andrew tate king tox masc
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PRIMARY 11 25 EASE AND INGRASSIA
SEE BARRON
tucker a fan
see male man macho
victim lawfare
see greta
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- David Gilmour @ Mediaite: Andrew Tate Indicted on Trafficking Charges in Romania – as He Fights UK Extradition From Miami Jail
Andrew Tate was formally indicted in Romania on charges including trafficking minors and money laundering on Friday, as he remains behind bars in Miami, Florida, fighting extradition to the U.K. over separate rape allegations.
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tate bros extradited to uk? 3 24
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UK 20 MORE ON TOP OF 30 CHARGES? MMA 726
PBD Podcast panelist calls Tate brothers' rape and human trafficking charges “politically driven and motivated”
- 07/20/26
Ben Shapiro on right-wing media “touting” the Tate brothers: It’s “really quite insane”
- 07/20/26
AN 3 26
President Donald Trump’s 19-year-old son Barron is reportedly close friends with Justin Waller, an influencer in the so-called “manosphere” who preaches mistreatment of women.
In the new Netflix documentary Louis Theroux: Inside the Manosphere, the 40-year-old Waller bragged that he had befriended Barron and in general joined Trump’s “inner circle.”
“I had dinner with Barron at Mar-a-Lago,” Waller said. “I met Donald that night. I’ve been to Mar-a-Lago four or five times.”
Manosphere influencers like Waller preach the belief that men are inherently superior to women and should be able to control women’s lives. They argue for patriarchal values in which women exist only to serve men domestically and sexually. Waller specifically advocates one-way monogamy wherein women are expected to be faithful to men but men are socially permitted to sleep with as many women as they desire.
Waller is not the only manosphere influencer to find his way into Barron Trump’s good graces. In December, The New York Times reported that Trump is close friends with Andrew Tate, another manosphere influencer who has been accused of multiple counts of sex trafficking and rape. Like Waller, Tate is an outspoken advocate of far right politics across the board, but focuses on teaching that men are superior to and should dominate women.
Thanks to Barron Trump’s instigation, Tate was allowed to leave Romania where he had been under house arrest since 2022 on allegations of coercing women into pornography, rape and pedophilia. Tate had previously been barred from leaving the country, but Barron Trump intervened to help him.
“I had word from The Trump admin that they’re on top of things,” Tate wrote at one point regarding the younger Trump’s assistance. “Ive been told I'll be free soon but Trump needs to see me in Miami.”
One month later, the Times reported, “an extraordinary order came down from the highest levels of the Romanian government” in which “the prosecutors were told to find a compromise with the Tates. Despite their misgivings, they lifted the travel restrictions, a move that Romania’s prime minister thought would appease the Trump administration.”
“We’re massively back,” Tate declared after the legal victory.
Although a legal adult, media outlets have traditionally been shy about covering the youngest Trump child in a critical way. First Lady Melania Trump has directly encouraged this, saying in January that Barron is “a child” and requires her constant supervision. Despite this kid gloves treatment, Trump is already worth $150 million according to the Nasdaq and is legally eligible to serve in the military, which he has refrained from doing despite his father provoking wars in Venezuela and Iran.
"America is strong because its leaders are strong. President Trump proves that every day,” declared the creators of a website called DraftBarronTrump.com. “Naturally, his son Barron is more than ready to defend the country his father so boldly commands. Service is honor. Strength is inherited. Dog (sic) Bless Barron.”
The site added, "This site is dedicated to honoring the strongest and bravest voices in war. When power is projected abroad, it is only right that strength exists at home. If you’re looking for proven genes, inherited courage, and unquestionable resolve, look no further than the Trump family. Leadership starts somewhere.”
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Louis Theroux, the reporter who helped unmask the crimes of Jimmy Savile, managed to convince members of the “manosphere” realm of influencers to let him into their lives, and what he uncovered was a legion of hate fueled by emotional neglect in their early years as father figures hit the horizon.
Irish Times writer Kathy Sheridan said she watched Theroux’s “Inside the Manosphere” documentary, wherein he deconstructs the “vacuous, vainglorious” rich scam artists with their Lamborghinis, desperately farming every click they can with abuse and spectacle.
“Watch again and the soulless, ignorant young men become savagely wounded children with podcasts, millions of social media followers and a guru in the shape of the alleged rapist and sex trafficker, Andrew Tate,” said Sheridan, who describes them scratching for the content to get clicks to lure more lonely, insecure boys into a squalid world of porn, crypto and Ponzi schemes that fund the influencers’ toys, which serve to lure in even more lonely boys.”
As an experiment, Theroux dropped $500 in one influencer’s investment project, only to find all but roughly $150 of it gone a few days later.
The word “misogyny” plays deep into the documentary, considering how thoroughly the manosphere despises women in their endless rants. Theroux focuses on a handful of young men who’ve made performative misogyny their path to fame.
In Marbella, Theroux spends time with Harrison Sullivan, the son of an English rugby international and a livestreamer who turns every interaction he has in Spain into a moment to be monetized. He teaches ‘boys to be proper boys … not these soyboy gimps,’ and he describes a female housemate as his ‘dishwasher’ only for his braggadocio to evaporate before the cameras when his mom visits.
Then it’s on to Florida to meet Myron Gaines, a broadcaster and author of the self-help book Why Women Deserve Less. Gaines believes in one-way monogamy, where he gets to play around while his partner must stay faithful — all while denying his misogyny.
“Misogyny would be the hatred of women. I love women and I understand them,” claims Gaines.
It’s not the first conversation where Theroux’ prodding uncovers inconsistency and some worried looks. Another target – Harrison Sullivan aka HSTikkyTokky – proudly admits that he gets a cut of OnlyFans ‘models’ earnings, which Sheridan said was “once known as pimping.” He also uses them for sex, all while expressing disgust for how they make their money.
When confronted about his homophobic and anti-Semitic rants, Sullivan denies it all, claiming he’s only “clip farming.”
“Women offer themselves up to be shamed and abused on air, which raises the question of whether they are complicit in some grotesquely unbalanced transaction,” said Sheridan. “Female partners and employees are silenced when Theroux attempts to [interview] them. Their role is only degradation. It can never be otherwise.”
Their victims include other men without a proper sense of respect for others instilled by guardians. This includes “Mattie,” a vulnerable young man who “moved to Miami to make it big, but ended up sleeping in his car and crying every night, grieving for his dead brother.”
“We can argue about the original sin that turned little boys into a version of Donald Trump – the world’s most obviously wounded child – but it’s the Matties who should concern us now,” Sheridan said. “He represents all the boys on the cusp, who have been sold the idea of a matrix – a secret world government run by Satanists, feminists and Jews, which is purposely designed to make men fail. Mattie will crumble under his guru’s pressure to man up or he will morph into the worst, emotionally-disconnected version of himself, like his gurus.”
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AN 1 26
The Miami New Times reports Miami venue moguls gave MAGA influencer Clavicular [Braden Peters] a dressing down after he and far-right “manosphere” influencers Andrew Tate, Nick Fuentes, Myron Gaines, and Sneako celebrated and sang Kanye West’s “Heil Hitler” at a Miami Beach club.
