Joe Biden Problems - Part 1
5/15/20 - Throughout public life, Joe Biden has claimed to stand for women. His long career from the Senate to the Vice Presidency to presumptive Democratic nominee can paint a very different picture. In the first of two episodes, we discuss key moments that give us pause about Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr.
Transcript below.
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CREDITS
Producer: Gina Delvac
Hosts: Aminatou Sow & Ann Friedman
Theme song: Call Your Girlfriend by Robyn
Composer: Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs.
Associate Producer: Jordan Bailey
Visual Creative Director: Kenesha Sneed
Merch Director: Caroline Knowles
Editorial Assistant: Laura Bertocci
Design Assistant: Brijae Morris
Ad sales: Midroll
LINKS
1991: Biden mishandles Anita Hill's testimony during Clarence Thomas's confirmation hearings as chair of the Senate Judiciary committee.
1994: Biden uses the Violence Against Women Act as character witness, a shield from backlash against his treatment of Professor Hill. VAWA was situated within the crime bill and tended to focus on training law enforcement and judges, stopping short of addressing the broader scale of violence women confront.
2016: Speaks at the United State of Women conference to a packed room of gender equality advocates, among them untold numbers of survivors, and us, describing his work on the Violence Against Women Act and recounting numerous instances of violence against women in borderline lewd, graphic terms.
2019: Announces his campaign and calls Anita Hill. Professor Hill was not impressed with his apology and shared some pointers for how he might make amends.
Throughout his career: inappropriately grabs, touches and hugs women in congressional offices and the campaign trail.
Biden's role in the Clarence Thomas hearings in 1991
Violence Against Women Act in 1994
Biden speech at the United State of Women in 2016
Lucy Flores on Joe Biden kissing her head in 2014
CYG Episode 33: Low Key Creep in 2015
TRANSCRIPT: JOE BIDEN PROBLEMS - PART 1
[Ads]
(0:48)
Aminatou: Welcome to Call Your Girlfriend.
Ann: A podcast for long-distance besties everywhere.
Aminatou: I'm Aminatou Sow.
Ann: And I'm Ann Friedman. Today is the first of a two-part discussion about Joe Biden and all of the many complicated feelings we have about his positions towards women, power, abuse. A lot of Joe Biden thoughts is what's happening today and the next episode.
[Theme Song]
Ann: The new levels of relevance of this intro hit me every time we say it. I know I've said this before but I think as everybody's shelter in place gets extended and extended I'm just feeling like long distance forever baby is how I'm feeling, I don't know, in ways both good and bad. [Laughs]
(2:00)
Aminatou: That's true. That's true.
Ann: Should we get right into it this week? I don't know, we have a lot to talk about.
Aminatou: I have no small talk to make so let's please get into it.
Ann: I mean the theme of this podcast pretty much is small talk but . . . [Laughs] Like the foundational core is small talk.
Aminatou: Also you know how I love small talk so it's really -- you know I must be in a tough place if I don't want to do it.
Ann: You know, I think you and I are outliers in the loving small talk department. It is a beautiful, wonderful thing when someone does it right. I think bad small talk is horrible but good small talk is a thing of joy and beauty.
Aminatou: [Laughs] Where you both walk away and go good talk, good talk.
Ann: Yeah, where you both walk away and you're like that was fun and low stakes. That's what I'm talking about. [Laughter]
Aminatou: Aww, Ann Friedman, fun and low stakes. Thank you for capturing everything I need right now. I love that we have now done small talk and small talk is concluding.
Ann: We had meta small talk. Meta small talk.
Aminatou: [Laughs]
Ann: The podcast is about Joe Biden this week.
Aminatou: Who's Joe Biden?
Ann: Oh, great question. I love that you're asking me that question.
Aminatou: I'm the stand-in for the audience here.
Ann: Oh my god, stop.
Aminatou: [Laughs] It's because I love your brain Ann. I think everyone knows that Joe Biden is the front-runner for the democratic nomination for the election that we're allegedly having in November.
Ann: The stand-in has become the teacher, listen to you. [Laughter]
Aminatou: He was the vice president of the United States for Barrack Obama. He hails from the great state of Delaware and was a senator during the Anita Hill hearings so there you go.
Ann: Right. Was a senator for a very long time and specifically 29 years I guess it was -- wow, what is time? -- when Clarence Thomas's confirmation hearings were happening he was chairman of the senate judiciary committee. So a very powerful position presiding over those confirmation hearings and a person who had a lot of power to control how Anita Hill's testimony was heard. And, you know, not someone who said everything or was the only person to blame for how she was characterized or how she was treated during those hearings but, you know, a very powerful actor during a particularly painful and infuriating chapter in US political history for women I would say.
