The View cohosts are facing serious backlash after joking about one of the most headline-making details in the massive sex trafficking case against Diddy.
On the Tuesday, September 17 episode of The View, Whoopi Goldberg opened the show by discussing the disgraced rapper’s arrest and the charges against him. The 14-page indictment against the Bad Boy executive (real name: Sean Combs) is “extensive and disturbing,” Goldberg noted.
Diddy, who was arrested in New York City on Monday, September 16, following the March FBI raid on his Los Angeles and Miami homes, was charged with racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking by force, cause or coercion and transportation to engage in prostitution charges. He is now sitting in jail until his trial, after the judge denied his $50 million bail request.
While The View cohosts discussed the case, Sunny Hostin, the show’s legal expert, began detailing the disturbing allegations against Diddy in the indictment, many of which she referred to as “mob-like behavior.”
“They’re describing a criminal enterprise that involved trafficking of underage people across state lines to have sex, and they dubbed them ‘freak-offs,'” a stone-faced Hostin said. “They raided his homes and found 1,000 vials of lubricant. They raided his home and found narcotics.”
Goldberg, for her part, interjected: “That’s not — lubricant is not —,” the EGOT winner began, while Alyssa Farah Griffin quipped, “It ain’t a crime, guys!” which Goldberg repeated as the audience laughed and Sara Haines chuckled.
“But it can be used as evidence of a ‘freak-off,'” Hostin explained, referring to the criminal sex acts that were described in the indictment. In these “freak-offs,” which sometimes lasted for days, per the documents, Diddy allegedly “used force” to “cause victims to engage in extended sex acts with male commercial sex workers that Combs arranged, directed, masturbated during and often electronically recorded.” During the FBI raid of his homes, law enforcement officers obtained alleged evidence from these “freak-offs”: including 1,000 bottles of lubricant and baby oil, as well as copious amounts of drugs.
Given the severity and extensive descriptions of these crimes, viewers of the long-running morning show were not happy with Goldberg and Griffin’s quips about the lubricant.
“Why would these people joke about this? Our society has gone to hell,” one person opined on X (formerly known as Twitter).
“So Whoopi’s comment about lubricant was beyond. She’s horrible,” another user wrote, adding: “Whoopi is making light of this situation she’s horrible.”
“Where’s the outrage?” a third user asked.
The hosts of The View were far from the first public figures to joke about the case against Diddy. 50 Cent, who has long trolled the hip-hop mogul about the allegations against him, tweeted a photo alongside Drew Barrymore on the red carpet.
“Here I am keeping good company with @DrewBarrymoreTV and I don’t have 1,000 bottles of lube at the house,” the “Back Down” rapper wrote.
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While social media has been filled with users making quips and memes about the allegations, others have implored that people take Diddy’s alleged crimes seriously.
“Please try not to get lost in the [sensationalization] of Diddy’s lifestyle and focus on the fact that he was abusing people and they are still living with the consequences to this day. Nobody needs your lame a** lube joke or for you to point out that Diddy is a freak,” one person wrote via X. “Idk there are times where approaching situations with humour is acceptable and I don’t think this is one of them considering sexual assault and sexual violence are so easily trivialised and dismissed. you can survive without the 13 likes your ‘dark humour’ will get you.”