“They're not really going for subtlety here,” said Bulwark podcaster Tim Miller while reviewing the widely spread video of the event. “You can see, I think that's Gaines … just doing the full Nazi salute over and over again while they're videoing themselves [in a van]. Nick Fuentes is in the back looking a little uncomfortable and chuckling.”
Later the group took a table at a club, Vendôme, where they prodded the DJ to play more Kanye so they could do more Nazi salutes, sing and party.
After the video went live, Vendôme released a statement calling the video content and imagery “deeply offensive and unacceptable” and claiming “Vendôme and our hospitality group do not condone anti-Semitism, hate speech, or prejudice of any kind.”
“In the days following the incident, the 20-year-old ‘looksmaxxing’ influencer Clavicular, who frequently uses the N-word and wears a hat with the N-word written on it, said that he would not apologize for what he did,” reports the Times. “He maintained that ‘it’s just a song.’ A week ago, he streamed himself in his Sprinter van dancing to ‘Heil Hitler.’”
“You can ban me from clubs, you can s-—— talk me on Instagram, but I’m not sorry about any of it,” the Times reports Clavicular saying on a livestream. “Not at all. Not even a little bit. F——the clubs. I would rather have free speech and the ability to make jokes and do content a thousand times over rather than being a little b—— who you know has to censor himself and do all that sh—— because if that’s what’s required to go into these dogs hit Miami clubs, keep me the f—— out.”
“However, it appears the ongoing bans hit a breaking point for the 20-year-old influencer,” the Times reported. “As he continued having difficulty partying in Miami, Clavicular sat down with Grutman and Papi Steak owner David Einhorn earlier this week.”
On his Kick livestream on Tuesday, the Times reports Clavicular says he’s no longer doing politics.
“I just said, ‘Look, I’m not trying to do politics anymore, and I would never want to be associated with politics,” said Clavicular, recounting his conversation with Grutman. “… I was like, ‘ Yeah, bro, of course. I’m here to mog. I’m here to lookmaxx. I’m not political whatsoever.'”
He later posted a photo of himself sitting at a table with the club owners on Instagram with the caption: “No more politics, just mogging #kingsofmiami @davidgrutman @davideinhorn.”
There’s no telling whether the tension is gone, however, report the Times.
“He has yet to publicly apologize, only claiming that he is not political. Meanwhile, he continues to say the N-word,” the Times said.
Read the Miami New Times report at this link.
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nyt
By Megan Twohey and Isabella Kwai
The reporters interviewed dozens of people in Romania, the United States and Britain and reviewed court documents, emails and text messages. They welcome tips at nytimes.com/tips.
Published Dec. 10, 2025
Updated Dec. 11, 2025
Days before Donald J. Trump’s return to the White House, Andrew Tate got some good news.
Mr. Tate and his brother, Tristan, swaggering influencers in the so-called manosphere, had been under criminal investigation in Romania since 2022, accused of coercing women into pornography. Andrew was also accused of rape and of having sex with and beating a 15-year-old. The brothers, American and British citizens, had been barred from leaving Romania while prosecutors built their case.
Now, in a Jan. 14 text message, Mr. Tate indicated that help was on the way.
“I had word from The Trump admin that theyre on top of things,” Mr. Tate wrote to someone close to him, in a message reviewed by The New York Times. “Ive been told ill be free soon but Trump needs to see me in Miami,” he added.
The next month, an extraordinary order came down from the highest levels of the Romanian government, a Times investigation found. The prosecutors were told to find a compromise with the Tates. Despite their misgivings, they lifted the travel restrictions, a move that Romania’s prime minister thought would appease the Trump administration.
“We’re massively back,” a grinning Mr. Tate announced in a video recorded for his followers on Feb. 27, as a private plane whisked the brothers to Florida.
Their arrival in the United States opened a rare rift among conservatives and raised suspicions over whether the White House had intervened. The Times found that support from Trump administration officials played a crucial role.
Interviews with dozens of people in Romania, the United States and Britain, as well as a review of hundreds of pages of court documents and private messages, offer the fullest account yet of how the Tates rose from a fringe corner of the internet to become a cause célèbre on the right. The brothers’ release from Romania was the culmination of a yearslong effort by Andrew to forge alliances with Mr. Trump’s advisers and family members.
The Tates have helped propel a brazenly chauvinistic movement around the world, even as they racked up allegations of human trafficking and physical violence in multiple countries. They deny criminal wrongdoing. But Andrew, 39, and Tristan, 37, have boasted about recruiting women to make lucrative sexual content, and have sold courses teaching young men how to follow in their footsteps.
Interview with Andrew Tate conducted by Anthony Dream Johnson and posted to YouTube in 2019.
As his notoriety grew, Andrew Tate shrewdly courted Tucker Carlson and other media stars of the right, who in turn tapped into the brothers’ loyal following to expand their own reach.
Andrew also nurtured relationships with Donald Trump Jr. and his younger brother Barron, who recognized the role that young male voters could play in their father’s return to power.
Barron, now 19, admired Andrew, and spoke with him over Zoom last year, according to Justin Waller, a mutual friend who was on the call. During the call, they discussed their shared belief that the Romanian criminal case was an effort to silence the Tates, he said.
After Mr. Trump’s re-election, some of the Tates’ supporters ascended into the new administration. One of them, the diplomatic envoy Richard Grenell, twice discussed their case with Romanian officials, The Times found.
Within days of the second conversation, the Romanian prosecutors received their marching orders and handed the Tates the freedom to travel — after long arguing that the brothers were a public danger and a flight risk. The prosecutors were outraged, according to people familiar with the matter who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it.
The brothers’ liberation rattled many American diplomats, who feared a shadowy new era of foreign relations. And it prompted hostility from many traditional conservatives, from Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, to the commentator Megyn Kelly, who said, “This actually is toxic masculinity.” Some likened the Tates to the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Their return also led to a new assault allegation, from a girlfriend who said Andrew beat and strangled her shortly after his arrival in the United States. Prosecutors declined to bring charges, but she has filed a lawsuit against him and has been granted a restraining order. He is suing her for defamation.
In a statement to The Times, the Romanian prosecutors’ office said that the country’s constitution requires them to operate independently and that their actions in the Tates’ case have been legal. Marcel Ciolacu, who was the prime minister when the Tates were released, did not respond to requests for comment.
An official with the White House said it has no knowledge of and is not involved in anything related to the Tates’ legal matters. The official did not respond to questions about Barron. Donald Trump Jr. did not respond to a request for comment.
The Tates’ lawyer said The Times’s findings about Andrew and Barron were “fake news.”
After more than two years of confinement, the brothers have used their newfound freedom to resume their jet-setting lifestyle and juice their brand. They have visited Kanye West, partied poolside with beautiful women and promoted their business to chanting fans.
“I’m in Dubai, I’m still rich, all I do is win,” Andrew said in a video posted in April that shows him driving off in a Bugatti.
But their legal problems haven’t gone away. The Romanian case is moving forward, and once it’s finished, the brothers will face charges of human trafficking and rape in Britain.