(4:35)
Aminatou: That's a really good way of putting it. And I also think that that incident specifically, it's so important to look at when you look at . . . whenever we talk about all of the ways that women are treated in public when they disclose stories of their abuse, of their harassment, that case I think was -- it's so instrumental in shaping so much of my thinking on this. And I also think that generally it was so instrumental in capturing in a big way the divide that exists when we say the words believe women.
Ann: Right.
Aminatou: And it's like what does that mean? Who gets to bring forth an allegation? When do they do it? And what is the responsibility of people who hear this allegation?
Ann: Right. And there are some really specific ways that if you are a person in power you are responsible for making sure that certain voices are heard and not quashed. And I think in the case of the Anita Hill hearings as the chairman it was Biden's role to decide which witnesses would and wouldn't be heard. And for example there were several corroborating witnesses, other women who had similar experiences with harassment at the hands of Clarence Thomas, who could have supported Anita Hill's story much in the way that now when we for lack of a better phrase publicly evaluate the stories of women we kind of look to other women for patterns right? Like I'm thinking about the cover of New York Magazine with all of the women who had been assaulted by Bill Cosby coming forward with their stories together.
(6:20)
And so essentially Biden was in a position where he could deny that to Anita Hill, right? There were other women who had similar stories who could've really shown that she was not an outlier or someone with an axe to grind and he chose to not let that be part of the hearings.
Aminatou: Right.
Ann: And so I think it's super, super relevant to everything that we're about to talk about that came later.
Aminatou: Right. And so to be precise so one grievance that you and I have, Joseph Robinette Biden, is he a Jr.?
Ann: He's a Jr. I think he's a Jr. Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr. Wow, Robinette is a new one for me. [Laughs]
Aminatou: I always remember Robinette because I have a charming love of middle names. But one point of the case is that Joe Biden could've done so much more to shield Anita Hill from Republican attacks because he was the head of the judiciary committee which means that he had the power really to structure the hearings in a way that could've been fair. So he, for example, allowed Justice Thomas to testify before Anita Hill. Joe Biden also didn't call on three women who wanted to testify about their own experiences about office culture when they had worked around Justice Thomas. So this is relevant because Anita Hill in her testimony which I can't get over how powerful it is, Anita Hill in her hearing described a very, very, very clear pattern of harassment.
Ann: I just have to pause you and say it was technically Clarence Thomas's hearing but you're also right that practically speaking it was Anita Hill's hearing. Like yeah.
(8:00)
Aminatou: You're right. No you're right. So in I'm going to call it the Anita Hill hearing. But in the hearing, you know, she like goes into excruciating detail. These are not like -- nothing is vague here. And so she goes into the detail, she talks about how he repeatedly asked her to go out like not as a coworker but to go out in a social capacity. She said no over and over again and he wouldn't take no for an answer. He talked about sex in very graphic details around her and, you know, then also had a lot of conversations about himself. And I also believe for me since I didn't grow up in America this hearing -- my understanding of this hearing is also how I know Long Dong Silver from American pop culture because it makes a very prominent cameo in this situation.
And the other thing that you -- like I think another thing that is so important to know about this hearing is the visual of it is so jarring. Here is this black woman telling this very -- this very gripping story in front of a 14 all-white male judiciary panel. It's just like the visual of it is like yes, this is exactly how power manifests. Are you kidding me? It looks so nuts. And then she gets grilled about everything that she says because none of those men believe that it is remotely possible that anything she is saying is true. And obviously the way that they're asking questions very much underscores that they just don't believe her, you know?
(9:40)
Ann: Yeah, I mean it's . . . if you have not watched clips of it and you're listening to this it is something that is very instructive and will feel like it really set a stage for a lot of things that were to come in terms of women, power, and American politics.
Aminatou: It's really nuts. It was like one senator was literally like well everyone talks about boobs at work. I believe that was Arlen Specter. Another, you know . . .
Ann: What was his middle name?
Aminatou: I do not know Arlen Specter's middle name.
Ann: I'm looking it up right now.
Aminatou: Can't help you. And then this is literally how I know all these ghoulish senators' names is from the Anita Hill hearing. Another senator, Orrin Hatch, basically said that she made it all up because her testimony was too similar to the Exorcist, like true story.
