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You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / Tara Reade defects to Russia

Tara Reade defects to Russia

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You can’t make this shit up! From The Daily Beast:

Tara Reade, a former Senate aide who accused President Joe Biden of sexual assault, announced Tuesday she defected to Russia.

The shocking confession was made during a Russian state press conference, where Reade was sitting next to alleged Kremlin spy—and pal—Maria Butina. Reade told the pro-Putin press the “very difficult” decision to move came after the realization that she no longer feels safe in Biden’s America.

“I’m still kind of in a daze a bit but I feel very good,” Reade told Sputnik. “I feel very surrounded by protection and safety. And I just really so appreciate Maria [Butina] and everyone who’s been giving me that at a time when it’s been very difficult to know if I’m safe or not.”

“You have U.S. and European citizens looking for safe haven here,” Reade added. “And luckily, the Kremlin is accommodating. So we’re lucky.”

Do you think there’s any chance they’d take the Trumps and Roger Stone? 🤔

Open thread.

Reader Interactions

91Comments

  7. 7.

    Amir Khalid

    At the moment, things are not going well in Russia. The last thing they need is more defects.

  8. 8.

    Spanky

    Useful idiot makes herself unuseful. Can’t wait to see how this one ends up.

    Oh wait! I don’t care, do u?

  9. 9.

    CaseyL

    That has got to be about the funniest thing I’ve read in a while, feeling more “safe and valued” in Russia than here.  Only if you don’t mind getting your comfort zone at the expense of everyone else’s – which is the GOP all over, innit?

    The thought that she might have been an asset all along had not previously occurred to me.  It’s convenient to think so, but I don’t see how the GRU could have had her on their radar until she emerged to try sabotaging Biden.

  14. 14.

    Kay

    I read the whole Tara Reade backstory. She’s a scammer and flim flammer from way back.

    O/T, in case anyone is interested, here is a very well crafted feminist case against TERFS, or, if you prefer, pro trans:

    MacKinnon

    It’s long and it’s not an easy read but it’s well written and clear like all MacKinnon’s work.

  18. 18.

    Jim, Foolish Literlist

    watching MSNBC and I just saw an ad tying trump’s “we should have default” to the GOP Congresscritters. I didn’t catch who put it on

  19. 19.

    RaflW

    I hope this emboldens more right wingers to emigrate (defection seems like a ridiculous word to describe leaving a country with open right to departure).

    Romney’s famous “self-deport” however does fit very nicely.

  21. 21.

    C Stars

    HA! Is this that person who serially skipped out on paying rent to her landlords by lying about her life and then when she came out with her accusations against Biden they all came out of the woodwork and said “She’s not what she seems”? Maybe I’m not remembering the story exactly, only that she was a liar and a grifter.

  27. 27.

    Sebastian

    It might be a test balloon to gauge US media reactions for when Bannon and Stone make a run for it and become anchormen for a new propaganda channel.

  29. 29.

    Kay

    @C Stars:

    serially skipped out on paying rent to her landlords by lying about her life

    That’s the one. She also gave false “expert” testimony which may have been relied on to convict people unjustly

    Good fucking riddance.

  30. 30.

    sab

    Tara Reid the actual American actress v Tara Reade the American Russian asset. Just to be clear. These women may look the same on Google, but they are not the same,

  31. 31.

    JPL

    Tara, the Russian asset, lies so much that George Santos wouldn’t defend her.

    imo

  34. 34.

    sdhays

    I’m kind of surprised Russia decided she was valuable enough to entice into “defecting”. Or is she “self-defecting” and going to be surprised when she arrives in Moscow to discover she needs to find a job?

    Maybe the McDonald’s rip-off is hiring?

  36. 36.

    Ken B

    @sdhays: Wagner’s hiring. They seem to have a high employee turnover rate for some reason.

    Most likely she’ll end up pushing disinformation on some state owned channel until the Russians get bored with her.

  37. 37.

