Brooklyn Nine-Nine actor Terry Crews and comedian D.L. Hughley fought openly on Twitter Sunday over Hughley’s past comments that disparaged Crews’ claims that he was sexually assaulted.
“It’s hard for me to think that a dude with all those muscles can’t tell an agent not to touch his ass,” Hughley had said on a radio show posted to YouTube in August.
“I can understand being in certain situations because there’s nothing you can do about it,” Hughley said then. “Listen I’ve had agents — a lot of them — you can’t touch my dick if I pay you because I can get another you.”
“Sometimes, you just say, ‘aye, motherfucker, I don’t care what people think of me. You ain’t doing this to me.’ That’s just where I come from.”
On Sunday morning, Crews shared the months-old interview in a tweet, asking Hughley if he was implying that Crews “wanted” to be assaulted.
“You saw the video!” Hughley tweeted back.
“Sir you said I should have pushed him back, or restrained him and I DID ALL THOSE THINGS…but you act like I didn’t,” Crews responded. “Were you there?”
“That’s different than slapping the shit outa him,” Hughley fired back.
“So sir…if you truly feel that is a correct way to deal with toxic behavior…should I slap the shit out you?” Crews asked Hughley in response.
Crews tweeted that he had looked up to Hughley throughout his career, but now considered him “an example of when comedy turns to sarcasm and cynicism.”
Now, Crews wrote, Hughley, Russell Simmons, 50 Cent, and Tariq Nasheed “have decided my sexual assault was hilarious, whereas there are a whole generation of black women and men who don’t think it’s funny.”
Representatives for Hughley and Crews didn’t immediately respond to BuzzFeed News requests for comment.
This isn’t the first time Hughley has commented on Crews’ sexual assault claim.
In a January 2018 radio interview, Hughley compared Crews’ experience to an incident on Big Brother UK, when rapper Ginuwine rebuffed a fellow contestant who is a trans woman.
Ginuwine’s actions were criticized as transphobic, but Hughley instead proposed that Ginuwine was a victim. “This trans woman tried to kiss him — she sexually assaulted him and they got mad at the victim,” Hughley said.
“That’s the whole #MeToo Movement,” he added. “If Terry Crews is a hero, so is Ginuwine.”
In an October 2018 interview on BuzzFeed News’ Profile, Hughley said that he found the #MeToo movement “disingenuous” because many men continued to hold power after sexual assault allegations had been made against them.
He also noted that over 50% of white women in the US voted for President Donald Trump, despite sexual assault allegations brought up against him ahead of the 2016 election.
“It isn’t that men don’t believe women; it’s that women don’t believe women,” Hughley said.
“To me, if you’ve been a victim, then the one thing you would have is a level of compassion, and you wouldn’t be used as a pawn to make this other person look bad,” he added.
Following the recent exchange with Crews, Hughley posted a photo on Instagram that read, “It’s always the people that know you the least, that judge you the most.” He tagged it “#isaidwhatisaid”, “#notakebacks”, and “#itiswhatitis.”