Her words landed heavily because they refused to provide comfort. There was no neat reconciliation, no moral loophole, no rhetorical escape hatch. Instead, she acknowledged something deeply unsettling: that even when harm is believed to be real, political actors may still decide that stopping a perceived greater threat outweighs full accountability.
Omar did not say Reade was lying. She did not minimize the allegation. She did not pretend the accusation evaporates in the face of party loyalty. She said she believes it — and then she said she would vote for Biden anyway. That distinction matters. It removes the illusion that supporting a candidate automatically absolves them of wrongdoing.