    Layer8Problem

    @Jim, Foolish Literlist:  I saw that myself, read off the name on the bottom at the end, and it was so anonymously unmemorable I immediately forgot it.  I just remember some F-alliteration words and “USA”.

    Excuse me for asking, but when did you stop being a Foolish Literalist?

  39. 39.

    Tony Jay

     Screws up 100,000/1 Election ‘24 betting slip, tosses it across a mostly empty room to land on the box where the TV once stood. Sighs. Scribbles a quick note apologising to the few friends he hasn’t borrowed too much money from. Walks out into the rainswept night to meet Jimmy the Knife at the pool hall and face the music like the man he used to think he could be. 

    Damn you, Tara Reade.

  40. 40.

    Roger Moore

    @CaseyL: ​
     

    It’s convenient to think so, but I don’t see how the GRU could have had her on their radar until she emerged to try sabotaging Biden.

    Finding people like that is what intelligence services do. They’re constantly on the lookout for people who might have some reason to be unhappy with the government or important people in the government in the hope they can leverage that for some use.

  44. 44.

    BruceFromOhio

    Do you think there’s any chance they’d take the Trumps and Roger Stone? 🤔

    Let all the riffraff  know that Vlad honors Trump Bucks, and the libs will be so very pwned if they all defected.

  46. 46.

    C Stars

    @Baud:

    I believe the NYT ran a sympathetic front page story about her.

    That checks out. I canceled my subscription when they ran a sympathetic story about Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes (calling him, if I recollect, “dapper” and a “style icon”) the week after he and his gang had been visiting NYC and randomly beating up people of color on the street. So yeah, totally can see how the NYT would love them some Tara Reade.

  49. 49.

    Jackie

    Boebert and Gaetz are threatening Used Chapstick’s Speakership. Margie has been unusually quiet…

    I have a dream UC (Used Chapstick) gets primaried next year and LOSES!

    (Don’t wake me up yet! Lol)

  53. 53.

    Scout211

    So what is Tara Reade’s game here? Money? Celebrity? Power? I don’t understand. Anyone have a clue?

  54. 54.

    NotMax

    When do the Rs begin excoriating Connecticut for succumbing to “wokeness?” (WaPo link.)

    On May 26, 1647, Alice “Alse” Young was ordered to Hartford, Conn., to be hanged. Young, a botanist, was accused of using witchcraft to start a pandemic that resulted in children’s deaths in nearby Windsor.

    Young, who was believed to be roughly 32 years old, was the first of at least 11 people put to death for witchcraft in Connecticut.

    On Thursday — nearly 376 years after Young’s death — Connecticut’s Senate passed a resolution absolving dozens of state residents who were accused, convicted and executed for the crime of witchcraft in the 1600s. Source

  55. 55.

    JPL

    @Scout211: recognition

    She hasn’t been in the news for a few years, so it’s time for her reappearance.

    Of course, she could have been an agent for Russia all along.

  59. 59.

    kmeyerthelurker

    Is it really defecting if she is completely free to go?  Isn’t that just emigrating?

  63. 63.

    Bill Arnold

    @CaseyL:

    but I don’t see how the GRU could have had her on their radar until she emerged to try sabotaging Biden.

    She fluffed PutinRussia in this medium post, and deleted it when it surfaced during her anti-Biden op, and my link to a copy of it at web.archive.org doesn’t work (additional cleanup, perhaps). This link still works:
    Bring on the Light (Dec 17, 2018, Alexandra Tara Reade)

    What if I told you that everything you learned about Russia was wrong? What if I told you as an American citizen, we have been fed propaganda to further a certain political American agenda?
    …
    President Putin scares the power elite in America because he is a compassionate, caring, visionary leader.

    That piece got her name (and dossier) on a GRU list, if it wasn’t on it already.

  64. 64.

    Miss Bianca

    @Jackie: You know how it goes…one week you’re buying the Speaker’s used chapstick, the next week you’re denouncing him.

