Diddy scrubbed his Instagram account clean last week and he faced backlash for deleting his apology video to Cassie. Among those criticizing Sean Combs for the “foolish” move is ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith, who ripped the embattled music executive.
“You deleted all the videos from your Instagram account including the one I just showed,” he said on the Tuesday (June 25) episode of Stephen A. Smith Show. “If you had a million photos, if you had a million videos, and you decided to delete 999,999, that’s the one you should’ve kept up if you’re sincere.”
Stephen A. continued: “And I know that you’ve been taking a lot of hits, and there’s been shrapnels of criticism all over the place aimed in your direction. Not that it wasn’t deserved … Although one could argue, the ex that you hit had to deal with a hell of a lot more than you had to deal with in terms of the criticism.”
Smith just couldn’t understand how Diddy or his PR team thought it would be the right move to delete the Cassie apology video when public perception was not on his side.
“Delete everything else — not that,” he claimed. “Don’t you want people to know that you were contrite? That you were incredibly sorry? That you have profound regret for the egregious actions that you were caught on camera committing?”
The boisterous First Take host added: “By deleting the video, you throw all of that out the window. The possibility of the very few people that would ever believe that really having a reason to continue to believe you.”
Fans noticed Diddy cleared his IG account last week, including the apology video in response to footage of him physically abusing Cassie in a Los Angeles hotel. CNN shared the March 2016 video in May, and it showed Diddy dragging Cassie across the floor of an L.A. hotel elevator bank.
Diddy said he was “disgusted” with his behavior in the apology video that was shared on his Instagram account. “It’s so difficult to reflect on the darkest times in your life, but sometimes you got to do that,” he stated. “I was f—ed up. I mean, I hit rock bottom. But I make no excuses. My behavior on that video is inexcusable. I take full responsibility for my actions in that video. I’m disgusted. I was disgusted then when I did it, I’m disgusted now.”
Cassie accused Diddy of rape, physical abuse and more in a sprawling lawsuit in November. The two parties — who dated on and off from 2007 to 2018 — would settle the dispute less than 24 hours and terms were not disclosed. The disgraced star has also since been accused of sexual misconduct in several other lawsuits; he had previously denied all allegations.
Watch Stephen A. Smith’s full rant on Diddy below.
