On Friday, Mike Tyson visited the White House, flew on Air Force One and walked onstage at President Trump’s rally in Syracuse, New York. “I’m just happy to be up here with my president, President Trump,” he told the crowd, AllHipHop reported.
Tyson was convicted of rape in 1992. Days before the rally, he said he’d carried Sean “Diddy” Combs’s pardon request to the president. Online, a lot of people asked the obvious question: why does this keep happening?
What happened at Trump’s Syracuse rally?
Trump was campaigning for Republican governor candidate Bruce Blakeman. He brought Tyson up, joked that he was Blakeman’s personal security, and praised his old friend’s prime: “He wanted to kill whoever it was. He was a very dangerous person actually, and he was one of the greatest fighters in history,” EssentiallySports reported. Tyson said, “There’s no way in the world I would ever be here if it wasn’t for a president like Donald Trump.”
What is Mike Tyson’s history?
In 1992, an Indiana jury convicted Tyson of raping Desiree Washington, an 18-year-old beauty pageant contestant. He was sentenced to six years and served about three. He has always maintained his innocence.
Trump defended him at the time. He called the verdict “a travesty” on Howard Stern’s show, CNN reported, and proposed that Tyson pay millions to rape victims from his next fights instead of going to prison. He later repeated Tyson’s claim that Washington “wanted it real bad,” adding, “She knocked on his door at 1 a.m. and was up and dancing at eight the next morning,” BuzzFeed News found.
What did Tyson do for Diddy?
On SiriusXM’s Andy Cohen Live, Tyson said Combs reached out from prison and “wanted me to give a letter to the president.” Asked if he did, Tyson said, “I did what he told me to do, yeah.” He also criticized Combs’s prosecution under the Mann Act. Combs is serving 50 months after a jury convicted him on two prostitution-related transportation counts and acquitted him of sex trafficking and racketeering.
To be fair to the record: Trump said in January that Combs had asked for a pardon by letter and that he wasn’t granting it, iHeart reported, and nothing shows Friday’s visit involved Combs.
Why are people upset?
Fans who cheered Tyson’s return to the ring against Jake Paul tore into him on social media for campaigning with Trump; others defended him, noting he’s backed Trump openly for years. But for many critics the bigger issue is Trump. The president, found liable by a jury for sexually abusing E. Jean Carroll, has a long record of defending and promoting men accused of abusing women, from Roy Moore to Matt Gaetz to Pete Hegseth.
The BeezLoop Take
Tyson served his sentence, and people can change. Nobody’s arguing he should be banned from public life. The issue is what the most powerful man in the country chooses to put on a stage and celebrate, a month before an election, as a symbol of strength. Trump didn’t just welcome him. He bragged about how dangerous he was.
This is a pattern, not a coincidence. A president who once said a convicted rapist should be able to buy his way out of prison, who repeated that the victim “wanted it,” and who has stood by man after man accused of abuse, keeps sending the same message to women and survivors: your pain matters less than my friends.
The open question: would any voter who says they care about protecting women accept this from a Democrat?
Also on BeezLoop: Trump’s sexual abuse verdict is final, and here are the accused men he’s stood by, and 50 Cent spent the week taunting Diddy.
Sources: OutKick / Fox News · AllHipHop · EssentiallySports · CNN (1992 Stern interview) · BuzzFeed News (1992 comments) · iHeart (Diddy pardon) · USA Today (video)