    It could happen to anybody, really.

  66. 66.

    Miss Bianca

    @Ken: OMG, so that really *was* a thing! I had a fellow grad student tell me she had seen it when she was in the UK, and I couldn’t believe it!

  68. 68.

    Roger Moore

    @kmeyerthelurker:

    Is it really defecting if she is completely free to go?

    Yes.  There were a few westerners who defected to the Soviet Union during the Cold War, and it was still called defecting.  As a quick rule of thumb, if the country you’re going to holds a press conference for you to denounce the country you’re leaving, it’s a defection.

  70. 70.

    RaflW

    re: Defection, I had thought the border status of the nation left mattered, but Webster’s seems to think it does not. And I’m no Webster, surely.

  71. 71.

    mrmoshpotato

    Who wants to see my surprised face?!

    Fuck off and never come back, you Russki shitstain!  Enjoy getting shipped off to Ukraine!

  72. 72.

    KrackenJack

    I hope Putin treats her like queen. Set her up in a dacha with caviar and willing cabana staff. That will encourage other like-minded individuals to join her. Once they have a battalion, they can do whatever seems appropriate.

  75. 75.

    Tony Jay

    @Ken:

    British TV of the ‘90s was run by a bunch of drugged up public schoolboys who had been left unsupervised for a long time. Sometimes that was great. Sometimes… not so much.

    @Baud:

    Ah, t’es francais? Maintenant je comprend La Grande Vie Sans Pants.

    One doesn’t jibber the foreign jabber tres bien. ;-)

  78. 78.

    WaterGirl

    @eclare: Yes, it really is bizarre.  She is an odd bird.  Marge is as transactional as Trump.  She is surely trying to promote herself by buying into his good graces, while at the same time I think she is trying to buy her way into the VP position by raising large amounts of funds.

    Shorter: with every move she makes, she is buying power.

  79. 79.

    Betty Cracker

    @WaterGirl: Agree that’s her goal, but since Greene is dumber than a satchel of toenail clippings, we can expect those power purchases to be idiotic, like the chapstick bid.

  81. 81.

    WaterGirl

    @Betty Cracker: Agree!

    What I meant to include in my previous comment, but didn’t, is that I think at the same time she is trying to suck up and buy her way into the Squeaker’s good graces, I think she is also aiming for Speaker and VP at the same time, hoping she gets one of them.

    Not sure whether you will agree on that one or not.  That’s a pretty tough move to pull off – ingratiate yourself with the person you are trying to knock off.

    Do we think Marge is aware that that’s a pretty tough thing to pull off?

    Either way, Marge is hungry for power.  I’m absolutely certain that she doesn’t know how to spell the word finesse, and I’m pretty darn certain that she’s not even aware of the concept!

  86. 86.

    Darkrose

    @Kay: Thanks for the link, Kay! I’ve had many issues with MacKinnon in the past, but it’s great to see her clearly laying out the problems with TERFs and their gender essentialism. Well before a certain YA author showed her entire ass on trans issues, I’d noticed that her books were steeped in the idea that the most important thing a woman could do was to be a mother. That’s the main message of the wizard series: maternal love conquers all. The kids all grow up and marry their boarding school sweethearts and the girls start having babies ASAP. It tracks with the epicenter of the anti-trans movement in the UK being the Mumsnet website.

  87. 87.

    Bethanyanne

    @Kay: I’m late to the thread, but damn that’s good. Thanks so much for sharing it. I’m only 10 min or so into the article, but damn. Her clarity of thought is lovely.

  88. 88.

    Chris Johnson

    @sdhays: On the contrary: she is un-valuable enough that she is of no further use working in the US.

    There’s LOTS of folks that could do likewise, who are not welcome to quit their jobs and run home to Moscow just yet. Tara is not surprising, but it just shows how she ceased to be useful after a point.

    If your only usefulness is ‘see, she lives with us now!’ then you are already out of the loop.

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