Aug. 16, 2025
How Sean Diddy Combs Got Off
The P. Diddy sex trial exposed disturbing allegations of abuse, but also revealed how race, celebrity status, and systemic misogyny shield powerful men from consequences. In this episode, we unpack the complexities of the charges: Why did prosecutors struggle to apply sex trafficking laws, and what does that say about how those laws are actually used?
We explore how the public discourse around "sex trafficking" often misses the mark, and how US trafficking laws are rooted in racist, anti-immigrant moral panics going back over a century. From Cassie as an “imperfect victim” to Diddy as an “imperfect perpetrator,” we break down the legal and cultural narratives that shape how we understand abuse, power, and justice.
Hello everyone and welcome to Unwashed and Unruly.
This is straight talk from the unwashed masses because reality is worse than a conspiracy.
Today we're talking about Sean Combs and sex.
It's a story about race, anti woman bias, moral panic, justice system, and the history of sex trafficking laws.
0:28
I'm your host, Lola Michaels with bona fide candyman Ezra Saeed.
Hi, everybody.
And pop culture deep analyst Cam Cruise.
Hey, hey, what's up, everybody?
You can reach us at unwashedunruly@gmail.com.
So just to get started, the PDD verdict, we're looking at a case of celebrity race, systemic misogyny, and how that insulates powerful men from very harsh consequences.
0:53
I listened to some of this case.
I knew it had credible allegations of just very disturbing evidence of abusive and violent behavior.
There were a lot of witnesses, but then prosecutors had trouble arguing how toxic abuse in a long term relationship legally constituted sex trafficking.
1:08
So basically the jury had to believe that P Diddy coerced his partners Cassie and Jane Doe through force and fraud as criminal exploitation and that it wasn't just a swinger lifestyle.
So what what is about this sex trafficking story in the P Diddy trial Cam that you got interested in What what motivated you to talk about it today?
1:27
All right, thank you, Lola.
Thank you for that beautiful, beautiful summary.
So the reason I got into it is actually just because I really like celebrity gossip.
So I love celebrity gossip.
There's a lot of murmurs in the industry that P Diddy was abusive, that he was a predator.
1:44
And I was like excited to see that he was finally going to get caught.
So when the when the trial started and I saw the charges of sex trafficking, I was actually very surprised because although I do think that P Diddy is an abusive maniac, I didn't think he was running a prostitution ring or was involved in a criminal sex network.
2:05
So I was just confused by the charges.
And as I listened to the case, I wanted to learn more about the charges, what the law of sex trafficking was, and how it fit the case.
So before we get into like the details of the sex trafficking question and whether or not you actually think he's guilty or why, can you give some background on the details of the case?
2:26
Yeah, sure.
And this is, there's a lot of really, really sensitive stuff here.
And yeah, it's, it's really sad.
There's a lot of horrible details.
So if you're sensitive to this kind of stuff, just kind of get ready.
So I'm going to just go over the details of the case.
2:41
I want to give a shout out to Rotten Mango.
That's the podcast that I listened to, to learn it, learn about this stuff.
The people who made the podcast actually went into the court every day and created episodes that summarize the testimony of each day.
So it was about like 8 hours of content.
2:58
So I feel like they really did give a really good, accurate picture of what was happening and what was being said in the courtroom.
So here are the allegations that Diddy was being accused of.
So the main person who was bringing him up on these charges is a woman named Cassie.
Cassie was somebody who dated Diddy, I think maybe 10 years ago.
3:18
So Diddy started dating Cassie when she was in her early 20s, and Cassie was an aspiring musician.
So she met Diddy and she, you know, saw an opportunity to further her music career.
But she also really expressed that they did have a connection.
3:34
It wasn't about only furthering her career.
She really did like him and love him.
And so they started a relationship.
And after some time in that relationship, Diddy opened up to her about some of his sexual proclivities, asking her if she wanted to participate in parties with other escorts where she would have sex with other men.
3:54
And she kind of reluctantly agreed to these things.
She was in love with him, she said, and these were his fantasies, and she didn't want to shame him about those things or make him feel bad about them.
So she kind of willingly participated.
According to her, she willingly participated in the first one, and she felt uncomfortable about it.
4:12
She didn't really like it.
P Diddy was super, super excited about it.
He loved it.
It was the greatest thing and it made him happy.
It was an abusive relationship.
Cassie was very concerned about keeping P Diddy happy and a lot of her behavior and actions centered around not upsetting him because when he was upset, he was abusive.