Ann: [Growls]
Aminatou: It's just . . . if you are someone who understands how problematic it is you'll probably . . . I want to scream just even talking about this. It's so nuts. But it's also true that not a lot has changed because if you fast-forward to our time I would direct you to Christine Blasey Ford's testimony in Congress and how all of that circus was treated.
Ann: I feel like it's worth noting that what happened in the next few years of his career, like the stuff he does brag about which P.S. he doesn't really like to brag about him overseeing the Clarence Thomas hearings as chairman of the senate judiciary committee but he does like to talk about something he did three years later. Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., he authors the Violence Against Women Act which is part of the crime bill of 1994 and something that actually whole teams of people in different senators' offices and lots of women's rights non-profits worked on but you would be hard-pressed to find a clip where Joseph Biden, Jr. says anything other than "The bill that I wrote. My bill." In one clip I watched he even says Biden's shelters at some point as if he personally oversees a network of domestic violence shelters or something. So he is very front-and-center about claiming his authorship of the Violence Against Women Act as part of his legacy.
(12:05)
Funny plot point about yours truly is that my very first job was at a women's legal rights non-profit, what was then known as the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund where I was hired as an intern right before the 20th anniversary of VAWA and so it was my job to put together an oral history of it for funders.
Aminatou: Aww!
Ann: And so I know a whole bunch about this law because it was like baby's first real job and involved a lot of interviews about it. And it's interesting because it does have this air of a little bit of atonement about Anita Hill because the election after those hearings saw -- you know, not by today's standards a bunch -- but definitely by the standards of then a bunch of women elected to Congress and it was kind of clear that the tide was already turning against him a little bit in terms of his behavior at that point. So VAWA has this air of like okay, look at me. Look at all the good things I'm doing for you. That's how I've always felt.
Aminatou: I think that that point is important because the legislation that is in it is really targeting all of the violence that happens to women. The disconnect between for a lot of male politicians understanding that yes, I believe that they believe that women should be treated equally, should live free of violence, and should be just thriving citizens. I don't believe that them having those beliefs mean that they understand what women are contending with when alone, not as a class, one woman alone stands up to say "Here is my story."
Ann: Yeah, and I think that's a really good point. I'm not trying to rag on the Violence Against Women Act either but it is definitely also this really specific approach that was looking at like courts and law enforcement, you know? So if you are a critic of like the jail and prison system in the United States and you're kind of taking a holistic view you probably have some criticisms of the way the Violence Against Women Act really leans on things like training police officers and training judges which is again better than having those people ignorant of what's going on but I bring it up because it's part of the crime bill.
(14:10)
And you're right it has very much this tone of we must protect women and that kind of tone was pervasive I think at that time in the tough on crime democrat sense of we must protect our daughters as opposed to we must fully respect and listen to what they have to say even when our own power is threatened which is exactly what you're saying about the individual stories versus this like faceless mass that men are graciously agreeing to help or something. And I think that for me this is a real through line with the way that Joe Biden talks about women, this sense of look at all these things I'm really doing for you. This protective stance that I find almost infantilizing as opposed to a real respect for power and for difficult, complicated stories.
[Music]
Aminatou: If you are someone who has listened to our podcast for a long time you know we have been discussing on this show for a long time Joe Biden's history of just inappropriately touching women.
[Clip] I can't wait until Black Lives Matter like actually learns about how awful Joe Biden is. Also he's a grabby, grabby old man. He's so gross.
There is a treasure trove really of pictures available on the Internet of Joe Biden hugging, kissing, touching women that look visibly uncomfortable and . . .
Ann: I would actually call it a horror trove but totally. [Laughs]
(16:10)
Aminatou: A horror trove. There's a horror trove. And it was always interesting to me that so many of us could see it and so many of us were made uncomfortable by it but it was never a part of the conversation. I don't remember it being a part of the conversation when Barrack Obama picked him to be his vice president. That seemed like -- at the time seemed like oh yeah, this team is great. Then they had this whole buddy cop routine thing going on, the two of them. Genuinely they love each other. The whole thing is cute. But in that moment it's something that it always left me feeling uneasy because I'm like are we all seeing what we're seeing here?
And I think the reason it made me feel uneasy, it's because the people who were in power at the time were people who like -- these are the people that we're rooting for to be in power. And so to see how easy it is to notice that something is maybe not right and it's so easy to sweep it under the rug and say well no one's talking about it, it's not great. And then you fast-forward to the moment now where Joe Biden is running for president. That was like front and center of the conversation immediately, you know? It was like well the two liabilities of Joe Biden, he's an inappropriate toucher and Anita Hill. In a small way I was like well, you know, progress can happen over eight years on these issues but it's just very disturbing still.