And in the United States, The Times found, anti-trafficking agents at the Department of Homeland Security have been investigating the Tates for years.
ImageAndrew Tate, in a half-unbuttoned animal-print shirt, sits in a crowded audience beside Tristan Tate, in a fuchsia blazer.
Andrew and Tristan Tate at a fight in Las Vegas in March, part of their U.S. visit after their release from Romania.Credit...Mikael Ona/ZUMA Press Wire
Riding Outrage to Money and Fame
Andrew Tate found modest fame as a professional kickboxer in the 2010s, but as he tells it, he didn’t start making real money until he and his brother went into pornography.
By 2015, the Tates had installed women in apartments and a hotel room in Britain, to perform live on webcams for paying customers. Andrew later described how the brothers romanced attractive women, coaxed them into the business and took most of the profits.
“It’s not just about picking up girls,” Mr. Tate said in an interview posted to YouTube. “It’s about converting them into really loving you enough to moving in with you and working for you and giving you all the money.”
Both brothers had run-ins with the British police. Tristan was arrested in 2014 after a woman reported he had assaulted her.
The next year, Andrew was arrested three times, the police said. One woman who had worked for him said in court documents that he strangled her during sex; another said he had raped, beaten and pulled a gun on her; a third woman said he had raped and strangled her while they were dating.
Authorities did not charge either brother. But Andrew said the scrutiny prompted him to leave Britain.
One day, he recalled on a podcast years later, he woke up and said, “I will not live under a government that will do this to me when I’ve done nothing wrong.” He and Tristan moved to Romania, a country they had gotten to know through the professional fighting circuit. There, Andrew said on another show, “you can get away with shit you can’t get away with in the West.”
With Romania as their new home base, the brothers ran their webcam business from there and in Britain.
When Andrew was cast for the British reality show “Big Brother” in 2016, few knew about his business or the assault allegations.
He was soon fired, however, after a tabloid obtained a video of him whipping a girlfriend with a belt. They both said it was consensual.
The scandal boosted his fame, especially on social media, where he became a fierce supporter of Mr. Trump. Donald Trump Jr. liked one of his supportive Twitter posts and they soon agreed to meet, Mr. Tate recalled on a podcast. He went to Trump Tower in 2017.
“We still inbox each other every couple of days,” Mr. Tate said on the podcast, in 2018.
By 2022, he and Tristan had gained millions of followers by preaching mental and physical discipline, entrepreneurship and the subjugation of women. They had expanded the porn business to TikTok, OnlyFans and other platforms, and were selling their courses to young men. One offering was called PHD, for “pimping hoes degree.” Over the previous eight years, they had earned at least 21 million pounds (nearly $28 million), according to records from a British court that found they had evaded taxes.
Interview with Andrew Tate conducted by James English and posted to YouTube in 2021. Mr. Tate discusses his beliefs about the inferiority of women.
When Andrew was kicked off several social media platforms and decried by high school teachers, it only increased his notoriety. He became one of the most searched people on Google.
In December 2022, the brothers were arrested in Romania and, with court approval, jailed for three months. Prosecutors later charged them with forming an organized criminal group and trafficking seven women, and charged Andrew with rape.
The 360-page sealed indictment, obtained by The Times, said the Tates had tricked the women into believing they were in long-term relationships, then coerced them into pornographic work. The brothers had put them under surveillance, restricted their movements and docked their pay if they cried on camera or broke other rules, prosecutors said.
Text messages cited in the indictment show Andrew Tate and one woman discussing what would happen if she went to Romania.
Woman
do you want me to be your slave or your wife?
Andrew Tate
you'll do whatever I tell you
which is the same thing
if I choose a woman to be my wife, she'll love me enough to let me tell her what I feel like
I WILL DECIDE if she's a slave
Once she arrived, he raped her twice, on one occasion forcing her into group sex, the indictment said.
Andrew choked another woman so hard that blood vessels in her eye burst, prosecutors said.
In a text-message chat titled “PIMPS,” Tristan and two associates discussed how to punish a woman who said she would no longer work for them.
Tristan Tate
The move now is as follows.
Associate 1
ok
Tristan Tate
both of you go, get her out of the house
Associate 2
Ok
Tristan Tate
hit her if you have to, I don't care
don't let her take her things
Associate 2
thanks
Ok
The woman was pushed down and dragged out of the house, she and witnesses told prosecutors.
Romania, long known as a hub for sex trafficking, has expanded prosecutions to include so-called Lover Boy cases based on romance, psychological coercion and threats. The indictment against the Tates acknowledged that two of the women cited as victims said they didn’t see themselves that way. Prosecutors said evidence showed that they were.
Press releases announcing the arrest, the indictment and the ensuing restrictions on the Tates’ movements made headlines around the world. But Mr. Tate, facing the prospect of prison, didn’t retreat from the controversy. He used it.
From Tucker to Barron
After his arrest, Mr. Tate hired Joseph D. McBride, a lawyer who had defended Trump supporters accused of insurrection at the Capitol. In short order, Mr. McBride pitched his brash new client to the conservative host Tucker Carlson.
In some ways, it was an odd pairing. Mr. Carlson was a proud husband who promoted Christian family values. But he had been ousted from Fox News after lawsuits exposed offensive language in his private messages to colleagues. He was building his own show on Twitter. And Mr. Tate, who had been reinstated on the platform by Elon Musk, had millions of followers there.
In an interview with The Times, Mr. McBride recalled telling Mr. Carlson that if he flew to Romania for a sit-down with Andrew, “I know we’ll break the internet.”
Image
A black car pulls up to a modern black-and-red building displaying a samurai statue and signs that read “security guard” and “Tate.”
The Tates’ compound in Romania.Credit...Daniel Mihailescu/Agence France-Presse via Getty Images
He was right. The 2023 interview, recorded at Mr. Tate’s luxury home on the outskirts of Bucharest, has drawn more than 112 million views.
They spent much of the two-and-a-half-hour conversation discussing their shared beliefs, including what they saw as a left-wing war on masculinity. Mr. Carlson didn’t press Mr. Tate on his porn operation or his previous comments about exploiting women.
Mr. Carlson misrepresented the criminal allegations in Romania, saying that they involved no sex crimes or violence, or any actions that could be considered trafficking.
“That’s not actually human trafficking,” Mr. Carlson said of the charges. “I don’t care what you call it, you weren’t buying, even accused of buying and selling anyone.”
Asked recently about the interview, Mr. Carlson told The Times, “If I misstated their indictment or got the facts wrong, I sincerely apologize.”
He added, “It doesn’t change my view that the Tates, whatever their personal behavior, had a message worth hearing.”
Interview with Andrew Tate conducted by Tucker Carlson and posted to Twitter in 2023.
The interview helped burnish Mr. Tate’s reputation. Charlie Kirk, the conservative youth organizer and Trump adviser, was among those who tuned in.
“Now I see why he’s popular,” Mr. Kirk said on his podcast. While he expressed disgust over Mr. Tate’s pornography business, he agreed that masculinity was under siege. “He is hitting on something that you’re not allowed to say, where there’s a lot of truth to it.”