4:31
So she started engaging in this activity and she felt pressured too.
She felt like she couldn't say no to this activity when he brought it up and it became something that they did once a week.
And the details of the freak offs are pretty wild, too.
So Cassie says that she would use drugs, usually ecstasy, to engage in this activity and that these parties would last anywhere from 36 to 48 hours.
4:57
And they would hire a handful of escorts.
So they would have like, men come in, maybe four or five men.
The man would have sex with Cassie while P Diddy watched in the corner and pleasured himself.
After the man finished, then they would go into another room.
5:13
So that would happen with the escorts on rotation.
So she would do that with one escort and then the next escort would start in a few in a little while and then the next escort in this would go on and on.
And Cassie said that this happened so frequently that she would start having urinary tract infections and then she wouldn't heal from the urinary tract infection and then she would have to have another freak off.
5:33
Oh, yeah, I don't know if I mentioned that these parties were called freak offs.
So she would have another freak off and she would be having to give oral to people.
And when she had sores in her mouth, Diddy would ask people to urinate on her.
And it was a wholly unpleasant experience for her.
5:49
She really, really hated it.
Being drugged the entire time is the only way that she can cope with it.
And she felt pressured to participate in this activity because she knew it's what Diddy wanted.
He would become violent when he didn't get what he wanted.
And he also kind of strung her along.
So she was always kind of waiting for him to release her records or to help her make that break.
6:09
So he definitely used manipulation around her desire to become a part of the music industry as a way to coerce her into engaging in this activity.
How does this case that you just described, like how does it fit the charges of sex trafficking?
Like how does that make sense?
6:24
Yeah.
So that's something that I learned about this.
I had a really different impression of what sex trafficking was going into this case.
So if I can just stop and ask you guys like what do you think sex trafficking?
What comes to mind when you hear the term sex trafficking?
When I think of it, I think of what used to be called white slavery, which conjures up images of women being kidnapped and forced into or coerced into forced prostitution.
6:53
Yeah, so there's there was always a moral panic around it in some way and it was always tinged with race and immigration from what I know about it.
Yeah, totally.
And I and I love that you use, not that I love kidnapping, don't get me wrong, Ezra, but I love that you use the word kidnapping because that felt like a really essential part of what sex trafficking was to me.
7:12
But as I learned, the word of the law of sex trafficking is really different from what my impression was.
So here is the law that applied to the Diddy case.
So this means sex trafficking is defined as recruiting, harboring, transporting, providing, or obtaining a person for the purpose of a commercial sex act through force, fraud, or coercion.
7:36
So if we look at the allegations, they actually do match the definition of sex trafficking in my opinion.
So if we go through some of those charges specifically, the first part was recruitment and transportation.
And he did recruit women using his his employees would have to call escorts for him and he would transport them across state lines, which is specifically addressed through the Man Act portion of the sex trafficking law.
8:04
And he was.
He was found guilty of the Man Act.
He was found guilty of the man Act, yes, and he was found guilty of prostitution charges, but he was not convicted on sex trafficking.
So yeah, that's why I was just trying to understand why he wasn't convicting on sex trafficking and trying to fit figure out exactly how the charges fit this situation.
8:22
So we have recruitment and transportation.
I feel like the prosecution did a really good job of proving those two points.
Coercion, I think is pretty clear.
He used manipulation about her career.
He used the intimidation of violence against her.
He used retaliation against women who had kind of resisted or try to report him in any way.
8:44
I think we meet the allegation of fraud and that he was stringing Cassie along, telling her that he was going to do certain things for her career and didn't do those things.
So he was misrepresenting that.
And force comes in the in the form of physical violence.
And I think that we can safely say that that's no longer an allegation because, you know, we have the the video of P Diddy attacking Cassie in the hallway.
9:08
That's something he admits that happened.
So there's not really much question around the idea of physical force and then commercial sex act.
Clearly, you know, he was paying for sex.
So that fits the charges there too.
OK, so you just proved that he was guilty of the version of sex trafficking by law.
9:27
So why did the jury get it wrong?
Yeah.
And I was really, really surprised when they came up with the verdict they did because like I said, I thought they proved it.
But I think that the big, big thing here is there's a really big, big gap between what people think sex trafficking is and how it exists in the letter of the law.
9:45
So a lot of the news that we see and a lot of the media that we see around sex trafficking presents the most extreme versions of this, the most extreme stories where people are abducted, people are taking overseas, people are drugged.