Ann: Also can we just take a moment for like he's an inappropriate toucher? Like the way -- and I'm not even singling you out but I'm just struck by the way that our dialogue about this evolves in response to how media articles are written about it right? Inappropriate touching is such a better headline than kissed a total stranger's head. That is what he did to Lucy Flores. He kissed a state assemblywoman's head, someone he was not friendly with in an intimate way, like literally just someone he was standing on a stage with, you know?
Aminatou: Right.
(18:10)
Ann: And there's something about these broad terms that really hides the creepy, demeaning, threatening way that they are usually received. It's like inappropriate is this catch-all that is frankly kind of useless when we think about the actual experience of standing on a stage, having the back of your head kissed, and being like what the hell do I do now? What was that? You know?
Aminatou: Right. Or having someone just grab you from behind and you're doing that or being at an official event and someone puts their hand on you in a way that makes you uncomfortable. Again there are hundreds of cameras just going. Your point about the language is so good because I know that even for me it's uncomfortable because you are trying to articulate a thing that you can see is wrong and you know is wrong but the vocabulary for it is lacking because as a society we have a really hard time explaining what is going on, you know?
Ann: Right. Right, and it's also, you know, it's hard because people immediately think that you're trying to throw a man in jail if you say maybe we should examine what's behind this behavior right? And so there's a lot of dancing around to say like the word inappropriate signals okay, it's bad and we don't like I but also no legal charges have been filed. You know, like it walks this line where, you know, it almost . . .
Aminatou: [Laughs] Citizen's arrest. Citizen's arrest.
Ann: Fully, fully, fully. So I don't know. I mean that stuff, you know, the fact that you can Google all of these photos and the fact that as recently as last year Lucy Flores was talking about this experience and the candidates running against Biden were acknowledging it at least. And Biden himself acknowledged it. Oh my god, do you remember his statement about the "inappropriate behavior" he gave last year? Can I please read it to you?
(20:15)
Aminatou: Please tell me. Please tell me because I'm going to cry. Please tell me.
Ann: I'm going to read an excerpt from the statement. Okay, this is Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr. in 2019. "I have always tried to make a human connection. That's my responsibility I think. I shake hands. I hug people. I grab men and women by the shoulders and say 'You can do this.' Whether they're women, men, young, old, it's the way I've always been, the way that I try to show I care about them and I'm listening. So it's just who I am. I never thought of politics as cold and antiseptic. I thought about connecting with people. As I said, shaking hands, hands on the shoulder, a hug of encouragement, and now it's all about taking selfies together." Like this is a direct quote from his statement about this. It's like . . . go on.
Aminatou: I mean the quote is so telling because Lucy Flores explicitly said that she was touched without her consent, that it made her feel bad, it made her feel demeaned. Just all of these things. And the automatic response is "I'm a hugger" which to me I'm like if you cannot draw . . . if you are the person who says you're the author of the Violence Against Women Act and it's the greatest work of your life and you cannot draw a direct line between someone telling you "Hey, a thing that you did made me feel unsafe," if you can't draw that line straight to why women feel so unsafe all of the time or understanding that that language echoes a lot of what women who are assaulted say . . . you know, it's like I'm not saying that giving someone an unwanted hug is the same thing as assaulting someone but the common denominator there is you touched someone without asking them or you touched someone who told you they didn't want you to touch them.
(22:15)
Ann: And you were either not reading the signs because you were not paying attention to the power differential or you were paying attention to it and you didn't care because you felt fine with it. And God, I really . . .
Aminatou: Right, because I'm a hugger.
Ann: Yes.
Aminatou: Because I'm a hugger literally says I am entitled to touching you. That's all that that says to me.
Ann: Ding, ding, ding, I could not . . . I mean I know I agree with you a lot but I really could not agree with you more about this point. It's so to the core of why we have to talk about the way he continually refers to the Violence Against Women Act when we talk about this other stuff that's going on because it's almost like he took it like some kind of prophylactic pill right? Like "Oh I coauthored the Violence Against Women Act. There's no way a hug could ever be inappropriate from me." It's like you don't get to exempt behavior in the future because you have done a positive thing writ large on this issue. It reminds me of all the Me Too stories we've heard where people would say . . .