Candace Owens, another popular podcaster, flew to Romania and conducted her own sympathetic interview of Mr. Tate. She told her audience it was a mistake to judge him for his past comments or the ostentatious content he posted.
“This is how guys have fun,” she said, “the same way that girls sit around and talk about ‘Real Housewives.’”
In other interviews, Mr. Tate drew parallels that he saw between himself and Mr. Trump: both booted from social media, both criminally prosecuted, both victims of political attacks.
In September 2023, Mr. Trump shared on Truth Social, his social media platform, a video of Tristan defending him. “Thank you!” Mr. Trump wrote.
Mr. McBride, the brothers’ lawyer, pressed their case in meetings with members of Congress, according to an interview he gave to the Republican operative Roger Stone. Mr. McBride said both male and female lawmakers were “outraged” at the brothers’ treatment.
Don Jr. showed support, too. “You’ve got people attacking you as far as I’m concerned,” he told Mr. Tate in a June 2024 conversation live-streamed on X, the renamed Twitter platform. “They just want to silence you.”
Image
Barron Trump, wearing a dark overcoat and slicked-back hair, stands with one fist raised as people around him smile and clap.
Barron Trump admired Andrew Tate and spoke with him by Zoom last year, according to a mutual friend.Credit...Eric Lee/The New York Times
His younger brother Barron was also a fan.
That spring, as his father was going after young male voters on the campaign trail, the teenager hosted a dinner at Mar-a-Lago for influencers. Among them was Mr. Waller, who has helped run the Tates’ courses and told The Times he is widely seen as the “third brother.”
The conversation that night meandered, Mr. Waller said, from “calling each other degenerate names” to discussing potential running mates for Mr. Trump, who also made an appearance and agreed to go on the podcast of another guest, Patrick Bet-David.
Mr. Waller has tried to play a “big brother” role for Barron, he said, visiting Mar-a-Lago and talking to him about dating. The president’s youngest son is “not a bad ally to have — let’s be frank,” he said.
He and Barron spoke to Andrew over Zoom last year, Mr. Waller said, while the teenager was having a suit fitted by Mr. Waller’s tailor. Although they discussed the Romanian case, Barron did not say anything about helping the Tates, Mr. Waller said. They also talked about supporting Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign on their online platforms.
That summer, when a young man tried to assassinate Mr. Trump, Mr. Tate told reporters that he had talked to Barron after the shooting.
“I’m very close to the Trump family,” he added. “I look forward to, once I am free, being with Donald Trump in person and reminding him that he’s a bulletproof badass.”
Allies Ascend
When Andrew texted in January that the Trump administration was “on top of things,” he didn’t name names.
But several of his supporters had found roles in the incoming government.
Paul Ingrassia, who was initially named White House liaison to the Justice Department, had once been part of the Tates’ legal team. Alina Habba, a counselor to the president who would later serve a brief stint as New Jersey’s top prosecutor, told Andrew on a podcast in January that “I got your back over here.”
Image
Richard Grenell Alina Habba, seated next to each other amid a crowd, wearing suits and neutral expressions.
Richard Grenell, center, and Alina Habba (wearing glasses) at a Senate confirmation hearing in January.Credit...Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times
And Mr. Grenell, a special presidential envoy, privately discussed the Tates’ case with Romanian officials, The Times found.
At Mar-a-Lago last December, he met Victor Ponta, an adviser to Romania’s prime minister.
Mr. Ponta had traveled to Mr. Trump’s Florida club to make inroads with the president-elect’s inner circle, he told The Times in an interview in Bucharest. His country was in a defensive crouch for its handling of a presidential election. Its highest court had tossed out the first round of votes, citing evidence that Russia had meddled on behalf of the winner, a far-right candidate. Donald Trump Jr. and Elon Musk, among other American conservatives, accused Romania of undermining democracy.
Mr. Ponta sensed that informal diplomacy would be a big part of the incoming Trump administration. And Mr. Grenell, who would soon negotiate the release of several American detainees in Venezuela, was already positioning himself as a forceful operator.
When asked by The Times whether he and Mr. Grenell discussed the Tates’ case, Mr. Ponta affirmed that they had. “Maybe he saw himself as releasing all the American hostages around the world,” he said, without elaborating further.
Last month, Mr. Ponta backpedaled. In a text exchange with The Times, he said he didn’t recall whether he and Mr. Grenell had talked about the Tates. He then said he was sure they had not.
Mr. Grenell also discussed the Tates’ case in mid-February, with Romania’s then foreign minister, Emil Hurezeanu, when they crossed paths at a security conference in Munich, as first reported by The Financial Times.
Mr. Grenell disputed the characterization of the encounter, saying in a statement to The Times that it had become exaggerated in media accounts. “I simply ran into him in the hallway,” he said. The foreign minister asked him if he stood by an old tweet showing support for the Tates, he said, and he replied yes. “I have never met the Tate Brothers, I’ve never been to Romania,” Mr. Grenell said. His statement did not address the Mar-a-Lago conversation.
Soon after the Munich conference, the prime minister posted on social media that the United States had not made any requests or demands on Romania.
‘The Tate Escape’
By then, the Tates’ legal problems were snowballing.
In Britain, the women who had accused Andrew of rape and assault a decade earlier were suing him in civil court. And prosecutors had authorized trafficking and rape charges against the brothers based on allegations involving three other women.
In America, Homeland Security anti-trafficking agents had been conducting interviews about the Tates, according to people familiar with the confidential investigation. The agents were working with federal prosecutors who would go on to win the conviction of Sean Combs, the music mogul known as “Diddy.” Both offices declined to comment.
In Romania, a judge had invalidated the 2023 indictment, citing procedural mistakes. But the prosecutors were trying to correct them and move forward with a case.
They had presented evidence that, since 2014, the brothers had between them coerced more than 30 other women, including a 17-year-old, into their pornography operation, court records show.
Mr. Tate was also accused of having sex with a 15-year-old and trying to bribe her to stay quiet. She told investigators he had beaten her with a belt and choked her until she passed out, according to the documents.
The Tates have denied all criminal wrongdoing and Andrew has contested the civil claims.
They said the new women cited in the Romanian investigation did not consider themselves trafficking victims. And they argued that being confined without an indictment violated their rights.
They got their break in late February. The order came down instructing prosecutors to negotiate with them, according to two people familiar with the move who were not authorized to discuss it. The prime minister believed the Trump administration would be happy with the outcome, a third person said.
On Feb. 25, the Tates officially requested to have their travel restrictions removed.
In a text message the next day, Mr. Tate shared his long-sought victory with someone close with him.
Andrew Tate
I have very details instructions from the americans about crossing borders, phones, passports etc. I cant say more. This goes into instant effect.
In the early hours of Feb. 27, the brothers drove to the airport, as documented in a video titled “The Tate Escape.” They beamed at each other as the plane took off for Florida.
When asked that day whether the Trump administration had aided in the Tates’ release, their lawyer, Mr. McBride, told The Times: “Do the math. These guys are on the plane.”
The Tate brothers shared this video with their followers on Rumble this year.