So when people hear the word sex trafficking, they're thinking about shady shadow networks of bad men who are kidnapping children off the streets.
10:08
So over time, I think that builds a very specific picture of what the crime of sex trafficking looks like, what victimhood looks like and what perpetration looks like.
And I don't think the Diddy case matched that picture.
And I think that kind of clouded how the jurors saw this case.
10:24
So you have like the idea that they're going to go after certain perpetrators and believe only certain victims.
I mean obviously race is a big factor in this but how does you know anti anti woman bias or anything like that play a role?
10:40
Yeah, and that's really, really important.
So the portrait that's creating by the sensationalism around sex trafficking kind of positions the victim as this innocent child who is completely has no autonomy over their situation and is completely powerless, and the person who's perpetrating these crimes as this, like, cartoonishly villainous bad guy.
11:02
And like I said, the case doesn't really match that.
So the first thing I want to talk about is the idea of perfect victim.
So we first see the term ideal victim in 1986, and it's a term that's coined by our Norwegian sociologist Nils Christie and explores how certain crime victims are perceived as more deserving of empathy and support in public discourse.
11:24
And if I could just continue to read from this definition, this idealized figure is often portrayed as weak, vulnerable, and innocent with no responsibility for their victimization.
They are typically engaged in virtuous activities at the time of the crime and are isolated from the perpetrator.
So like I was saying about the portrait that's created and the sensationalized media that we see about sex trafficking, the victim is an innocent child.
11:47
They're completely weak.
When Cassie met Diddy, she was not a minor.
They were having a consensual relationship, and she's also black.
So when you match this picture versus the picture of victimhood that we see in the media, we already see there's some nuance here and some complications.
12:03
And it gives space for the defense to kind of paint Cassie in in a light where maybe she's not completely blameless in this scenario.
So I think this issue in the the roles of perpetrator and victim are clouded here in a few ways.
12:19
I think the fact that Diddy is powerful and connected also changes the equation a bit.
And I think the defense capitalized on that dynamic in that they tried to frame Cassie as a gold digger, somebody who was really sought fame and money over everything else.
12:38
And also I think there's a attitude that exists in the general public that there is a price for fame, that if you're involved in entertainment, in entertainment industry as a woman, that there that you should just expect to have to be sexually exploited or you should expect certain favors as a price of admission.
12:54
So I think all of these things colored people's opinions towards Cassie, and Cassie wasn't really able to garner the sympathy as the victim.
That's interesting.
So what has been the reaction to the verdict on social media?
Social media I, I think is so interesting and such a wonderful tool in in situations like this because you can really see a window into what the general opinion is.
13:17
And I think that you can totally see that people did not perceive Cassie as a victim through the comments on social media.
I gathered a bunch of comments here that show that Cassie failed to gain sympathy and that people saw her as partially responsible or didn't think of her as a victim.
13:34
So if I could read some of those comments here.
The first one says Cassie's husband has got to be re evaluating his life choices.
Cassie out here making us believe she's innocent.
Cassie ruined her image for 20 mil.
Why are they even saying Cassie's husband like they don't know who he is?
13:50
Yeah.
And I think that is there's so much misogyny also in these in these comments where that because Cassie was involved in quote UN quote promiscuous activities that her husband should be ashamed for that.
14:07
And that's pretty, pretty awful.
The next comment, she is not a victim.
Cassie loved it.
Cassie's husband is the real victim in all of this.
I do not wish this even on my worst enemy.
So yeah, you can clearly see, and I didn't really check the cherry pick these comments.
14:23
It's not like I looked through and I tried to pick the worst ones.
This represents the general sentiment.
Everybody kind of sees Cassie as willing that she was hungry for fame and that she stayed in a bad situation and that she could have left at any time.
And I think that's one of like the, I think that's one of the areas that the defense really did some great manipulation.
14:46
They really worked hard to try to keep any experts out of the courtroom that could testify on the dynamics of abusive relationships.
They worked really hard to get off any get any jurors out who had experienced domestic violence.
So kind of maintaining this facade about what abuse and sex abuse looks like was essential to their framing of the case.
15:08
Going back to just the sex trafficking question and like how it ties in, how has the legal definition of sex trafficking been applied in the US?
Like what are and, and what are we looking at?
Like is this a real thing?
Is the public perception of it versus the way the law describes it?
