To Reade, though, none of this is that complicated.

“My story never changed. I just didn’t come forward with all the details. It’s really simple,” she said to me. “I held back this story because I was afraid of a powerful man.”

Don’t be fooled by Fox News, Donald Trump, or the same type of groups that produced the Tea Party a decade ago: The protesters taking to the streets against social distancing are a small minority of Americans — and their attitudes represent a fraction of public opinion.

In fact, America has done something remarkable in this moment: It has united.

Last week, 81 percent of Americans told pollsters for a Politico/Morning Consult poll that the country “should continue to social distance for as long as is needed to curb the spread of coronavirus, even if it means continued damage to the economy.”

Let me repeat that: 81 percent of Americans agree. That’s an astounding figure.

An NBC poll found a lower rate at 60 percent, but still a solid majority. Large majorities of Democrats and independents are more concerned about the virus than the economy, as are about half of Republicans.

This consensus is striking given that Americans live in an era when they’re divided along party lines on everything from climate change to the NFL.

But continued vigilance is required. Trump will keep trying to divide Americans ahead of the election this fall. Fox will continue to air images that make the anti-social-distancing movement look mainstream. Well-funded conservative groups will gin up more events.

This is the same playbook that worked in 2009 when the conservative machine sparked the Tea Party, which shaped American policy for a decade. Tea Party politics delayed the recovery from the Great Recession, hobbled attempts to expand health care coverage that is desperately needed right now, and left the medical-supply stockpile under-funded, putting medical providers in grave danger as they fight to save the lives of Covid-19 patients.

The stakes are too high to fall for the same pantomime. Social-distancing supporters are the dominant movement. And the country needs to remember it.

Trump and Fox are putting lives at stake

Trump’s approach to the pandemic has been to crow about his administration’s imaginary successes while blaming governors for everything that’s gone wrong.

On Friday, he escalated his message, endorsing the anti-stay-at-home protests cropping up across the country — specifically the protests in battleground states run by Democratic governors.

Moments after Fox News aired a segment on the rallies, Trump tweeted their rally cry against their governors: “LIBERATE.”

Trump has peddled dangerous misinformation about the virus since the start. He’s undermined policies encouraged by the CDC (he told Americans they should wear masks outside but quickly added that he doesn’t plan to). This endorsement is perhaps the most dangerous thing he’s said.

There’s a lot that’s not yet known about Covid-19, but we do know that gatherings spread the virus. Again and again, when groups get together, attendees get sick. Some have died. And we don’t know the extent to which they’ve spread it to others, though we know it’s a terribly contagious virus.

We also know that Americans are actually doing a good job social distancing, which health experts are crediting with a more optimistic outlook on the number of Americans who will die from the virus than initially feared.

But Fox News is trying to convince Americans that there’s a groundswell of opposition to these important measures, attempting to make small rallies look big and fringe attitudes look mainstream.

On air, they’ve displayed images that make the protests seem significant. A first glance at the map below makes it look like a huge number of rallies have already happened, but they haven’t. It’s a double-whammy: The movement looks large and Fox encourages viewers to join.

The same images were used in the early days of the Tea Party, when Fox trumped up the rallies, describing them as part of a “revolution” and urging viewers to join.

Conservative groups are playing an important part, too. Three pro-gun groups are behind the largest Facebook group encouraging the protests, according to an investigation by the Washington Post.

In Michigan, a group funded by Trump ally Education Secretary Betsy DeVos helped get out the word.

And the same Tea Party groups that were successful a decade ago are eager to join in.

Trump needs to divide people to win

Trump won in 2016 in part because of his success with rural white voters in states Barack Obama won and he’s ratcheting up his strategy to do it again.

The clearest example is in Michigan, where Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s in-state popularity has soared to 15 percent higher than Trump’s. Nationally, her profile is on the rise. Her name is being floated as a possible vice presidential pick.

Whitmer has become a target of Trump’s, starting weeks ago and up until protests hit her state last week.