A Rift on the Right
From the moment they arrived on U.S. soil, the Tates encountered pushback.
Their electronic devices were confiscated by border control officials. Mr. Ingrassia, by then the White House liaison to Homeland Security, tried and failed to have their phones returned, ProPublica reported. (Mr. Ingrassia denied the account.)
That night in Miami, the brothers celebrated over cigars with Mr. Waller, he said. But public backlash was mounting, even among some prominent conservatives.
Megyn Kelly and Ben Shapiro denounced the Tates. Some Republican leaders spoke out, too.
“I certainly don’t think that we should be using any influence in our government to try to get him out of what seemed to be extremely serious charges in Romania,” Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri told HuffPost, referring to Andrew.
After Mr. DeSantis said the brothers were not welcome in Florida, the state’s attorney general announced a criminal investigation of them.
This actually is toxic masculinity, people. This is the real version of it.
Megyn Kelly
Right-wing commentator
America does not need more self-proclaimed pimps.
Ben Shapiro
Right-wing commentator
Florida is not a place where you’re welcome with that type of conduct in the air.
Ron DeSantis
Governor of Florida
As the right-wing rift over the Tates cracked open, Mr. Stone, the Republican operative, deleted an X post saying Mr. Grenell had secured their release. Ms. Habba said that she had “no part” in lifting the Tates’ travel ban.
And Mr. Trump had already said he knew nothing about it.
In mid-March, the brothers flew back to Romania for a court appearance. One of Andrew’s then-girlfriends, Brianna Stern, told the police in Beverly Hills he had assaulted her before he left. On social media, she shared several of his text messages.
Andrew Tate
i really love hitting you its very good for me
and you
its relaxing dont you think
?
Brianna Stern
pookie no i cry
Prosecutors declined to bring charges, citing insufficient evidence. Ms. Stern is suing Andrew, and he has countersued, claiming defamation. He and Tristan are also suing a woman in Florida who is cited as a victim in the Romanian investigation.
In recent months, Andrew has continued to weigh in on American politics, including calling for “civil war” after Mr. Kirk’s assassination. But while he and his brother have flown in and out of Romania, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, they have not returned to the States.
Many of his allies have stopped publicly defending him.
An exception is Nick Fuentes, a rising voice known for his antisemitic and sexist rhetoric. He and Mr. Tate, both critics of Israel, have lavished each other with praise.
Mr. Tate may not be a paragon of Christian morality, Mr. Fuentes said in an October interview with Mr. Carlson. “But men are going with him because he’s putting women in their place.”
Image
Andrew Tate, walking outside in a dark hoodie, turns his face to the camera and grins.
Andrew Tate returned to Romania in March for a required check-in with authorities.Credit...Vadim Ghirda/Associated Press
Matei Barbulescu contributed reporting. Produced by Eli Murray.
Photo credits for illustration: Robert Ghement/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock (Tate brothers); Jacquelyn Martin/Associated Press (Donald Trump Jr.); Pool photo by Chip Somodevilla (Barron Trump); Gage Skidmore/ZUMA Press Wire (Candace Owens); Bill Bowden/Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (Joseph McBride); Ross D. Franklin/Associated Press (Tucker Carlson); Kenny Holston/The New York Times (Alina Habba); Jim Watson/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images (Richard Grenell).
Megan Twohey is an investigative reporter at The Times. Her work has prompted changes to the law, criminal convictions and cultural shifts.
Isabella Kwai is a Times reporter based in London, covering breaking news and other trends.
See more on: Andrew Tate, U.S. Politics, Donald Trump, Donald Trump Jr., Richard Grenell, Tucker Carlson
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RWW
12/10/2025
by
- Brianna Sacks @ The Washington Post: Election denier tapped for FEMA leadership role
Gregg Phillips, who claimed that millions of “noncitizens” voted illegally in the 2016 election, will head FEMA’s Office of Response and Recovery.
- Isaac Stanley-Becker @ The Atlantic: USAID Hired the Right-Wing Influencer Responsible for Its Decimation
Mike Benz was brought aboard to find evidence for his claims that the agency is secretly a spy operation.
- Steve Benen @ The Maddow Blog: Democrats score big wins in Florida and Georgia, as the GOP’s election woes continue
The more Donald Trump and his party pretend they don’t have an electoral problem, the more Republicans lose winnable elections.
- Megan Twohey and Isabella Kwai @ The New York Times: How a Manosphere Star Accused of Rape and Trafficking Was Freed
Barred from leaving Romania, Andrew Tate courted powerful figures on the American right, from Tucker Carlson to Barron Trump. Then an extraordinary order let him go.
- Michael Luciano @ Mediaite: Trump Suggests It’s ‘Treasonous’ To Report He’s in Bad Physical Shape
President Donald Trump slammed The New York Times and unnamed “some others” for reporting unfavorably about the 79-year-old’s health.
- Steven Monacelli @ The Barbed Wire: He’s an Unapologetic Fascist Who ‘Despises’ Democracy. He Still Wants You to Vote for Him.
The court-appointed public defender in North Texas was once leader of the Proud Boys, has posted racist threats online, and sports a white nationalist tattoo. Now he wants to represent you.
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an 12 9 25
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AN PP 11 25
Online influencer Andrew Tate, a self-described misogynist who has millions of young male followers, was facing allegations of sex trafficking women in three countries when he and his brother left their home in Romania to visit the United States.
“The Tates will be free, Trump is the president. The good old days are back,” Tate posted on X before the trip in February — one of many times he has sung the president’s praises to his fans.
But when the Tate brothers arrived by private plane in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, they immediately found themselves in the crosshairs of law enforcement once more, as Customs and Border Protection officials seized their electronic devices.
This time, they had a powerful ally come to their aid. Behind the scenes, the White House intervened on their behalf.
Interviews and records reviewed by ProPublica show a White House official told senior Department of Homeland Security officials to return the devices to the brothers several days after they were seized. The official who delivered the message, Paul Ingrassia, is a lawyer who previously represented the Tate brothers before joining the White House, where he was working as its DHS liaison.
In his written request, a copy of which was reviewed by ProPublica, Ingrassia chided authorities for taking the action, saying the seizure of the Tates’ devices was not a good use of time or resources. The request to return the electronics to the Tates, he emphasized, was coming from the White House.
The incident is the latest in a string of law enforcement matters where the Trump White House has inserted itself to help friends and target foes. Since entering office for a second term, Trump has urged the Justice Department to go after elected officials who investigated him and his businesses, and he pardoned a string of political allies. Andrew Tate is one of the most prominent members of the so-called manosphere, a collection of influencers, podcasters and content creators who helped deliver young male voters to Trump. And news of the White House intervention on behalf of the accused sex traffickers comes as Trump is under fire over his ties to notorious child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and his administration’s recent efforts to stop the public release of the so-called Epstein files.
Ingrassia’s intervention on behalf of Tate and his brother, Tristan, caused alarm among DHS officials that they could be interfering with a federal investigation if they followed through with the instruction, according to interviews and screenshots of contemporaneous communications between officials.
One official who was involved and spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid facing retribution said they were disgusted by the request’s “brazenness and the high-handed expectation of complicity.”