15:24
What are the actual statistics?
So one of the things that makes this issue really interesting is that it's very hard to nail down what is actually happening.
So here is a statistic that comes from the University of Texas.
According to the University of Texas, 7079 thousand minors are currently being trafficked in Texas alone.
15:45
So we're talking about 80,000 kids.
That does not include the adults.
So a huge, huge number and that's kind of reiterated by the Institute of the Institute Against Human Trafficking.
According to the Institute Against Human Trafficking quote, there are hundreds of thousands and potentially over 1,000,000 victims trapped in the world of sex trafficking in the United States.
16:07
Because of the hidden nature of the crime, it is essentially impossible to know how many for sure.
So this is a really, really bizarre statistic because the first part of it is saying there's hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of people.
And then the second part of it is saying.
We don't really don't.
Actually know.
16:23
So it's very strange, like it doesn't really make sense.
And the fact that there's a bunch of insubstantiated claims out there is further evidenced by this quote over here.
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children had a quote in 2015 saying one in seven runaways are victims of sex trafficking, and they're talking about teens here.
16:45
So the Washington Post investigated that claim, and they found there was no evidence at all.
In response to that investigation, they changed the quote to say one in seven runaways are likely victims of trafficking.
And where that number comes from is a complete mystery.
Well, yeah.
I was going to actually ask you about that because you have you read all these statistics and these numbers and how do they get these numbers?
17:07
Like are, is there any reality to it?
Is is it based on anything?
It's, it's really interesting because there are all these claims about the prevalence of sex trafficking, how it's everywhere and how difficult it is to collect data around it.
And I do sympathize with that.
17:23
But the ways they use now, I feel like clearly are creating false positives.
So one really good example of that is the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children has a hotline you can call to report your missing kid.
So the way this works is when the operator receives that call, if they get any inkling that sex trafficking is involved, that child will be marked as a sex trafficking victim.
17:44
So.
That means it's just subjective.
Well, there is a list of warning signs.
Would you like like to hear Shared Hope International's list of warning signs for teenagers?
Absolutely.
Get ready for this.
This is some really extreme behavior in teenagers.
18:00
The first one is unexplained absences from class.
That means you're being sex.
Trafficked.
Yeah, exactly.
So apparently we probably all were likely victims of sex trafficking.
My entire junior high school year.
Yes, overly tired in class, less appropriately dressed than before, which we also know is just the part of kind of maturing.
18:20
Like your dress changes sexualized behavior.
Again, a normal part of development.
Withdrawn, depressed, distracted or checked out.
Brags about making or having lots of money.
It's weird because a lot of those things when you were first reading them sounded like biased against low income and poor families because a lot of kids, they're going to school and they have a lot of distraction at home.
18:47
They come from really difficult economic situations.
You know, they don't have enough to eat.
That's going to affect like how their attention levels are, how distracted they are, their clothing.
Like all of those things just seem like, well, then who are who's going to be accused of this exactly?
19:05
Exactly.
And those are like the people who come up the most in the system are foster care kids.
And if I can talk more about how the hotline works, it's actually pretty alarming.
So like I said, if the operator gets any inkling that you're being sex trafficked, if there's any warning sign, quote UN quote warning sign of sex trafficking, you're marked as a sex trafficking victim.
19:26
And also the way that it's tallied is really interesting because if I have a daughter and she runs away and I say, oh, she has an older boyfriend, then she'll be marked as a victim of sex trafficking.
She can come back in 2 hours and she'll still be considered.
She'll still be on that list, so she's still contributing to the data.
19:42
They don't delete it.
They don't delete it.
And you can also be counted multiple times.
So if that same person runs away the next month, then they'll be counted again.
So there's a lot of instances, like you were saying, of vulnerable children, kids who are in foster care situations running away. 6 * a year.
19:59
That is counted as six victims of sex trafficking.
So the definition is incredibly broad and and problematic.
Yes.
And the way that we collect data is creating a lot of false positives.
I realized that it is hard to create data around this stuff.
20:14
So it's like it's, it's a difficult task, but the way that we're doing it now really doesn't make any sense.
So it's, I mean, like, to me it sounds like it's going to, it's a very convenient way of creating a moral panic around this stuff.
Because anytime of there's like a sexual panic in the US, there's always like another agenda that's going on.
20:35
You know, it's some sort of campaign to implement some sort of like social control or manipulate people.
So like what?
How does this fit into?
You're exactly right.