“We’ve had a big problem with the young, a woman governor,” Trump said in an interview with Sean Hannity. “You know who I’m talking about, from Michigan.” Trump dismissed Whitmer’s requests for the federal government to provide more medical equipment to her state and said their interactions had “not been pleasant.”

Last week, conservative groups in Michigan encouraged residents to drive to Lansing and snarl traffic in opposition to Whitmer’s response to Covid-19. Michigan has been hit harder than most other states during the pandemic. It’s the tenth-largest state by population, but it has seen the third-most deaths.

Whitmer has taken more aggressive steps to combat the spread of the disease than most other governors, including extending a statewide stay-at-home order by two weeks. She also ordered big-box stores like Home Depot to suspend the sale of nonessential items, like gardening supplies and paint, during the extension.

Last Wednesday, some protesters in the state capital of Lansing got out of their cars and stood together in a display that quickly turned into a 2016-style rally. Attendees wore MAGA hats, they chanted “lock her up” (referring to Whitmer) and waved pro-Trump signs.

Images from the event showed protesters ignoring social-distancing rules.

Trump needs the same rural white voters who carried him then to come out for him again. He’s getting them fired up right now. In part, it’s an effective message because rural areas of Michigan have been hit far less hard than blue urban centers like Detroit, where most of the cases and deaths have been concentrated. (Whether it’ll stay that way with protesters risking bringing it back home is an open question.)

Weeks ago, Trump warned that the cure for the disease can’t be worse than the virus itself. Many economists have since weighed in, arguing that that is a false choice. We can take steps to shore up the economy through actions by the Fed and stimulus packages in Congress while attempting to curb the virus.

At the same time, there’s no way for the economy to turn back on like a light switch. Covid-19 cases in the US are still on the rise, and most Americans say they wouldn’t go back to normal life even if the rules changed. That’s not a recipe for economic recovery.

The most-respected plan is the one Trump’s own administration has set forth. Once deaths and new cases are down for a solid period of time, once testing can track the virus’s spread, the rules can slowly start to change. It’s a cautious approach based on the best evidence available. It’s not about politics. And most Americans don’t want it to be.

Americans generally expect that when regularly scheduled programming is interrupted to cut to the president sitting in the Oval Office, they will hear an important, sober, and universal message — a message almost always of unity, often a call for shared responsibility and even sacrifice.

President Trump just used the powerful symbol of his office to attempt to divide us.

Seated behind his desk in the White House Wednesday, Trump looked into the camera and warned Americans of an enemy who has infiltrated our borders. We are at war, he said, with a “foreign virus.”

It’s a tactic meant to distract from what his administration has and hasn’t done, in this case to combat the coronavirus pandemic. “This is the most aggressive and comprehensive effort to confront a foreign virus in modern history,” Trump said of his administration’s work.

The pandemic, of course, isn’t a spy. It’s not an infiltrator. It’s a health crisis that’s been long predicted. The way we’ll fight it is through mechanisms like social distancing, a technique that requires clear, direct information so everyone knows it’s important to participate and how to do so. It’s a shared responsibility. We are in this together.

That is not the language of the Trump era. Trump rode into office on a message of division, of fear and hate and xenophobia. He announced his campaign in 2015 by smearing Mexicans. Even his inaugural address was laced with dark notes. “From this day forward,” he said during his address, “it’s going to be only America first.” Xenophobia isn’t a bug in the system for him; it’s a feature.

Throughout his time in office, again and again, he’s rallied his supporters through fear of outsiders — whether it was fear of travelers from Muslim-majority countries or asylum seekers at the US-Mexico border. He’s portrayed foreigners as filthy and derided others’ homelands as “shithole countries.”

Now, faced with explaining his government’s response to an outbreak that’s getting worse, he’s relying on the same tropes.

On Wednesday night, when he should have been calling on Americans to come together, he attempted to make us afraid of all of Europe. “To keep new cases from entering our shores, we will be suspending all travel from Europe to the United States for the next 30 days,” Trump said (excluding the UK for some reason).