“It was so offensive to what we’re all here to do, to uphold the law and protect the American people,” the person said. “We don’t want to be seen as handing out favors.”
It’s unclear why law enforcement wanted to examine the devices, what their analysis found or whether Ingrassia’s intervention hindered any investigation. The White House and DHS declined to answer questions about the incident.
But law enforcement experts said it is highly unusual for the White House to get involved in particular border seizures or to demand authorities give up custody of potential evidence in an investigation.
“I’ve never heard of anything like that in my 30 years working,” said John F. Tobon, a retired assistant director for Homeland Security Investigations, which typically analyzes the contents of electronic devices after they’re seized by Customs and Border Protection. “For anyone to say this request is from the White House, it feels like an intimidation tactic.”
Tobon said that even if authorities resisted the request from Ingrassia, knowledge that the White House opposed their actions could cause them to be less aggressive than they would normally be: “Anytime somebody feels intimidated or as if they’re not free to follow procedure, that’s going to stay in the back of their mind because of the consequences. In this administration the consequences are different, people are getting fired.”
Samuel Buell, a Duke University law school professor and former federal prosecutor, called the pressure on behalf of the Tates “another data point” in the White House politicizing law enforcement.
“This is not something that would have been viewed as appropriate or acceptable prior to 2025,” Buell said. “There’s a pattern here of severe departure from preexisting norms … that are being tossed aside left and right.”
The Tate brothers’ lawyer, Joseph McBride, said he didn’t know what happened to the devices but that his clients have still not had them returned. He said it’s unclear whether any investigation into their contents is continuing.
His clients, he said, are innocent and there was no illicit materials on their electronics. “There have been multiple investigations against them and nothing has come of it,” McBride said.
Ingrassia worked at McBride’s firm before joining the White House, and McBride acknowledged speaking “to Paul from time to time” but couldn’t recall discussing the seized devices with him. Ingrassia, he said, has never given the Tates special treatment since joining the Trump administration.
The White House declined to answer questions about whether Ingrassia was acting on his own or representing the White House’s wishes.
In a brief interview with ProPublica, Ingrassia denied trying to help the Tates, before hanging up. “There was no intervention. Nothing happened,” he said. “There was nothing.”
Ingrassia’s lawyer, Edward Paltzik, said in a text message: “Mr. Ingrassia never ordered that the Tate Brothers’ devices be returned to them, nor did he say — and nor would he have ever said — that such a directive came from the White House. This story is fiction, simply not true.”
When questioned about whether Ingrassia had asked authorities to return the devices, even if he did not order them to, Paltzik declined to comment, explaining that “the word ‘ask’ is inappropriate because it is meaningless in this context. He either ordered something or he didn’t. And as I said, he did NOT order anything.”
A DHS spokesperson did not respond to specific questions about the intervention or any impact it might have had on an investigation, only saying in a statement that Customs and Border Protection “performed a 100% baggage examination and detained all electronic media devices when the Tate Brothers entered the country. Electronic media devices were detained and turned over to Homeland Security Investigators for inspectional purposes.”
Ingrassia’s work at McBride’s small New York law firm included helping to represent the Tate brothers. He has praised Andrew Tate’s “physical prowess” on social media along with his “willpower and spirit,” calling him “the embodiment of the ancient ideal of excellence.”
Ethics experts said when government officials take actions to benefit former clients, it undermines public trust.
“The rule of law cannot be carried out if it depends on cronyism,” said Virginia Canter, a former government ethics lawyer who served in the administrations of both parties. “To have a member of the White House interfere when they’ve had a prior client relationship and some sort of personal relationship, that gives rise to questions of impartiality.”
Trump had nominated Ingrassia to lead the Office of Special Counsel, but the 30-year-old lawyer’s chances for Senate confirmation imploded after Politico reported that he had sent a string of racist text messages to fellow Republicans and described himself as having “a Nazi streak.” Paltzik, his lawyer, raised doubts about the authenticity of the texts but said “even if the texts are authentic, they clearly read as self-deprecating and satirical humor.”
In a post on X announcing he was withdrawing from his Senate confirmation hearing because not enough Republican lawmakers were supporting him, Ingrassia said he would “continue to serve President Trump and this administration to Make America Great Again.”
Last week, Ingrassia announced he was moving to a new role within the administration, after Trump called him into his office and asked him to serve as deputy general counsel at the General Services Administration.
It’s unclear what prompted authorities to seize the Tates’ property, but the bar for searching electronic devices is significantly lower for those entering the U.S. compared with those already in the country, even if they are citizens.
After the seizure, the contents were examined by federal agents with Homeland Security Investigations, according to the official involved. A Homeland Security official, who asked for anonymity because they didn’t have permission to speak publicly, confirmed that HSI agents scrutinized the contents.
The Tates left the United States in late March.
No criminal charges have been filed against the brothers in the United States, though a lawyer representing four anonymous defendants sued by them in Florida filed court papers this year suggesting that federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York were investigating the pair. No other details have become public, and a spokesperson for the prosecutors’ office declined to comment.
In an interview with conservative podcaster Candace Owens soon after landing in Florida, Andrew Tate revealed his devices had been seized, saying they were taken after he refused to give customs officers his passwords.
Tate, who was born in the U.S. but spent much of his childhood in Britain before moving as an adult to Romania, complained that his rights were violated, calling himself “one of the most innocent people on the planet.”
And he said law enforcement officials wouldn’t find anything on his devices: “You think I sleep with a phone full of evidence? You think I don’t wipe my phone every night? You think I’m dumb? Come get me.”
In that interview, Tate made no mention of a White House official intervening on his behalf and seemingly misidentified state authorities in Florida as responsible for taking his devices.
Shortly after the Tates landed on Feb. 27, Gov. Ron DeSantis and state Attorney General James Uthmeier announced that Florida authorities had launched an investigation into the brothers. Uthmeier said his office had “secured and executed subpoenas and warrants” and called the brothers’ behavior “atrocious.”
“These guys have themselves publicly admitted to participating in what very much appears to be soliciting, trafficking, preying upon women around the world,” he said at the time. “We’re not going to accept it.”
The status of the Florida investigation is unclear. A spokesperson for the Florida attorney general declined to comment for this article.
Allegations of sexual abuse and violence have swirled around Andrew Tate for almost as long as he’s been in the public eye. In 2016, Tate was booted off the cast of the British version of the “Big Brother” reality series around the time a video emerged of him whipping a woman with a belt. Tate said he and the woman were joking.
Tate’s profile only rose afterward, and he began amassing a following as a self-help guru for young men. He quickly aligned himself with Trump’s then-young MAGA movement.
“The tate family support trump FULLY. MAGA!” he posted on social media after meeting with Donald Trump Jr. at Trump Tower in 2017.
Tate moved to Romania a year after his brief foray in reality TV, in part, he said, because he believed authorities there investigate sex crimes less aggressively.
“I’m not a … rapist but I like the idea of being able to do what I want,” he said.