This fits the perfect definition of a moral panic, because a moral panic is all about an exaggerated fear about a perceived threat that may not actually exist.
20:53
And when we look at the data, that's exactly what we see.
So in 2017, Homeland Security reported 500 cases of sex trafficking.
And at the same time, NGOs are reporting ranges from the hundreds of thousands to 1,000,000.
So we see a huge discrepancy in this data and that's where we see that this is not based on statistics.
21:11
This is based on people's emotions.
This is reflecting people's anxiety.
And like also this propels people to feel like that this is a large and unaddressed problem, that there is a notion that we're insufficiently concerned about this problem and that this crime is happening under our nose and that police are not doing enough about it.
21:34
So this is where we really see this like knee jerk feeling and how this is starting to be defined as a panic.
And then you have whenever there's other police aren't doing enough, then there's a justification for the police cracking down and cracking down more widely.
And that leads to all sorts of.
21:51
Exactly.
Exactly.
And then you have, so I was thinking about the all the scare and panic like in the 80s and 90s about, you know, that children being kidnapped, about satanic ritual abuse in preschools.
22:07
You know, all of that, which was a kind of social reaction to women actually going to work and not being responsible for entirely responsible for a child care at home and a way of showing that there was a real threat by women breaking from some sort of domestic like family model or mold or whatever.
22:33
Yeah, there's always a campaign to Save the Children.
I think that's something that existed in the form of Satanic Panic in the 1980s.
It existed in the form of Stranger Danger in the 1990s.
So this panic is not wholly new.
It just has a new name.
So this is our version of Stranger Danger for the 2000s.
22:52
So like why now though?
Like what's the like?
I think in the 80s and 90s we knew why there was a lot of hysteria about childcare because it was an attempt to put women back into the home and to be the primary caregivers.
And to say that it was scary to leave your children with daycare providers because they were inevitably going to perform some sort of satanic ritual on your child and perform abuse, which was completely fabricated, of course.
23:20
But so there was a, a, a big social context there that was attempting to put women in their quote, UN quote place in the family.
Yeah.
So what you're saying is that the this was a manifestation of anxieties that existed around womanhood and questions around childcare.
23:40
And I surprisingly and weirdly enough, I think this is all panic around immigration.
And it sounds kind of like a stretch, but if we go back and look at the history of sex trafficking in America, its roots are in anti immigrant sentiment.
23:55
And ultimately these are laws at the end of the day.
And these are laws that are used to control movement and to be able to prosecute people from crossing borders.
Immigration How do sex trafficking laws relate to immigration?
OK, Yeah, All right, so bear with me.
Now, guys, we're going to go back and we're going to go back to the times when sex trafficking was first on our minds as people.
24:17
And guess what?
Surprise, surprise, it's all about racism.
Like most of the laws in America first start out.
So the precursor we see to the sex trafficking law is something called the 1870 Act to prevent the Kidnapping and Importing of Mongolian, Chinese and Japanese Females for criminal or demoralizing purposes.
24:37
That just rolls off the tongue, don't it?
Yep, and you can already see that it's a tool that's being utilized to control migrant populations.
All right, so then in 1875, there's another act that includes in its preamble that it was trying to quote, UN quote, end the danger of cheap Chinese labor and immoral Chinese women.
24:59
And this all, of course, culminates in the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which prohibited the immigration of Chinese laborers for 10 years to the country.
So these laws were being created to keep Chinese people out and to control them.
So right from the beginning, these are tools of control.
25:18
And sex trafficking is a newish term that's being created to separate it from smuggling.
So smuggling historically has been done for the benefit of the person who was participating in it.
It was being done at the behest of the person being done it to it.
25:34
But trafficking shifts the criminality from the person who is being smuggled, the person who's entering a country illegally, to the person doing the transportation.
And as you can see, this is obviously a much more efficient tool for people who are trying to prosecute.
It's a lot easier to go after the person who's doing the transporting than it is after to go after every single person who is here illegally.
25:55
So really, right from the beginning, it's a tool that's used to control migrant populations.
It's weird though, because when you were saying that, I was thinking about going back to the PDD, that it fits into the imperfect victim definition because it's like if they're going to say sex trafficking, but then you have a willing, quote UN quote willing victim in their mind, the how they presented Cassie and and and Jane, then they would be, it would fall more into like the smuggling definition or would fall more into like, oh, they voluntarily chose this relationship.
26:29
They chose this lifestyle.