This isn’t the first time in history a leader has stoked fears among the public by linking outsiders to germs, of course. It’s been part of many dark chapters in world history. Researchers have documented the repeated, often unfounded fears of connections between germs and immigrants throughout the 20th century. In a moment of crisis, it’s particularly jarring and dangerous.

In this case, though perhaps predictable, it is especially dubious.

Experts pointed out that full-scale travel bans haven’t been effective. Italy, the hardest-hit country in Europe, was the first European country to ban travel to and from China, where the outbreak originated, and it didn’t help.

And Trump’s big announcement ignores the fact that the virus is already in the United States, spreading locally. The big threat isn’t the virus coming to the United States. It’s already here.

“A large number of new clusters in the United States were seeded by travelers from Europe,” Trump said — without explaining how the virus is spreading now or even highlighting some of the best science-based measures to test for it or stop it from spreading.

Medical experts reacted critically to Trump’s ban by pointing out that it ignores the work that really needs to be done, such as testing to assess the full scale of the crisis and mass communication with the public about how to prevent the spread.

Trump did tell Americans to cover their mouths and noses when they cough or sneeze. He did finally say it was best to stay home if you are sick.

But his message wasn’t the sober, direct statement Americans might expect from the president in the Oval Office. More worrisome, maybe a xenophobic speech designed to distract is what we we actually should have expected.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren is dropping out of the presidential race, leaving two white men to duke it out for the Democratic nomination and then take on the white man sitting in the Oval Office.

It’s a disappointing turn of events for Democrats who are proud of recent historic firsts — electing America’s first black president and then electing a woman as a major party’s nominee in 2016. The 2020 Democratic field started out diverse but winnowed over time until Warren was the only candidate standing who wasn’t a white man.

And while there’s plenty to unpack about the role gender and race played in this year’s contest, Warren can at least have some modicum of satisfaction that as she went down, she took Mike Bloomberg and Chris Matthews with her.

Warren eviscerated Bloomberg, the former New York City mayor, twice on primary debate stages, going after him for his treatment of female employees at his company, Bloomberg LP, in a stunningly effective assault. And she knows it.

“In this campaign, we have been willing to fight, and, when necessary, we left plenty of blood and teeth on the floor,” Warren said in a press call announcing her departure from the race. “And I can think of one billionaire who has been denied the chance to buy this election.”

She appeared on MSNBC after one of the debates to talk about Bloomberg’s history and ended up taking a prominent network figure, Chris Matthews, to task in a way feminists had wanted to see for years. The exchange went viral and inspired women to speak up about his behavior. He was gone from MSNBC just days later.

Warren destroyed Bloomberg at his first debate (NDA edition)

Mike Bloomberg spent roughly $400 million on television ads before he stepped onto a debate stage. When he finally did, Warren made him wish he hadn’t.

In a series of stunning confrontations, Warren forced Bloomberg to contend with his alleged history of mistreating women — including signing nondisclosure agreements with former female employees who say he harassed or discriminated against them.

“The mayor has to stand on his record. And what we need to know is what is lurking out there. He has gotten some number of women — maybe dozens, who knows — to sign nondisclosure agreements for gender discrimination in the workplace,” Warren began, winding up before landing the punch: “So, Mr. Mayor, are you willing to release all those women from those nondisclosure agreements so we can hear their side of the story?”

Bloomberg attempted to play down the matter. “We have a very few nondisclosure agreements,” he said.

“How many is that?” Warren interjected.

“None of them accused me of anything other than maybe they didn’t like a joke I told,” Bloomberg went on, not answering Warren’s question but somehow making things worse for himself anyway. (His jokes were really funny, by the way, like saying of female employees: “I’d f— that in a second,” according to a lawsuit.)

Warren looked at the crowd knowingly, which, by this point, was squarely on her side. Bloomberg was done.

He stammered through an argument about how the women “decided they wanted to keep it quiet for everybody’s interest. They signed the agreements, and that’s what we are going to live with.”

