Latest news with #pro-Tate
Yahoo
28-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Why MAGA Likes Andrew Tate
Yesterday, Andrew Tate and his brother, Tristan, boarded a private jet to fly from Romania to Florida. Andrew, an American-born former kickboxing professional, is a highly visible online influencer who became rich and famous glorifying the abuse of women. It wasn't just talk: In 2022, the Tate brothers were arrested by Romanian authorities on a range of criminal charges, including human trafficking and, in Andrew's case, rape. They were forbidden to leave the country, pending trial. Both brothers have denied all charges. But the Tates, who both hold dual U.S. and U.K. citizenship, have some important friends. They have been vocal in their support for Donald Trump, and MAGA world has returned the admiration. Andrew Tate has been platformed and lionized by Tucker Carlson, Elon Musk, and Donald Trump Jr. Last month, he made a joint appearance with Alina Habba, one of President Trump's advisers, on Benny Johnson's popular pro-Trump podcast. Habba lavished praise on Tate, and said he was in legal trouble only because, she told him, 'you love what's right.' The pro-Tate advocacy resurfaced at the Munich Security Conference at the end of January, when Richard Grenell, a Trump envoy there, spoke with the Romanian foreign minister. Grenell said he'd taken an interest in the Tate brothers' situation; the Romanians got the message. Today, the Tate brothers are at liberty in Florida. One of Grenell's other jobs is now to lead the Kennedy Center. A few days after his return from Munich, he told the audience at the Conservative Political Action Conference that his goal was to bring more Christian programming to the Kennedy Center. Christ and human trafficking: In Trump's America, we can have both. Neither Andrew nor Tristan Tate has been convicted of any offense, including charges they face in Britain over an alleged sexual offense, which they also deny. But a presumption of the Tates' innocence doesn't explain why MAGA world loves them so much. This is the week, after all, that MAGA world is rejoicing in the release of Jeffrey Epstein's contact lists, material that has largely been in the public domain for a decade. How does the human mind hold the simultaneous beliefs that Epstein was bad and the Tate brothers are good? For that, one must understand that the MAGA movement is about sexual grievance, even more than racial resentment. It is an expression of male disgruntlement that depends on the votes of men—not just any men, but those who feel disrespected and undervalued. Andrew Tate offers unhappy men an exciting fantasy: They don't need education or challenging work; they don't need families or children; instead, they can fulfill themselves by dominating and brutalizing women. In this scenario, women will do the chores and provide sexual favors to order, while men can be little sultans ruling their harems as they harden their hearts against empathy and love. MAGA, too, has a fantasy to offer the men who feel superfluous. Its one big economic idea is to impose tariffs to keep out foreign manufactured goods. If the goal is to make America more prosperous and secure, it's not a good idea. In fact, it's overwhelmingly counterproductive. Every tariff on imported goods is an equivalent tax on exported goods, as a great economist elegantly demonstrated almost a century ago. If you keep out foreign glass or car parts, you also keep in American soybeans, software, motion pictures, aircraft, insurance products, and educational services. This is an accounting necessity, and everybody who studies the issue knows it. But if you don't care very much about the economy, then your real goal may go something like this. Our voters are less educated men in less successful places. Men who are having trouble finding a place in the modern world of specialized skills in the information economy and the service sector. Men who don't want to load all of their belongings into a van and drive to a new life in a different place with unfamiliar ways. These men are having trouble finding partners and wives. They feel isolated and angry. Back in the 1990s, politicians such as Bill Clinton tried to encourage young men to get more education, train for new kinds of jobs, move to bigger cities. But our voters, the MAGA mentality argues, didn't want to do that—and anyway, if they did do it, they'd turn 'woke' and vote for Kamala Harris. What we want to do instead, they say, is make our voters feel as though they're bigger by making women feel smaller. Police their bodies. Tell them they can't order medications across state lines or cross state lines for an abortion. So the real point of tariffs is not economic betterment but social engineering: to raise wages for men on the assembly line. The pretense is that this raise will come at the expense of foreigners. But maybe, MAGA can hope, tariff-driven increases in the wages of displaced men will come at the expense of women in offices and labs. Then the women will have no choice but to marry them, have their babies, raise the babies. And they will have to put up with their man, whether or not the marriage is miserable or even violent. Because that, as Vice President J. D. Vance suggested in 2021 remarks, is better for the kids. If we can't make the men better, the MAGA agenda goes, we will force women to accept them by reducing women's options and making their lives worse. And who does a better job than Andrew Tate of teaching young men that they can feel better by making women feel less? No wonder MAGA admires him. He's not just useful to them. They identify with him. He is their movement on steroids. No laws for him. The accused sex abuser, the accused human trafficker, is welcome in MAGA land. Article originally published at The Atlantic
