As Sean “Diddy” Combs faces ongoing legal scrutiny over allegations of sexual assault and abuse, Real Time with Bill Maher host Bill Maher used his platform Friday night to call for a cultural and judicial “new rule” nearly eight years after the rise of the #MeToo movement.
“A lot has changed” since the fall of Harvey Weinstein and other powerful men in 2017, Maher said in his closing monologue. Framing Diddy’s case as a litmus test for how society handles allegations today, Maher didn’t hold back.
“We need to keep two thoughts in our head at the same time: One, Diddy is a bad dude – really bad. Like, the worst thing in rap since Hammer pants. A violent, sick f**k – I’m sorry, an alleged violent, sick f**k. And we should lock him up and throw away the baby oil,” Maher said. “And two, things have changed enough that moving forward, the rule should be, if you’re being abused, you’ve got to leave right away.”
Maher insisted that urging abuse victims to act sooner is not the same as blaming them: “It’s not victim-shaming to expect women to have the agency to leave toxic relationships. Quite the contrary, to not expect that is infantilizing.”
The comedian pointed to text messages presented at trial between Diddy and singer Cassie Ventura—his former girlfriend and accuser—arguing they could complicate any legal case. A graphic shown on the show included one message reading, “I’m always ready to freak off.”
“If Diddy walks free, it will be because his lawyers can point to an endless stream of texts from Cassie expressing what’s often called ‘enthusiastic consent’ to their sex life,” Maher said. “If you’re ‘MeToo-ing’ someone, it’s not helpful to your case if you texted him, ‘me too!’”
Looking back at the earliest #MeToo allegations, Maher argued that the landscape has shifted. “When women felt, for good reason, that ‘OG predators’ like Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein would never be held accountable, why not at least get something out of it?” he said, describing a system once saturated with enablers and silent accomplices. “It was not illogical for an abused woman to say, ‘Well, if I can’t get justice for my pain, can I at least get a receipt? A coupon?’”
While Maher acknowledged the psychological complexity of abusive relationships—“as counter-intuitive as it seems, why an abused woman would send complimentary text”—he insisted that support systems today are far more robust. “We’re not in the ‘no one listens to women or takes them seriously’ era anymore. Operators are actually standing by to take your calls.”
“I understand why it can be difficult for women to leave an abusive relationship,” Maher added. “But this should be society’s new grand bargain. We take every allegation seriously, but don’t tell me anymore about your contemporaneous account that you said to two friends 10 years ago. Tell the police right away. Don’t wait a decade. Don’t journal about it. Don’t turn it into a one-woman show. And most importantly, don’t keep f**king him. Your only contemporaneous notes about what he did should be a police report.”
Maher also highlighted the “showbiz sparkle” element that can complicate stories like Diddy’s. “If we’re going to have an honest conversation about abuse, we also have to have an honest conversation about what people are willing to do for stardom. If you want a No. 1 record so bad you’ll take a No. 1 in the face, some of that is on you,” he said. “And if you’re doing it for love, well, c’mon, Oprah and Dr. Phil and every podcaster in the world by now have done a million shows about ‘abuse is not love’ and ‘abusers don’t change.’”
Maher closed with a brutal comparison: “R&B singer Ike Turner was a psycho, just like Diddy. But in an era when there was no movement to help her, Tina Turner somehow got away and she did it with 36 cents in her pocket and a mobile card.”
You can watch the clip above and catch new episodes of Real Time with Bill Maher on Fridays at 10:00 pm ET.