Warren had won. Still, she dug the knife in deeper, just to be sure: “This is not just a question of the mayor’s character,” she concluded. “This is also a question about electability. We are not going to beat Donald Trump with a man who has who-knows-how-many nondisclosure agreements and the drip, drip, drip of stories of women saying they have been harassed and discriminated against. That’s not what we do as Democrats.”

Then the next day, Warren did some epic trolling. Warren, a lawyer and former Harvard Law professor, wrote up a contract for Bloomberg to use to allow the women involved in the NDAs to be released from the agreement.

Amazingly, the Bloomberg campaign responded by actually following through — for three women. They offered to release those three women from their NDAs. But we still don’t know how Bloomberg’s lawyers selected just these three cases, how many other women remain bound by NDAs, or what the specific allegations are — about him and about the company culture he created. Also, we don’t know if he’d fight what comes out in public, or in court.

It was an attempt at atonement, but a failed one. And after his disastrous appearance, Bloomberg started sinking in the polls.

Warren destroyed Bloomberg at his second debate (pregnancy edition)

Two weeks after laying into Bloomberg during his first debate appearance, Warren went back at him. This time she started out telling a story she’s told before about losing her job as a special needs teacher when the principal discovered she was pregnant. The kicker this time, though, was different. “At least I didn’t have a boss who said to me, ‘Kill it,’ the way that Mayor Bloomberg is alleged to have said to one of his pregnant employees,”

Bloomberg responded, “I never said that.”

When moderator Gayle King asked Warren what the evidence was for the allegation, Warren backed the accuser and said: “her words.”

Warren was referencing an allegation made by Sekiko Sakai Garrison, a former employee at Bloomberg LP. In a 1998 lawsuit, Garrison said that when she told Bloomberg she was pregnant, he told her to “kill it.” Garrison has never changed her story.

(Warren didn’t mention, it, but there is another witness to the incident. In a recent Washington Post article, another former Bloomberg employee, David Zielenziger, said he heard Bloomberg make the comment. He told the Post he thought Bloomberg’s behavior toward Garrison was “outrageous,” adding, “I understood why she took offense.”)

A few days later, on Super Tuesday, Bloomberg discovered that $400 million can’t undo two minutes in the ring with Warren.

Chris Matthews spiraled along with Bloomberg

On the night Warren took Bloomberg to task over the “kill it” saga, she appeared on MSNBC, where she went on to knock down another man who has a long documented history of making sexist comments: Chris Matthews.

Matthews was puzzled why Warren would believe that Bloomberg would make such a terrible comment to a pregnant employee.

“A pregnant employee sure said he did,” Warren replied. “Why shouldn’t I believe her?”

Matthews asked Warren if she believed Bloomberg was lying and Warren held firm: “I believe the woman, which means he’s not telling the truth.”

“Why would he lie?” Matthews responded, a question that has a pretty obvious answer.

“Why would she lie?” Warren fired back.

Matthews critics have been frustrated by the attitudes he’s displayed on air, unchallenged, for years. The moment with Warren felt different. Suddenly, the tide turned.

Journalist Laura Bassett followed up on the viral moment with a piece in GQ titled “Like Warren, I had my own sexist run-in with Chris Matthews,” where she detailed creepy comments he made to her in the MSNBC green room. The piece, likewise, went viral, and other women chimed in, sharing their own accounts of Matthews’s attitudes.

By Monday night, Matthews stepped down as the anchor of Hardball.

Matthews was a major player in shaping American political journalism for a generation, including how we view the intersection of gender and politics.

He got away with demeaning female guests for years. They were on his show to boost their profile and their careers, not to get in fights with him about sexism (which certainly wouldn’t get them invited back). So he got away with diminishing them by commenting on their looks, a signal to the audience that the conduct is okay.

Warren’s appearance was different, though. Not only did she not give a damn what Matthews thought of her, showing she didn’t care was the whole point. She was running against Bloomberg on the case that he is wrong. She wanted to tell Matthews he was wrong.