It was a swinging lifestyle.
And so how can you charge he did?
How can he be the perpetrator of sex trafficking?
Because he wasn't running it as an enterprise with coercion.
Yeah.
And like the we can also question the use of force here because Cassie was making a choice on some level.
26:45
So it really is murky when you think about it in those terms for sure.
So yeah, you're absolutely right.
And then so.
Does that mean So what you were saying about immigration?
So I assume that means like the definition of sex trafficking by law has changed over the years depending on what the ruling class really wants to implement, like what who they, which immigrants are when they need the cheap labor, when they need someone to come, a population to come in to perform, like when there's when they need that hysteria or social control, obviously the economy.
27:19
So we're seeing a lot of this happened today in terms of immigration.
So how did the law change?
So one of the interesting things is the law always reflects the current anxiety of the times.
And I think that's one of the reasons you can really say this is a moral panic.
So the first time or one of the first times that the term trafficking is used, the actual term is in the 19 O 4 International Agreement for the Suppression of White Slight Slave Trafficking.
27:44
So that was the idea that that the the problem was that basically to undermine the deep seated black slavery as being a foundation of this country and to say that actually like white slaves where that was the main issue.
They're the victims of awful black people.
28:02
The dark skinned riffraff that are invading the country.
Yeah, exactly.
So at this time or in this law, trafficking is defined this way, cross-border movement of white women and girls by force to seek or drugs for the purpose of commercial sexual exploitation.
28:20
So it is specifically for white women.
It is written in the law.
So I'm not speculating about this being a race based law.
It's literally.
It's in the, it's in there.
Yeah.
And it also, this is how it defines A victim.
A victim is a white woman who is a victim of the animal lust of the dark racist.
28:38
So this is in 1904.
This Oh yeah, this leads to the man Act in 1910.
But as you guys know, this is when slavery has ended.
So now interracial relationships are on the rise and these laws are created around the fear around that.
28:54
So they take, yeah, so they take completely consensual relations and criminal relationship between black men and white women.
And they need to put black men in their place, quote UN quote, and uphold the quote, UN quote sanctity of white womanhood.
And so they can say, well, you're trafficking when really these are just consensual relationships and they're traveling across state lines.
29:15
Yep, Yep, And it's a way it's like a physical, it's like a a legal manifestation of an anxiety that's kind of existing at the time.
And it's funny that are not funny.
But you're totally right when you touch on the purity of of white women is if we look at the Man Act of 1910, which is the culmination of all these other smaller acts.
29:34
The Man Act sought to maintain the moral the moral purity of white women by prohibiting women from crossing state lines for immoral purposes and criminalizing interracial couples.
In terms of the PDD case, it's itself I, I think you're by all indications, I think you're right that he is guilty of obscene abuse of Cassie.
29:55
I also think he's wealthy, he's powerful, he's black and that and he's weird if if nothing else.
And those are ingredients that a lot of powerful people in the US don't like in in a black man.
30:11
I think he made he, he sort of became an easy target.
And it sounds like from what you're saying, they kind of overshot by going for the sex trafficking conviction?
30:27
As I don't I don't think she's saying that I feel like.
I, I, I think that, I think when you think about it within the context of general perception than they did overshoot.
But when you think about it in terms of the letter of the law, it's it's a good fit.
Yeah, so, cuz I, I mean, I agree that generally when we see there's a reason why I think even the defense use the term like a public lynching and like the implementation, like the, the charges of the man act.
30:54
They actually pointed out that there's a history of going after black men because anytime a black man is on trial for sex, there's always an ulterior motive.
There's always some sort of, you know, disgusting recycling of those racist tropes from the from the Klan era and and modern day lynching comes to mind for a lot of black celebrities who have been on trial, even if they are guilty of crimes, but the way that they can still be framed up or pigeon holes, you know?
31:33
Yeah.
And I think everything you're mentioning there made it even more surprising that the verdict was what it was because as you're saying, minorities have historically been prosecuted using these laws to.
So to see him get off was really surprising to me.
I'm actually interested in whether or not we're seeing in 2025 these two scandals, major sex scandals with these circles, right?
31:55
So we have the PDD stuff and Epstein under the Trump administration.
What?
Is there any relationship or overlap between the two?
So from everything I've seen there don't really have a relationship with each other.
I think that their names come up in conversation together often because they're both accused of similar types of crimes.
