Nine months ago, a former model came forward to accuse George Takei of drugging and groping him in 1981. The former Star Trek actor and cultural icon adamantly refuted the allegation, but saw his social-media empire crack as the public backlash hit. Mic, Slate, Upworthy, GOOD and Futurism all broke ties with the Facebook expert. On top of that, he became a target of right-wing trolls, including the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., who, even though his father has been accused of sexual misconduct by over a dozen women, took it upon himself to attack Takei.
Wrong again Georgie… I guess you have a bit more free time to read #fakenews now that it’s a bit tougher to ply kids with alcohol to assault them??? You know with all the added scrutiny. https://t.co/xUbvbfhMxN
— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) December 10, 2017
“It was a horror. A horror. A total nightmare,” Takei said to The Daily Beast. But then in May, the Observer, a paper formerly owned by Trump’s son-in-law Jacob Kushner, published an in-depth investigation into the sexual-assault allegation against Takei. His accuser admitted to fudging several details, then ultimately walked back the drugging and assault claims.
Takei is now moving on from the claims and focusing on his activism. In an interview with The Daily Beast, the actor compares Trump’s family separation policy to Japanese internment, and his own family’s time at an internment camp. But he says that the current immigration policies are worse.
“I remember that morning when the soldiers came and, with their guns pointed at us, ordered us out of our home,” he said, according to The Daily Beast. “I remember my mother weeping. I remember that. But this administration has reached a new low: they’re tearing children apart from their parents. In our case, our families remained intact.”
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