Aminatou: Ann I'm like clapping in my apartment.
Ann: [Laughs]
Aminatou: Like thank you. You are taking the words out of my mouth, thank you.
Ann: Where women would be like "But this guy promoted me and I'm a woman" or like "He's always been great to me" or he donates to whatever foundation that his shady lawyers asked him to donate to when they found out this allegation was coming out. I really feel that it is not dissimilar to kind of say like that is the tactic that he's employing here.
Aminatou: I mean, Ann, case in point, Eric Schneiderman who literally was like the . . . he was the one man that was always being honored at women's events. Turns out he is someone who had been sexually assaulting people, you know?
Ann: Yeah.
(23:50)
Aminatou: I don't know. I'm both depressed and angry about it.
Ann: You and I were in a room with Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr. in 2016 at the United States Women Summit.
Aminatou: [Sighs] Oh my god.
Ann: And he spoke and of course invoked his authorship of VAWA approximately ten bajillion times. But what I remembered about that, and I went back and listened to the speech, what I remembered about that was the graphic descriptions of women's experiences during and after being assaulted which I will not subject you to but involved a lot of nudity. In every anecdote he told at some point the woman was naked and shaking and afraid and it was really, really upsetting.
Aminatou: It was very triggering.
Ann: Yeah.
Aminatou: It was incredibly triggering. It was also just so telling. Joe Biden was invited to speak at this conference because of his authorship of VAWA, because he's vice president. He was one of the few men who got time to speak at this conference and the two things that I remember from it was that 1) I was triggered by his speech. I was not the only person in the room that felt that way. And 2) Ann, he spoke forever. Do you remember how he spoke forever?
Ann: Oh I went and -- 47 minutes I believe to Obama's like 32 or 27 or something like that, yeah.
Aminatou: Right. And so for context for everyone this was like a thing where we all had the schedule for the day and it was like speech after speech after speech, like it's that thing. Joe Biden went early in the day and he spoke for so long that he threw off the schedule for the rest of the conference. And I remember all day just being annoyed by that. It was like this thing is never going to end. Like we're just trying to get to the end so we can hear Oprah and Michelle Obama speak. [Laughs]
Ann: They really stacked the programming at the end, it's true.
Aminatou: I know, they really stacked the programming at the end. I was like put the big hitters in the morning before Joe Biden. Like it seems really small and petty but it was so emblematic of like of course. Of course you said the wrong thing but more importantly you felt entitled to just everyone's time which is the thing that we are talking about. It was so textbook. [Sighs]
(26:00)
Ann: Yeah, textbook bad behavior at an event like this. And also it's interesting because we were literally the audience but we were not the audience for that speech. The audience for that speech were the men who he addressed on the senate floor to get VAWA passed who were like think of your daughter traumatized and shaking. Like not actual survivors or allies of survivors who were present in that room. And I think that that is also very telling of who is that speech calibrated for?
Aminatou: Right. Oof. Well let's take a break.
[Ads]
(29:12)
Aminatou: Well okay, let's talk about the moment that we are in now.
Ann: Do we have to? [Laughs]
Aminatou: I mean, listen, all I have is time babe. Unless something weird happens Joe Biden will most likely be the Democratic nominee to run against Donald Trump for president.
Ann: Fully presumptive. Presumptive, much like inappropriate, is the media word. Presumptive. [Laughs]
Aminatou: Right, presumptive, unless something weird happens and weird things are happening. When he announced that he was running so many people were running for president and so it's interesting to see that it's shaken out this way because the early conversations about Joe Biden were either like okay, he's someone who has been at this game for so long that he has probably the best name recognition of all of them but also I think there was a belief that in the time since the Obama presidency and the current administration that the culture had moved so far along that there was no way that Joe Biden with his Anita Hill problem and his air-quotes "inappropriate touching" problem and just being a fuddy-duddy, that there was absolutely no way the he would get elected.
(30:30)
Ann: Right. Like you can't put a pair of Ray-Bans on a turd and convince us all to vote for it. Like no.
Aminatou: Right. Fast-forward to now and here we go. The thing that I remember about when he announced that he was running, there was so much chatter about what was going to happen about Anita Hill specifically. If you are not following Anita Hill's current career please Google her. Her resume is iconic. And she is very much someone who is, even though she is not someone who speaks a lot, she is still someone who is a very relevant player in the conversations that we have about the place of women in politics and society.
