ugh. Mr. Ellis, I just don't understand why you would issue such a trash apology.
I hope he apologized to her. I still don't think he did it on purpose (I'm pretty sure he just misjudged his hand position for the side hug initially, then corrected it quickly), but the "sorry if you were offended" approach makes it look even worse. Like he's too proud to say what he needs to say (unsurprising, as he probably has few people in his world that check him on mistakes).
He fucked up on the grip and he owed her a big apology for making her feel at BEST clearly very embarrassed on a world stage. But I think it's pretty absurd to assume he tried to grope or otherwise assault her in front of the world. It just doesn't make any sense, folks. Again, Occam's Razor and all that.
I think a lot of you are well off base here and are getting yourselves worked up by staring at looping gifs and the worst of the frozen frames. Awkward and unfortunate moment demanding profuse apology directly to Ariana, but making it more than that feels both unwarranted and unfounded (pending commentary directly from her).
When I first saw the incident I was like, how on earth could he think that he'd get away with doing it at such a public event. Then I see responses like this and I'm like, yep that's why. Always gonna be people downplaying sexual assault.