Warren stepped down from the presidential race on Thursday. But she didn’t back down from sexism, even at the very end. She won’t be the first woman to serve as president, but her contributions to confronting sexism on the trail are a worthy piece of her legacy.

Since Chris Matthews announced his retirement from MSNBC Monday night, his friends and colleagues are praising the now-former Hardball host as a lion of the field of political journalism, as if he were leaving the network for a reason other than on-air sexism.

“Chris Matthews is a giant. He’s a legend; it’s been an honor for me to work with him,” MSNBC journalist Steve Kornacki said on air after Matthews announced he was stepping down.

Morning Joe host Mika Brzezinski agreed:

Other guests and colleagues joined in their support of Matthews, including former Democratic National Committee Chair Donna Brazile, George W. Bush’s communications director and now MSNBC anchor Nicolle Wallace, and MSNBC host Andrea Mitchell.

But this was no ordinary retirement. CNN media writer Brian Stelter confirms that Matthews preempted being fired by departing voluntarily. The proximate cause was a string of recent controversies, including making an on-air comparison between Sen. Bernie Sanders (who is Jewish) and the Nazi advance on Europe, getting into an embarrassing back-and-forth with Sen. Elizabeth Warren over Mike Bloomberg’s history of sexist comments, and then finding himself the subject of a piece in GQ by journalist Laura Bassett, who described how he made creepy, suggestive comments to her in the MSNBC green room — an experience many women on Twitter said they shared.

All these instances are part of a pattern with Matthews, particularly those related to gender. For years, he’s used his daily televised platform to undermine women — sizing up his female guests’ looks and belittling politicians like Hillary Clinton, whom he’s called “witchy,” “anti-male,” and “uppity” over the years.

Matthews is not accused of criminal behavior like other men in his field who’ve been called to task in the Me Too era. But he shares a set of sexist attitudes that have profoundly shaped political journalism and attitudes that are just beginning to be confronted.

Matthews’s supporters are right that he was a giant in political journalism. They are right that he left a mark on how we understand politics. But his departure isn’t a loss. It’s an opportunity to rethink how we should and should not cover politics and power.

Matthews has made misogynistic remarks on TV for many years

The hallmark of Matthews’s on-air behavior over the years was to diminish the credibility of a female guest by commenting on her looks. During his sign-off Monday night, Matthews offered this apology:

Compliments on a woman’s appearance that some men, including me, might have once incorrectly thought were okay were never okay. Not then and certainly not today, and for making such comments in the past, I’m sorry. 

Matthews’s poor treatment of his female guests is well-known: Media Matters has tracked his conduct for years.

One particularly egregious example comes from 2007. Amid a turbulent moment for the economy, Matthews had on respected financial journalist Erin Burnett of CNBC. Instead of treating her as a serious guest, he toyed with her and demeaned her:

“Could you get a little closer to the camera?” Matthews said to Burnett. “My — what is it?” Burnett asked, seeming to think something was wrong with the equipment. Matthews then said: “Come on in closer. No, come in — come in further — come in closer. Really close.” As Burnett adjusted, he said: “Just kidding! You look great! Anyway, thanks, Erin, it’s great to — look at that look. You’re great.”

He concluded “you’re a knockout.”

In the video Burnett looks a bit annoyed, but she mostly smiles through the ordeal. She’s a professional and there to advance her career, not to make an enemy out of Matthews. But by allowing these types of scenarios to play out again and again, MSNBC was telling TV viewers that this behavior was okay.

There are many, many examples of similar behavior by Matthews. Media Matters has documented him commenting on the looks of many women in public life.

During a post-debate night panel during the 2008 primary, for example, Matthews responded to MSNBC host Joe Scarborough’s point about Clinton’s Iraq War vote problem among the Democratic base by changing the subject.

“The cosmetics tonight are very important,” Matthews said. “First of all, her pearls, Grace Kelly. Dynamite. The pearls were great!”