Atlantic
28-02-2025
- Politics
- Atlantic
Why MAGA Likes Andrew Tate
Yesterday, Andrew Tate and his brother, Tristan, boarded a private jet to fly from Romania to Florida. Andrew, an American-born former kickboxing professional, is a highly visible online influencer who became rich and famous glorifying the abuse of women. It wasn't just talk: In 2022, the Tate brothers were arrested by Romanian authorities on a range of criminal charges, including human trafficking and, in Andrew's case, rape. They were forbidden to leave the country, pending trial. Both brothers have denied all charges. But the Tates, who both hold dual U.S. and U.K. citizenship, have some important friends. They have been vocal in their support for Donald Trump, and MAGA world has returned the admiration. Andrew Tate has been platformed and lionized by Tucker Carlson, Elon Musk, and Donald Trump Jr. Last month, he made a joint appearance with Alina Habba, one of President Trump's advisers, on Benny Johnson's popular pro-Trump podcast. Habba lavished praise on Tate, and said he was in legal trouble only because, she told him, 'you love what's right.' The pro-Tate advocacy resurfaced at the Munich Security Conference at the end of January, when Richard Grenell, a Trump envoy there, spoke with the Romanian foreign minister. Grenell said he'd taken an interest in the Tate brothers' situation; the Romanians got the message. Today, the Tate brothers are at liberty in Florida. One of Grenell's other jobs is now to lead the Kennedy Center. A few days after his return from Munich, he told the audience at the Conservative Political Action Conference that his goal was to bring more Christian programming to the Kennedy Center. Christ and human trafficking: In Trump's America, we can have both. Neither Andrew nor Tristan Tate has been convicted of any offense, including charges they face in Britain over an alleged sexual offense, which they also deny. But a presumption of the Tates' innocence doesn't explain why MAGA world loves them so much. This is the week, after all, that MAGA world is rejoicing in the release of Jeffrey Epstein's contact lists, material that has largely been in the public domain for a decade. How does the human mind hold the simultaneous beliefs that Epstein was bad and the Tate brothers are good? For that, one must understand that the MAGA movement is about sexual grievance, even more than racial resentment. It is an expression of male disgruntlement that depends on the votes of men—not just any men, but those who feel disrespected and undervalued. Andrew Tate offers unhappy men an exciting fantasy: They don't need education or challenging work; they don't need families or children; instead, they can fulfill themselves by dominating and brutalizing women. In this scenario, women will do the chores and provide sexual favors to order, while men can be little sultans ruling their harems as they harden their hearts against empathy and love. MAGA, too, has a fantasy to offer the men who feel superfluous. Its one big economic idea is to impose tariffs to keep out foreign manufactured goods. If the goal is to make America more prosperous and secure, it's not a good idea. In fact, it's overwhelmingly counterproductive. Every tariff on imported goods is an equivalent tax on exported goods, as a great economist elegantly demonstrated almost a century ago. If you keep out foreign glass or car parts, you also keep in American soybeans, software, motion pictures, aircraft, insurance products, and educational services. This is an accounting necessity, and everybody who studies the issue knows it. But if you don't care very much about the economy, then your real goal may go something like this. Our voters are less educated men in less successful places. Men who are having trouble finding a place in the modern world of specialized skills in the information economy and the service sector. Men who don't want to load all of their belongings into a van and drive to a new life in a different place with unfamiliar ways. These men are having trouble finding partners and wives. They feel isolated and angry. Back in the 1990s, politicians such as Bill Clinton tried to encourage young men to get more education, train for new kinds of jobs, move to bigger cities. But our voters, the MAGA mentality argues, didn't want to do that—and anyway, if they did do it, they'd turn 'woke' and vote for Kamala Harris. What we want to do instead, they say, is make our voters feel as though they're bigger by making women feel smaller. Police their bodies. Tell them they can't order medications across state lines or cross state lines for an abortion. So the real point of tariffs is not about economic betterment but social engineering: to raise wages for men on the assembly line. The pretense is that this raise will come at the expense of foreigners. But maybe, MAGA can hope, tariff-–driven increases in the wages of displaced men will come at the expense of women in offices and labs. Then the women will have no choice but to marry them, have their babies, raise the babies. And they will have to put up with their man, whether or not the marriage is miserable or even violent. Because that, as Vice President J. D. Vance suggested in 2021 remarks, is better for the kids. If we can't make the men better, the MAGA agenda goes, we will force women to accept them by reducing women's options and making their lives worse. And who does a better job than Andrew Tate of teaching young men that they can feel better by making women feel less?