But in 2023, prosecutors in Romania accused the Tates of operating a criminal group that trafficked women, including some who alleged the brothers led them to believe they were interested in relationships but instead forced them into filming online pornographic videos. Prosecutors also said they were investigating allegations that the Tates trafficked minors. Andrew Tate was charged with rape. The Tates have denied the allegations, and the initial charges against them were sent back to prosecutors by a court because of procedural issues.
The Tates face similar allegations in Britain. Authorities there authorized a raft of charges against the brothers, including rape and human trafficking, based on allegations from three women. In 2024, arrest warrants were issued for the brothers, who have denied wrongdoing, but authorities said they would not be extradited to the United Kingdom until criminal proceedings in Romania were completed.
A woman has also sued the Tates in Florida, accusing them of luring her to Romania to coerce her into sex work. The Tates have denied the allegations, and last month a judge dismissed most of her claims but allowed for her to refile.
This year, Tate derided the allegations against him and compared himself to Trump on X. “Romania? No case UK? No case USA? No case,” he posted on X. “Lawfare? – Im one of the most mistreated men in history beside president Trump himself.”
The intervention on behalf of the Tates was not the first time those around Trump took an interest in legal issues involving the brothers.
In February, Romania’s foreign minister said that presidential envoy Richard Grenell told him at an international security conference in Germany that he remained interested in the fate of the Tates. “I did not perceive this statement as pressure,” the foreign minister, Emil Hurezeanu, said, “just a repeat of a known stance.” Grenell told the Financial Times that he had “no substantive conversation” with Hurezeanu but supported “the Tate brothers as evident by my publicly available tweets.”
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DEFUND LEFT SOROS PAID PROTESTERS
mma
On the killing of Charlie Kirk, political violence, and the right’s response
Written by Matt Gertz
Published 09/12/25
Charlie Kirk, a powerful right-wing activist, popular podcaster, and close friend and ally to President Donald Trump, was shot and killed while speaking at a college in Utah on Wednesday. Politicians of both parties and commentators across the spectrum, including myself, have responded with condemnations of the act as both the tragic murder of a young husband and father and an act of political violence that must be anathema if we hope to preserve our country as a liberal democracy.
Rational people on all sides of the political spectrum abhor political violence and want to ratchet down the temperature, but this requires an honest assessment of what is happening: There have been far too many cases of political violence in recent years, and the targets are not limited by party, ideology, or creed.
Yet within the right-wing media bubble, long before there was even a suspect in custody, commentators cited Kirk’s killing as proof the left is at war with them. Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) on Thursday called out right-wing pundits who took Kirk’s death “as an opportunity to say we're at war so that they could get some of our conservative followers lathered up over this.” He added: “It seems like a cheap, disgusting, awful way to pretend like you're a leader of a conservative movement.”
Tillis cited two commentators in particular, but such rhetoric has been a staple throughout the right-wing media ecosystem since news broke that Kirk had been shot. It is what right-wing audiences are hearing right now — and what they have been hearing, to one extent or another, for quite some time.
“They are at war with us!” Fox News star Jesse Watters said on The Five, his network’s most-watched show, shortly after Kirk’s passing was announced.
“Whether we want to accept it or not, they are at war with us,” he continued. “And what are we gonna do about it? How much political violence are we going to tolerate? And that’s the question we’re just gonna have to ask ourselves.”
“THIS IS WAR,” posted Libs of TikTok. “Civil war,” was Andrew Tate’s take. “This is war,” commented Ian Miles Cheong. “This is a war, this is a war, this is a war,” Alex Jones said on his livestream. According to Steve Bannon, “We are at war in this country.” “We’re not supposed to say this,” posted Shaun Maguire. “But the truth is we’re at War.”
Many on the right were Kirk’s friends and are mourning his death. Some of them may fear for their own safety. But the narrative they have constructed relies on ignoring the recent spate of attacks targeting Democrats, the gruesome contemporaneous response to those attacks from some of the most influential voices on the right, and the chorus of Democratic officials who have condemned Kirk’s assassination.
There is no war, no righteous, violent struggle between a “left” and a “right.” A man was killed. His killer deserves to be brought to justice. Turning that into a “war” can only make the situation worse.
Terrorists have targeted political leaders of both parties
It is not true, as Eric Trump and
both claimed in right-wing media interviews since Kirk’s slaying, that violence is “only going one way,” or, as right-wing radio host Dana Loesch put it on Watters’ prime-time show, that “it's not the right killing the left, it's the left killing the right.”
It seems both pointless and morally inappropriate to try to weigh attacks against one another to determine who has it “worse,” but it’s impossible to have a conversation if we can’t agree that political violence goes both ways.
The ideology of people who attack political figures doesn’t always map neatly onto a political party, in no small part because the assailant typically suffers from some form of mental illness. But Democrats have certainly been the targets of political violence in recent memory: In October 2022, a man broke into the home of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi seeking to kidnap her, and brutally assaulted her husband, Paul. In June, an assassin allegedly murdered a Democratic state legislator and her husband and wounded a second and his wife in Minnesota. Last month’s lethal attackon the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention by someone who authorities say “wanted to send a message against COVID-19 vaccines” should also be placed in this category.
It’s worth revisiting how right-wing media covered those domestic terror attacks, as it speaks to how its audience likely interprets them in an increasingly fragmented media landscape in which people can pick and choose news sources that confirm their biases.
After a man broke into the Pelosi residence and attacked Paul Pelosi with a hammer, MAGA influencers claimed based on effectively no evidence that the attacker, who turned out to be a deranged individual steeped in right-wing fever swamp conspiracy theories, had actually been let into the speaker’s house by her husband for the purposes of sex and subsequently attacked him as part of a lovers’ quarrel.
Donald Trump Jr. posted a photo of a pair of briefs and a hammer on a bed with the caption: “Got my Paul Pelosi Halloween costume ready.”
For months afterwards, Fox hosts including Watters alluded to such wild claims on their nationally broadcast programs, undeterred by body camera footage from the scene of the attack or basic human dignity.
Prominent MAGA social media influencers likewise responded to the Minnesota shootings by spinning up a false profile of the killer — in reality a Trump supporter who railed against abortion and the LGBTQ community — as a far-left supporter of Gov. Tim Walz. Laura Loomer and Mike Cernovich even suggested Walz might have orchestrated the attacks as political hits.
Fox’s right-wing propagandists, meanwhile, all but buried that story. There were no soul-searching reflections about political violence targeting the left on the programs of Watters, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, or Greg Gutfeld — instead, discussion on those shows the week after the attacks was limited to correspondent reports and headline reads. The week after the CDC shooting, those programs didn’t cover it at all.
Looking further back, the leading lights of the right-wing media aggressively sought to minimize and sanitize the Trump mob’s assault on the U.S. Capitol in 2021, and they alternatively blamed “incivility” from the left for a Trumpist sending mail bombs to a host of left-wing and Democratic targets and suggested those attacks were a “false flag.” And that’s to say nothing of other attacks apparently fueled by right-wing extremism that targeted Jewish, Latino, and Black Americans in Charleston, South Carolina; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Buffalo, New York; and El Paso, Texas.