32:14
One of the things that I did see that I think is interesting is there's been talk of Trump pardoning P Diddy.
Yes, I have seen that.
As.
A fellow sex offender.
Yeah, and, and Trump was explicitly asked about it at one point and he would not rule it out.
32:33
And he said, you know, something to the fact that he's going to quote certainly look at the facts and make a decision, you know, whether to go on a pardoning spree, continuous pardoning spree with P Diddy or not.
So that's that's one connection.
32:50
I mean, one of the things that's interesting about this is this trial began in 2025 and ended in 2025, rather rather quick trial and all under the Trump era of intense hostility to immigrants and intense increase in racism in general against everybody who's not white.
33:15
So yeah, like you said, I think Trump is an important part of this conversation.
There's a lot of anti immigrant sentiment right now.
And like I said before, there's always a correlation between interest and rhetoric around sex trafficking and rise of immigration.
And that kind of gets us into why this storyline persists, why this panic exists, and who is benefiting from this sensationalism.
33:38
And I think there's 2 answers to this.
I think 1 is, like I said, this is really tied to immigration.
These laws help protect borders.
They allow prosecution and deportations.
And this is a tool, this is for politicians to use.
It's also a tool for them to use the virtue signal to say to their communities that they care about the children.
33:58
And the second reason that these storylines persist and that the sensationalism is benefit, the second party of people to whom the sensationalism is beneficial are Ng OS.
Ng OS that advocate for victims of sex trafficking are obviously always looking to raise funds and collect money for their organizations.
34:19
And they know by going to the public and saying, hey, we're supporting vulnerable women, they're not going to raise as much money as if they go to the public and say, hey, we're working to end modern day slavery.
And because one way kind of works on the psychology of people, that works on our savior complex.
34:35
You know, we don't want to help support somebody.
We want to save somebody.
So it really allows us to feel like heroes in a way.
So NGOs work really hard to keep the storyline heightened and sensationalized because it garners more funds for them.
34:52
And it's the NGOs that are collecting the statistics.
Yes, the NGOs are collecting the assistance.
The statistics that our government uses is collected by advocacy groups and NGOs.
Except it seems like in this case there's also the opposite happening, which is using like this very broad and ambiguous and charged at the same time accusation of sex trafficking and racketeering, conspiracy to go after P Diddy.
35:18
When really what you're you're talking about is how do you prosecute abusive and coercive relationships?
Yeah.
And so much of how we prosecute them or how this, so much of the success or failure of those trials are based on people's perception of abuse, are based on people's perceptions of abusive relationships.
35:37
And there's just a lot of misunderstanding and misinformation about that.
And by having sensationalized pictures of how abuse works, it supports and scaffolds those misunderstandings.
And I think that had a really big impact in how people saw Cassie as unworthy of sympathy, how people didn't see P Diddy as the cartoonish monster that's being portrayed.
35:59
So yeah, I think that has an unintended consequence in in our perception around sex abuse.
And one last thing on that, with the current climate being increasingly anti immigrant and racist, it's also increasingly misogynist, an anti woman.
And I wonder if that played a role in sort of painting Cassie in a very unfavorable light today.
36:24
Just like that Johnny Depp trial.
Yeah, for sure.
And I think that when we have this kind of moral panic, we have like a return to traditional values.
And for us that is largely misogynistic.
And we saw that in the rhetoric online where people are blaming Cassie for being sexually loose and a lot of moralistic hysteria that speaks more to our emotion, more to our emotions and our kind of patriarchal understanding of things.
36:54
So one of the conclusions I think we can all make out of this case is that these laws don't really exist to protect minors, children, women from abuse and coercion.
They're really about immigration, racism and social control.
37:12
Exactly, Ezra.
So once again, all about racism.
Surprise, surprise.
Welcome to America.
America.
Yeah, yeah.
I don't think we can do an entire episode on the P Diddy trial and not talk about baby oil.
37:31
I know it's, it's, it's a real, it's a real injustice.
So if you guys want to know how much baby oil was being used, Cassie said that Diddy liked his people shiny while they had sex and that every 10 minutes or so they would reapply baby oil and each freak off, they would go through about one gallon of baby oil.
37:52
And they were doing these things in hotels.
So they were like routinely destroying hotel rooms and having to pay 10s of thousands of dollars for cleanup.
Like this whole thing is just so crazy.
Wouldn't you hate to have to clean up a hotel after a freak out?
But we don't love anybody who doesn't love us.
38:15
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