Yahoo
27-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Andrew Tate and brother land in US from Romania after travel ban lifted
The self-styled 'misogynist influencer' Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan arrived in Florida on Thursday after flying from Romania to the US in a private jet, as prosecutors suspended their travel ban and a court lifted a precautionary seizure on some of their assets. The pair, who were arrested in Romania in 2022 and face trial on charges of rape, sex with a minor, people trafficking and money laundering, took off from Băneasa airport in Bucharest for Fort Lauderdale at 6am (4am GMT), officials confirmed. Their 12-hour flight landed in Florida at 11am local time, with immigration officials boarding the Gulfstream aircraft to process paperwork. The brothers declined to answer reporters' questions as they walked from the plane into an executive terminal. Authorities in Romania said prosecutors had approved the brothers' request to travel. The anti-organised crime unit, Diicot, said the pair remained 'under judicial supervision' and would have to 'appear before the judicial authorities at every summons'. It added that any violation 'may lead to a higher custodial measure'. Romania's justice minister, Radu Marinescu, said the brothers, who are dual British and US nationals, must return to Romania for their next court appearance on 24 March. In a separate development, a Tate representative said an appeal court had 'restored ownership of properties, vehicles, bank accounts and company shares' to the brothers. Authorities seized several luxury cars, land and property in 2023. The pair are outspoken supporters of Donald Trump, and several members of the US president's inner circle have spoken out publicly against their treatment, including Donald Trump Jr who described their detention as 'absolute insanity'. Elon Musk responded to a suggestion from Andrew Tate that he would 'run for prime minister of the UK' by saying 'he's not wrong', while one of Tate's lawyers, Paul Ingrassia, is the White House liaison official for the US Department of Justice. According to Ingrassia, the Tate brothers were 'sacrificed on the altar of the Matrix under the banner of egregious crimes they never committed'. The US vice-president, JD Vance, has appeared on a pro-Tate podcast. Asked by reporters in Washington if there had been any US involvement in their departure, a Trump administration official said they had 'no insight right now on anything related to the Tate brothers'. Andrew Tate, 38, a former professional kickboxer, and his brother, 36, had been under a travel ban since their arrest along with two Romanian women on charges of human trafficking, rape and forming a criminal gang to sexually exploit women. Diicot launched a second inquiry in August into alleged crimes including forming an organised criminal group, human trafficking, trafficking of minors, sexual intercourse with a minor and money laundering. The brothers were among six people taken into custody then, when authorities ordered them to be placed under house arrest. The Tates and their suspected accomplices have denied all of the charges against them in both cases. The brothers are also wanted by UK authorities who have filed an extradition request over allegations of sexual aggression in a case dating back to 2012. A Romanian court has ruled that proceedings in Romania must be concluded first. In a joint statement, four British women who allege they were sexually abused by Andrew Tate said they felt 'retraumatised' when they found out he had left Romania. 'It is clear that he will now not face criminal prosecution for his alleged crimes in Romania,' the women said. 'He will use it as an opportunity to harass further and intimidate witnesses and his accusers, and he will continue to spread his violent, misogynistic doctrine around the world.' The women had warned last week that the US government might push Romania to ease their travel restrictions, and the Financial Times has said Washington raised the Tates' case with Romanian authorities. The women's lawyer, Matthew Jury, told the BBC that they had been 'the victims of the most horrible and horrific alleged crimes … And to see the most powerful man in the world support their alleged abuser is incredibly traumatising.' The Romanian foreign minister, Emil Hurezeanu, confirmed that Trump's special envoy, Richard Grenell, had spoken to him about the brothers' travel ban at this month's Munich Security Conference. Hurezeanu said Grenell told