In the next breath, he moved on to Michelle Obama:

“Whatever you say about [Barack] Obama, his wife looked perfect! Perfect for the occasion. Perfect-looking wife. She had the pearls as well. Another Grace Kelly, well turned out, very dignified, not dignified, attractive, classy.”

He uses the same language with conservative women. Here’s how he spoke to Laura Ingraham, according to Media Matters:

On the September 12, 2007, edition of Hardball, Matthews began an interview with right-wing radio host Laura Ingraham by stating: “You are — I’m not allowed to say this, but I’ll say it — you’re beautiful and you’re smart. And you’ve got a huge radio audience.” When the interview ended, Matthews asked: “Can I sing your praises?” adding, “I get in trouble for this, but you’re great looking, obviously. You’re one of the gods’ gifts to men in this country. But also, you are a hell of a writer.”

Repeating these stereotypes over and over contributed to a culture in political journalism that devalues women, that puts their looks before their smarts or intellectual contributions. And doing it on TV just makes it worse — presenting an image to viewers that goes completely unchecked.

Matthews routinely smeared Hillary Clinton

Matthews also disparaged female candidates and officeholders. On the night Nancy Pelosi led Democrats to a historic victory in the House in 2006, he pointed out that she would have to go head-to-head with George W. Bush on all kinds of policies. “How does she do it without screaming? How does she do it without becoming grating?” he wondered.

Hillary Clinton was a continual target.

He once pinched her cheek after an interview.

In 2006, Matthews attempted to compliment Clinton, saying, “she was giving a campaign barnburner speech, which is harder to give for a woman; it can grate on some men when they listen to it — fingernails on a blackboard, perhaps.”

Before an interview during the 2016 Democratic primary, footage posted by The Cut captures Matthews making a joke about drugging her with a “Bill Cosby pill,” shocking his staff:

Network footage obtained by the Cut shows Matthews, during the interview setup, making a couple of “jokes” about Clinton. He asks, “Can I have some of the queen’s waters? Precious waters?” And then, as he waits for the water, he adds, “Where’s that Bill Cosby pill I brought with me?” Matthews then laughs, delighted with the line, for an extended moment, as the staffers around him react with disbelief, clearly uncomfortable

Clinton’s loss in 2016 was so narrow that it’s difficult to point to any single issue as the reason she lost. But it’s nonetheless true that Clinton had to deal with media figures who were eager to embrace old, sexist tropes that signal to their audiences what leadership doesn’t look like.

In the Me Too era, women have called out serial harassers Leon Wieseltier, the influential culture editor of the New Republic; and Mark Halperin, the former head of ABC Politics and co-author of the best-selling Game Change series. Halperin pioneered a style of politics-as-sports journalism embraced by Matthews and other cable news hosts. These men claimed they were looking down on politics from the stands, objectively assessing the plays of the game.

But we are starting to see the reality of this “objectivity.” Halperin dismissed sexual assault allegations against Donald Trump during the 2016 campaign. Matthews got into a fight last week with Warren over whether to believe a well-supported claim by a former Bloomberg employee that he told her to end her pregnancy. Matthews became indignant with Warren, essentially calling the accuser a liar:

“Do you believe that the former mayor of New York said that to a pregnant employee?” Matthews said to Warren. “You believe he’s that kind of person who did that? You believe he’s lying? You’re confident of your accusation?”

Warren is confident of her accusation. And unlike for so many years when women felt they couldn’t confront Matthews, Warren did. Then something else happened — journalist Laura Bassett said “me too,” publishing a scathing account of Matthews’s green room behavior. Then Bassett’s Twitter replies lit up with more “me too” accounts of Matthews’s conduct.

The dynamic that forced Burnett and others to smile through Matthews’s indignities shifted under his feet this week — a change for the better for political journalism and for our culture as a whole. Perhaps Matthews’s friends who are lauding him as a great American journalist should look to the women who stood up for truth as the real heroes of this story.