Ann: As all of this was brewing the very first day of his presidential campaign Biden people announced that he had called Anita Hill and "expressed his regret for what she endured." Which like, okay, the Apology 101 playbook says that you actually have to accept some culpability if the apology is going to be real. Like I'm sorry you felt bad is not really an apology because it is not engaging with your role in what really happened. So it's not an apology at all in fact; it's just saying like isn't it sad that you feel sad? Anyway he did that.
(31:45)
Aminatou: Also there's a 28-year gap between when the hearing was and when he decided to run for president. And at no time in the middle had he addressed it at all.
Ann: You know, I will say this. When you make a huge, huge mistake of that level sometimes it does take a long time to get right about it and to apologize. And there is a part of me that if this apology had seemed like it was actually grappling with the issues at play and had seemed to actually take some responsibility for what she had gone through I may feel different about it actually even coming at the politically opportune moment. But . . .
Aminatou: I guess here's why I feel differently about it. It's not -- I do agree with you that it takes a really long time to apologize to someone and I'm not discounting that. I think that is true and fair. The reason that this is a sticking point for me is because it's not the first time Joe Biden has run for president.
Ann: Exactly.
Aminatou: It's not the first time that he has been confronted with like oh, what are all the problems I need to button up before I run for office? And in fact when you are running for president -- like if you're thinking about running for president you've probably been thinking about it for a really long time. And so it . . . I only bring up that point to illustrate this: he is the person that made . . . he is the one that made it look politically expedient.
Ann: Of course.
Aminatou: I don't believe that there is a wrong moment to apologize to someone but I'm like the timing is suspicious and the timing is only suspicious because he made it suspicious.
Ann: Right. Okay, so that's one thing, like the announcement of the campaign came with this non-apology. And then we should talk about Tara Reade.
Aminatou: I mean also it should be said that Anita Hill really brings the fire when she talks about how deeply unsatisfied she was with that phone call. Can you imagine like someone calls you 28 years later to apologize to you and you're asked about it and you're like "Actually that was not satisfying at all?"
Ann: Oh my god, actually I'm just going to read this quote because in it she comes for his VAWA credentials as well. Here's what she says: "The focus on an apology to me is one thing but there needs to be an apology to the other witnesses and there needs to be an apology to the American public because we know how deeply disappointed Americans around the country were about what they saw and not just women. There are women and men now who have really just lost confidence in our government to respond to the problem of gender violence." [Sighs] Anita Hill.
(34:15)
Aminatou: The reason that I'm harping on this incidence specifically is because the apology shows that for as much as Joe Biden says that he is listening and he understands or he is trying to do the right thing we are on completely different pages. You know, saying like I apologize. It took a long time but it was really painful. But to fully say the wrong thing and then when the person that you're alleging apologizing for says "Hey, actually that apology wasn't great," in her statement she literally gives him the road map for like "Actually here's how you make it better."
Ann: I know! For free. For free. [Laughs]
Aminatou: And to be fair, Ann, he's had an entire calendar year since that happened and he hasn't done it. So, you know, I'm just like what are we . . . who is driving this car? This is nuts.
Ann: I can tell I'm upset because all I want to do is get a snack right now and put down this microphone. [Laughter] You're so right. Ugh.
Aminatou: Are you kidding? She literally is doing the job that every political adviser who has worked with him on this issue should've just told him. She's like no, actually you're not paying me any money. Here's the thing you're supposed to do and still haven't done.
Ann: Yeah, 30 years of campaign advisers could not put it this succinctly. [Sighs]
Aminatou: [Laughs] I'm only laughing so I don't sigh.
Ann: I mean we can do both. I think we have to do both.
Aminatou: So that's part one of everything we have to say about Joe Biden. Next week we'll be discussing Joe Biden in the context of today and the upcoming election.
Ann: Right. And specifically the allegations against him by Tara Reade and some of the media conversation that is playing out around that. Until then we'll see you on the Internet.
Aminatou: See you on the Internet, boo-boo. You can find us many places on the Internet: callyourgirlfriend.com, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, we're on all your favs. Subscribe, rate, review, you know the drill. You can call us back, leave a voicemail at 714-681-2943. That's 714-681-CYGF. You can email us at callyrgf@gmail.com. We're on Instagram and Twitter at @callyrgf and you can buy our book Big Friendship anywhere you buy books. Our theme song is by Robyn, original music composed by Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs. Our logos are by Kenesha Sneed. We have editorial support from Laura Bertocci. Our producer is Jordan Bailey. This podcast is produced by Gina Delvac.