him he was 'interested in the fate of the Tate brothers', but he said there was 'no form of pressure, no threat' from the US side and that 'things are perfectly clear as far as we are concerned'. Romania's prime minister, Marcel Ciolacu, has also denied that the US made any request to Bucharest regarding 'the legal situation of well-known foreign influencers investigated by Romanian authorities', either during the conversation or after it. Tate has been banned from several social media platforms for misogynistic views and hate speech but has more than 10 million followers on X, where he promotes an ultra-masculine lifestyle that critics say denigrates women. In its second case against the brothers, Diicot alleges they used the so-called 'loverboy' method – convincing people they are in a romantic relationship – to force 34 women into making pornography that was sold online for almost $3m (£2.1m). Diicot alleges one of the defendants forced a 17-year-old to produce pornography in Britain and Romania, creating profits of $1.5m, and also alleges that the defendant repeatedly had sexual relations with a 15-year-old. It was not immediately known where the Tate brothers were heading after leaving the airport in Florida. They shook hands with officials at the foot of the plane, and remained in the terminal building for more than an hour as a dozen or so media members waited outside. It is also unknown if they will meet Donald Trump, whose Mar-a-Lago mansion in Palm Beach is about 45 miles north of Fort Lauderdale. The US president is scheduled to arrive in Florida on Friday for a weekend visit.
The Guardian
21-02-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Andrew Tate's alliance with Trump has been in the making for a long time
Ever since I began reporting on Andrew Tate four years ago (during which time my colleague Jamie Tahsin and I made two documentaries, wrote a book on him and interviewed his alleged rape victims), I've been sounding the alarm on the far-right disinformation network that connects him to Trump's inner circle. Earlier this month, US special envoy Richard Grenell, a vocal supporter of Andrew Tate pressured the Romanian government to remove judicial control restrictions on the Tate brothers, demanding that the alleged human traffickers be allowed to travel freely, according to sources who spoke to the Financial Times. The Romanian government has since confirmed this was a request but denied there was political 'pressure'. The alliance between the Trump administration and the Tate brothers has been in the making for a long time. Paul Ingrassia, one of the lawyers Andrew Tate hired to fight his human trafficking case, was recently sworn in as the White House liaison for the Department of Justice. According to him, the Tate brothers were 'sacrificed on the altar of the Matrix under the banner of egregious crimes they never committed'. Andrew Tate is friends with Donald Trump Jr, who called Tate's detention 'absolute insanity,' since 2016. Donald Trump himself Jr also appeared on a stream with Andrew Tate sycophant and collaborator Adin Ross in August 2024. Around the same time, JD Vance appeared on pro-Tate podcast the Nelk Boys. Elon Musk responded to Tate's 'run for prime minister of the UK' by saying 'he's not wrong' and JD Vance followed both Tate brothers on X in December. Alina Habba, who now holds the high-ranking political adviser role of counselour to the president, has said she is a 'big fan' of Andrew Tate. 'I sympathize with you,' Habba told Tate on a rightwing podcast, 'because I think you go through a lot of the same 'show-me-the-person-I'll-find-the-crime' that President Trump has gone through … I agree with everything you say, and I have your back, out here in the States. After Trump won the 2024 election, Tate tweeted that his case would be 'dismissed'. 'Watch this space ;-),' he said. Tate has access to the highest levels of Trump's inner circle. If, as he is insinuating, he has convinced the administration to act on his behalf, they would be attempting to interfere with dozens of alleged human trafficking and rape victims' quest for justice. Trump and Tate have a lot in common, and both stand to gain much from each other. They are disinformation virtuosos, having sought to delegitimize criminal allegations against them through information warfare. They both mastered their loud, obnoxious performance of self under the lights and cameras of reality TV (The Apprentice for Trump, Big Brother for Tate), before using the same model to dominate social