The manosphere seizes on the Diddy trial to undermine female victims: ‘I don't see no crimes committed'

The Guardian

15 hours ago

When the trial of Sean 'Diddy' Combs began last month, there was one man who stood apart from the journalists, legal eagles and YouTube gossips queuing up for seats inside the New York courtroom: Myron Gaines, co-host of the Fresh and Fit podcast and author of the 2023 book Why Women Deserve Less. In the past five years, he has become infamous for his incendiary takes on masculinity, dating and the perceived challenges that men face in contemporary society.
Combs was a natural person of interest for Gaines, as well as his peers who focus on Black masculinity and traffic in many of the same misogynistic tropes that have been present in hip-hop from its early days. For decades, the New Yorker was an alpha-male fantasy come to life: a self-made captain of industry and paragon of 'Black excellence' who helps mainstream hip-hop music while juggling a roster of paramours that included Bad Boy artist Cassie Ventura.
According to Gaines, 55, the Diddy trial is 'the biggest hip-hop case of all-time' – 'bigger than Epstein', he declared after the first few days of testimony, adding: 'Honestly, it's bigger than Trump's.' And with no TV cameras in the courtroom, his sliver of the manosphere has become a crucial information source for its loyal audience of young men – and also casual trial observers who might stumble into such content through algorithmic forces.
Since Combs's arrest last September on federal criminal charges for racketeering, sex trafficking and transportation to engage in prostitution, these podcasters and YouTubers have been notably more sympathetic to him than to the witnesses called for the prosecution. The allegations about Combs's behavior are horrific and include shocking revelations about his drug use, sexual indulgences and hair-trigger temper. But you wouldn't know that from following trial coverage from these faithful evangelists of toxic masculinity. Ventura, especially, is an object of their derision, and their assessment of her testimony is withering. In their view, Combs is not a man with incredible power and influence who abused and mistreated those in his circle, but the target of a #MeToo-style witch-hunt orchestrated by Ventura.
'I don't see no crimes committed n this case,' tweeted Boosie Badazz, the southern rapper and manosphere ambassador, three days into the trial. 'U shouldn't be sent to jail for being a freak.'
YouTuber Greg Adams, who discourages Black men from settling into committed relationships, pushed back against the prosecution's attempts to characterize Ventura as a naif on his channel, Free Agent Lifestyle. 'There's no accountability on her part,' he said. 'Everything is: 'My brain still ain't developed, he slipped me a drug, he tricked me,' when it should've been: 'I was 21, Diddy was a damn near millionaire kabillionaire and I was upgrading.''
Rapper Cam'ron, a self-styled sports commentator, interviewed one of the male escorts who testified to participating in Diddy 'freak offs' for an explicit recap of his sexual experiences with Ventura. DJ Akademiks, the hip-hop tastemaker always playing devil's advocate, has called the allegations against Combs 'bullshit' and says the crimes he's accused of committing hardly warrant the life sentence he could receive if found guilty.
It is Gaines, though, who is uniquely well-positioned to cast himself as a voice of reason, often evoking his seven-year stint as a homeland security special agent, during which he handled human-trafficking and organized crime cases, to his audience of almost 2 million people. The Diddy trial doesn't just recall elements of his claimed background; it also allows him to dwell on favorite themes: in hours-long daily trial postmortems, Gaines uses blunt talk and reductive reasoning to stitch the facts of the case into a broader rebuke of modern, independent women.
Among other things, Gaines claims Ventura's testimony shows that she was not a 'passive victim'. ('For her to kind of omit responsibility from this stuff is a little crazy,' he said.) He points to the videos, texts and other freak-off-related exhibits that the government has presented in court – much of which came from Ventura – as evidence of how women entrap powerful men. He reckons Ventura's 2023 lawsuit against Combs, which was quickly settled for $20m, speaks to how women use the legal system against high-profile men to humiliate them and enrich themselves. To Gaines, Ventura testifying to receiving an additional $10m settlement from the InterContinental hotel for their handling of the 2016 altercation between her and Combs was a 'gotcha' moment.
'What it looks like to me and I think anyone who's in the courtroom is this is a dysfunctional relationship where you have two extremely jealous individuals that are both violent, that are both using drugs every single day, partying every single day, where emotions are fluid and there's a lot of infidelity going on,' Gaines said five days into the trial. 'So it's almost like a recipe for disaster.'
The more Gaines lives up to his online reputation, the more neutral observers struggle to square it with the guy they queue up with outside the courthouse. During the trial, he has acquired something of a reputation. 'He's actually quite meek in real life,' said Stephanie Soo, the creator behind a popular crime-focused YouTube channel called Rotten Mango. 'Not that I think he should carry himself as he does on his podcast in the courthouse. But he's rather, like he has a very soft demeanor.'
Gaines also seems to appreciate some nuances of Ventura's predicament that his peers wholeheartedly dismiss. Namely: he accepts that Ventura was abused and mistreated throughout the decade-long relationship with Combs. But for the most part, he seems to side with the defense argument that the government has taken a domestic violence case and turned it into a sex-trafficking case. 'Let's be honest here: Cassie had a very strong hand in a lot of this,' he said.
While Gaines and his ilk assail Ventura's credibility and ridicule supporting witnesses such as rapper Kid Cudi for 'ratting out' Combs, the crux of the prosecution's racketeering argument – that Combs exploited his extensive corporate resources and outsized interpersonal control to engage and traffic in prostitution – is largely lost on them. So is the southern district of New York's 95% conviction rate. As much as these voices make it seem plausible that Combs could beat this case, the reality is his best chance of beating the case might be through a presidential pardon.
Not surprisingly, that's something Donald Trump – the manosphere champion and a one-time Diddy wingman who has granted clemency to an assortment of hip-hop heroes, including the rapper NBA YoungBoy last week – is apparently considering.
'I haven't spoken to [Combs] in years. I think when I ran for politics, that relationship busted up, from what I read,' Trump said during an Oval Office event last week, when asked about a potential pardon. 'I would certainly look at the facts [of the case]. If I think someone was mistreated, whether they like me or dislike me wouldn't have any impact.'
Either way, it's clear who he thinks the victim would be.
With the Diddy trial at its projected halfway point, that Combs's defense team can count on continued support from Black voices in the manosphere is a marked development. Just this week, at least one content creator was reportedly requested to be barred from the trial after leaking the identity of an anonymous witness.
For these men, the trial is a test of their influence as they reframe a female victim's story into a modern allegory on the perils of being too powerful a man. It seems to be working. During the first week of the trial, a fan approached Gaines outside the courthouse and told him: 'You're the only person I trust to cover this trial.' He didn't need the encouragement.
Anna Betts contributed to reporting