Alec Baldwin quits Twitter after backlash over Weinstein comments
Alec Baldwin announced he will suspend his personal Twitter account Saturday following online criticism over comments he made about movie mogul Harvey Weinstein’s sexual harassment and abuse allegations.
Baldwin came under fire following a PBS interview posted Friday where he talked about Weinstein’s reported payoffs to keep women he had allegedly sexually abused, including actress Rose McGowan, from coming forward (Weinstein has denied all allegations of non-consensual sex).
Baldwin said he was no longer engaging online on Saturday.
“It is [with] some degree of sadness that I will suspend posting on this [Twitter] account for a period... in the current climate,” Baldwin said in the first of a series of tweets from his official account.
In the PBS Newshour interview, the actor discussed Weinstein’s reported payoff to McGowan.
“And where this thing with Harvey Weinstein and Rose McGowan came along was, I had no idea, until now, that she had settled the case,” Baldwin said. “And I found this very compelling. The New York Times wrote an article and said, ‘Do the settlement of these cases hurt the cause of exposing and bringing us to a place of real change?’ When women take money and are silenced by that money, even though they took the money and were silenced because they were told, beyond the money, it was the right thing for them to do – keep quiet, don’t make too many waves, it is going to hurt your career. When they do it, nonetheless, does it set back the cause of change?”
Asia Argento, one of Weinstein’s many accusers, was one of the vocal online critics of the interview, tweeting at Baldwin: “You’re either a complete moron or providing cover for your pals and saving your own rep. Maybe all three.”
In a later tweet Argento said Baldwin was “mansplaining ‘the cause’ for women everywhere.”
In his Saturday tweets, Baldin responded: “It was never my intention, in my public statements, to ‘blame the victim’ in the many sexual assault cases that have emerged recently. I simply posited that the settlement of such cases certainly delayed justice, though I am fully aware that those settlements were entered into [with] the understanding that settlement is wise, intimidated into believing so.”
“My heart goes out to all such victims. My goal is to do better in all things related to gender equality,” Baldwin tweeted. “Au revoir.”
However, in either a parting shot or a sign that Baldwin would continue to speak elsewhere on Twitter, the actor tweeted from his separate Hilaria and Alec Baldwin Foundation charity account to Argento.
“If you paint every man [with] the same brush, you’re gonna run out of paint or men,” he wrote.