media. There, among the likes and the shares and the algorithms, they learned that while truth and integrity get you nothing, controversy, lies and extremism can be easily transmuted into fame, wealth and power. Tate is aware of the value he can offer politicians. In January he instructed his associates to call two Romanian rightwing politicians to tell them:, 'You will get a lot of votes when Tate says you took their side,' according to prosecutors who tapped his phone. Whereas this Romanian politician ultimately turned Andrew Tate down, the Trump administration apparently has fewer scruples. But the Tate-Trump alliance is about more than just votes, especially now Trump has won. The Trump administration and Tate are both promoting a conspiracy theory that USAid and the mainstream media have worked together to fabricate charges against Tate. By supporting him, the Trump administration is forging a new axis of disinformation to go after the press and the very idea of justice and due process. Before we get into that, let's remind ourselves of what exactly the Tate brothers are being accused of. Andrew Tate is a misogynist influencer and conspiracy theorist. The charges against his brother and him mostly relate to the webcam sex businesses they operated first in the UK and then in Romania. Tate and his brother are accused of either trafficking, raping, grooming or abusing at least 48 alleged victims in total. They have denied all charges. Four of these women are pursuing a civil case in the UK against Andrew for rape or physical abuse (Three of them had previously reported Tate to the UK police for sexual violence and physical abuse, but the Crown Prosecution Service decided against bringing charges in 2019). Both brothers are also being investigated for crimes of sexual aggression relating to at least two separate women by Bedfordshire police, who have obtained a European Arrest Warrant for them. In 2023 Romanian authorities formally charged the Tate brothers with rape, human trafficking and forming an organised crime group to sexually exploit women, naming seven alleged victims. Prosecutors allege Andrew Tate raped at least one of them repeatedly and coerced the women through threats of violence and financial ruin. In 2024 they filed a second indictment which mentions 35 alleged victims of trafficking, including one who was 15 years old at the time. Both Tate brothers deny all of these allegations, and have repeatedly characterised them as a coordinated attack by 'the Matrix'. Our work uncovered Andrew Tate's War Room Network, which trains men how to manipulate vulnerable women into sex work. Andrew Tate denies any wrongdoing and says he is prepared to defend his innocence. I have met many of these women. Their stories are horrific. Many have told me stories of violent strangulation. Andrew Tate texted one of them 'I love raping you'. When asked about this text in 2023 and 2024 Tate did not respond, but he has denied any accusation of rape. Rightwing pundits have been attempting to delegitimize the cases against the Tates for years. When they came forward with their allegations, many of the alleged victims were called misogynistic slurs by thousands of Tate supporters, liars by manosphere podcasters like Sneako and Fresh and Fit,' and 'paid actresses' in viral posts on X. Some also suffered witness intimidation and abuse. Tate's other lawyer, Joseph McBride, who worked with White House official Paul Ingrassia, publicly named one of the alleged victims (who was meant to stay anonymous) and discussed her 'body count' on the Fresh and Fit podcast, leading to online harassment. Another Tate ally, the self-proclaimed 'investigative journalist,' Sulaiman Ahmed, showed up outside one of the alleged victims' parents' house in Florida. The victims' legal representatives claim he was paid by Tate to silence her in a conspiracy that 'amounts to witness tampering.' Court documents from the second Tate indictment in Romania allege that after he was moved from jail to house arrest, Tate attempted to pay one of his alleged victims – a 15-year-old – 2500 euros to say 'only good things' about him to the Romanian authorities. The potential for witness tampering and interference is one of the reasons the Tate brothers have been placed under judicial control. Another is that they might try to escape Romania. (The streamer Adin Ross said Tate told him he at one point planned to leave Romania and 'never come back'.) Tate's team have denied the brothers are a flight risk. By pressuring the Romanian authorities