On Friday night, the Hollywood Reporter broke allegations against actor and LGBT advocate George Takei, who was accused by a male model of sexually assaulting him in 1981. Takei swiftly denied the claim while stating that this “simply did not occur.” Not helping matters? Takei’s newly resurfaced (October) comments on The Howard Stern Show, where the actor admitted to grabbing men’s genitals in order to “persuade” them. And this weekend, Takei did something else that didn’t present a good look.
In a move that evoked shades of Kevin Spacey coming out in response to sexual assault allegations against him, Takei blamed Russia for amplifying the the male model’s accusations. In doing so, Takei tweeted (and subsequently deleted) a chart that purportedly showed Russian bot-activity trends over 48 hours. The chart originated from SecuringDemocracy.org and showed “Takei” and “George Takei” high atop the trending list. Takei claimed that these bots attacked his Facebook page, and his team had to “ban all traffic from within the Russian federation.”
Oh no. Naturally, people screencapped this disaster and called out Takei for sort-of saying that “Russia did it” while adding that the country wanted to “cow him into silence.”
https://twitter.com/EoinHiggins_/status/929768732410466304
Add "Russia did it" to the list of classic recent reactions to sex abuse allegations. (Tweet subsequently deleted) pic.twitter.com/8wxwPygMtx
— Noam Blum (@neontaster) November 12, 2017
Of course, it’s not unreasonable to imagine that Russian bots would spread a negative story about a Trump critic, but Takei’s public comment on the matter looks like an attempt to downplay the allegations against him. As such, one concerned Takei fan tweeted, “Don’t go in this direction. If the allegations are untrue, say so, and leave it at that. Russia is not trying to silence you. This makes you sound silly (and too self-important).”
https://twitter.com/GregorySBerry/status/929753132376215552
Others were even harsher in their assessments of Takei’s declaration.
The extent to which predators will avoid accountability:
George Takei, knowing fully well many of his followers are from #Resistance twitter, had deflected his sexual assault allegations onto Russia. This is not only manipulative, but downright disgusting. pic.twitter.com/SwoGuUWgBT
— gregor samsung 𖢥 (@slimjosa) November 12, 2017
https://twitter.com/surfbordt/status/929777429727600641
Hypocrite! Sad! Russia liar! Sad!
— beef (@beefturn33) November 12, 2017
Did @GeorgeTakei actually try to blame Russia for his sexual assault allegations, or is that #FakeNews ?
— Christian Chiakulas (@ChrisChiakulas) November 12, 2017
Are we going to talk about the fact that George Takei used the "Russia did it" to contest the allegations against him. It's incredible that the Star Trek fandom is surprisingly quiet about this case.
— star trek is political 🖖 (@chekthefuckov) November 12, 2017
Yes, the entire nation of Russia is going after George Takei… that makes total sense lol.
— Glasswalker (formally the X) (@TheXTeamVan) November 12, 2017
There are a lot more tweets where those came from, but they’re much uglier in nature. Whatever Takei was trying to accomplish here, it didn’t work.