to release the Tate brothers from judicial control, Trump's special envoy Grenell could be seen as hampering Romanian due process and multiple human trafficking investigations, not to mention breaking Article 41 of the Vienna convention which requires that diplomats don't interfere with domestic affairs in their guest country. If someone was accused of similar crimes in the US, they would almost certainly not be allowed to leave the country – and the administration knows this. So why support someone being investigated for human trafficking? For those of us following closely, all the signs of a coordinated disinformation attack on the media and the courts by the Trump administration, the Tates, and a network of far-right agitators and pundits are there. Tate's attack lines are parroted by the Trump administration and vice versa. On 3 February, Tristan Tate suggested a conspiracy theory on X that USAid could somehow be involved in the investigation into the Tates. Hours later, Grenell, Trump's special envoy, responded that Romania was the 'latest example' of how 'USAid programs were weaponised against people and politicians who weren't woke'. The implication that it is 'woke' to oppose the Tates is a new low for the 'Maga' movement. But this is simply the latest round of artillery in an information war in which Andrew Tate and Trump are natural allies. The day after Grenell's comment on X, Elon Musk boosted a post saying that 'USAid funds the BBC'. (The reality? USAid made a $1.9m donation to the BBC's media charity in India.) Andrew Tate was quick to jump on the bandwagon, replying to Elon: 'The real redpill as that all of these 'other' funders of the BBC are ALSO funded by USAID. ALL OF IT IS USAID. Propaganda arm of The Matrix.' (Tate hates the BBC because the documentaries I've made about him were commissioned there.) On 17 February, the conspiracy evolved, with Tate now claiming: 'It was Biden who locked us up in the first place. USAid-sponsored attack. UK foreign office heavily involved. They want me to serve time for tweets. None of the charges against me were ever real.' USAid. The legacy media. The Romanian courts. The Biden administration. Tate seamlessly weaves them all into one giant convoluted conspiracy that's bent on putting him in jail to prevent his wisdom from freeing young men. He does so with support from the Trump administration and Musk. (In January Musk, who reinstated Tate's account after buying Twitter, tweeted 'Great point' to an X post that read: 'The same government and journalists who accused the Tates of sex trafficking overlooked actual sex trafficking.' One of his 'department of government efficiency' employees appears to be a Tate fan.) Paul Ingrassia, the former Tate lawyer who is now a White House Liason for the Department of Justice, once wrote a sycophantic blog post about the Tates in which he never discusses the allegations or the case itself but audaciously accuses the media of using the Tate brothers as scapegoats to 'drown out' the 'real victims' and 'legitimate cases of sexual abuse and sex trafficking'. Ingrassia never responds to specific allegations or evidence, nor provides an argument as to why the allegations are 'bald-faced lies'. The facts are never discussed. The idea that someone could be accused of heinous sexual crimes and successfully delegitimize those allegations as a politically motivated sham is presumably appealing to Trump and his inner circle, many of whom have themselves faced allegations of sexual assault. Not once has an official in the Trump administration said anything about the 48 alleged victims who say they were either raped, trafficked, physically abused, or a combination of the above, one of whom is an American citizen. They deserve due process without interference. Judicial independence is protected by law in Romania, but in practice judges have been unlawfully influenced. They will hopefully carry out their investigation regardless of what Trump's cronies say. Ingrassia, in his excoriation of the supposedly anti-Tate media, wrote: 'The real victims are once again forgotten, lost beneath the howls and cries of those in command of the mainstream media loudspeaker, who drown out – and thereby, exacerbate – legitimate cases of sexual abuse and sex trafficking.' But this quote reeks of projection. It is true in reverse, as the loudspeaker belongs to 'Maga' and Tate. The challenge journalists now face is to be louder. Matt Shea is a film-maker and the co-author of Clown Word, Four Years Inside Andrew Tate's Mansophere