If you downplay right-wing violence against left-wing targets, it’s much easier to convince your viewers that the violence is all going in the other direction.
- ### MAGA wants “the Left” to be “crushed with the power of the state”
While the repeated declarations that they are at “war” with a murderous left are obviously corrosive, there have not been widespread direct calls for retaliatory violence from prominent right-wing media figures. But many are urging President Donald Trump, his administration, and congressional Republicans to respond with widespread political repression of the left and the Democratic Party.
“We can honor him [Kirk] and honor his memory and make it a living thing that we use this to take down the apparatus that's well-funded that is at the core of this anti-Americanism,” Steve Bannon said on his streaming show Friday. “It has to be a all-of-government approach. ... Let's go kick down some doors and perp walk some folks today.”
Laura Loomer, a conspiracy theorist and streamer who has Trump’s ear and regularly gets federal officials fired for insufficient demonstrated fealty to the president, declared Wednesday, “It’s time for the Trump administration to shut down, defund, & prosecute every single Leftist organization.” She later added: “All of the Leftist groups that pay for these radical protests need to be prosecuted. … More people will be murdered if the Left isn’t crushed with the power of the state.”
MAGA influencer Mike Cernovich demanded “congressional hearings now” on Wednesday, which he said should include “every billionaire funding far left wing extremism,” naming George Soros, Bill Gates, and Reid Hoffman. He also called for “massive RICO investigations now” to scrutinize “every dollar” and tagged Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel.
Former GOP Senate candidate Blake Masters echoed Cernovich, adding, “Either we destroy the NGO/donor patronage network that enables and foments” violence, “or it will destroy us.”
Sean Davis, co-founder of The Federalist, posted Wednesday that “the Democrat party is a domestic terrorist organization” and “terrorist Democrats will not stop. … And until they are stopped—until every single nutjob inciting this madness and cheering it on is held accountable and removed from civil society—it will not stop.” His outlet published a piece which declared that Democrats “need to be treated like the domestic terrorists they are.”
“The last time the radical Left orchestrated a wave of violence and terror, J. Edgar Hoover shut it all down within a few years,” Manhattan Institute senior fellow Christopher Rufo said. “It is time, within the confines of the law, to infiltrate, disrupt, arrest, and incarcerate all of those who are responsible for this chaos.”
YouTuber Benny Johnson claimed that “the modern Democrat party is a terrorist organization” and that the left-wing movement must be “ripped root and stem from our American republic and thrown into the fire where it belongs.”
Some are even suggesting that because the threat to the right is so clear, if Republican leaders don’t respond with such steps, the result will be some on the right taking matters into their own hands.
Davis posted on Thursday that if congressional Republicans don’t take “proper action” to protect “a population being hunted for sport,” then the result would be “improper reaction,” which he described as “a response that cannot be contained once it is out.”
Likewise, Cernovich wrote: “I’m choosing my words mindfully, don’t twist them. This is a prediction, not a preference. If Congressional GOP and Trump don’t act swiftly and ferociously, there will be retaliatory actions due to lawful means not being used. This is always what happens. RICO these fucks now!”
Trump appears to be responding to these demands for political retribution.
- ### The elephant in the room
It is impossible to have a rational conversation about topics like lowering the political temperature and pushing back against the spread of political violence when the president of the United States is interested in those issues only as a cudgel against his political opponents.
On Wednesday evening, the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal urged Trump, himself the victim of two assassination attempts, to take advantage of “an opportunity for leadership” by seeking to lower the tenor of political rhetoric.
Any other president would not need to hear such advice — but Trump’s previous responses to attacks on Democratic targets demonstrate his lack of interest in bringing the country together. He mocked the brutal assault against Pelosi, said following the Minnesota shooting that it would be a “waste of time” to call Gov. Tim Walz because he is “so whacked out,” and completely ignored the CDC attack.
In an Oval Office address a few hours after Kirk was killed, Trump characteristically ignored the Journal’s counsel. He offered a testament to Kirk’s life and promised that the shooter, who at that point had not been publicly identified or taken into custody, would be brought to justice.
But he also attributed blame far beyond the person who took Kirk’s life, saying that the “rhetoric” of “the radical left” was “directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today.” He went on to promise that his administration would go after the individuals and organizations he said “contributed to this atrocity and to other political violence,” adding that “radical-left political violence has hurt too many innocent people and taken too many lives.”
Trump did not name the targets of the action he promised to carry out. But a “straightforward reading of his rhetoric,” as The Atlantic’s Jonathan Chait noted, is that “the president of the United States is treating the political opposition as accessories to murder and threatening to use the full power of the government to attack it.”
On Friday, Fox & Friends co-host Ainsley Earhardt pointed to “radicals” on both the right and left and asked the president, “How do we fix this country? How do we come back together?”
Trump’s response made clear that he is uninterested in doing so. He excused “radicals on the right” as people who “don’t want to see crime,” saying, “They don't want these people coming in, we don't want you burning our shopping centers, we don’t want you shooting our people in the middle of the street.”
“The radicals on the left are the problem, and they are vicious and they are horrible and they are politically savvy,” he added, before running through a litany of grievances with his critics.
That message is echoing across MAGA media, a powerful information apparatus with a rare and unmediated grasp on its audience. It will fuel more vitriol, making it harder, not easier, to have honest conversations and reduce the threat of political violence in this country.
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an 6 25
A controversial $20 million study examining why young American men are leaving the Democratic Party paints a sobering picture—and confirms growing concerns about liberals’ hold on a critical voting bloc, according to its initial findings.
“Democrats are seen as weak, whereas Republicans are seen as strong,” Ilyse Hogue, co-founder of the Speaking with American Men (SAM) project, told Politico. “Young men also spoke of being invisible to the Democratic coalition, and so you’ve got this weak problem and then you’ve got this, ‘I don’t think they care about me’ problem, and I think the combination is kind of a killer.”
America's young men are stressed, ashamed and confused over what it means to be a man in 2025, Politico reported.
READ MORE: ‘Vindictive Erasure’: Hegseth Ripped for Pride Month Order to Rename USNS Harvey Milk
"They vented about conflicting cultural messages of masculinity that put them in a 'no-win situation around the meaning of ‘a man,’ ' according to the SAM project memo."
Economic concerns are a big driver behind young men feeling stressed. Being unable to buy a home in today's market with high prices and high interest rates, or worried about paying for their children's college, has led to their concerns about "being a man, and living up to their own expectations or the expectations of their family or society," SAM project co-founder and pollster John Della Volpe told Politico.
Focus group participants' responses helped paint the picture.
"An Asian American professional described Democrats as embracing 'the fluid masculinity of being, like, empathetic and sensitive,' while 'Republicans are more like, the traditional masculinity of a provider, strong, and the machismo type.'"
READ MORE: ‘You Have One Job’: MTG Scorched for Not Reading Key Provision in Budget Bill
A Latino man told the project that Kamala Harris was focused on, “Oh, I got Beyonce on stage with me. Oh, I got Lady Gaga on stage,” and “it just kind of felt like, what does that have to do with me? I’m trying to move up in life.”
“Trump’s over here like, ‘if we’re able to get a surplus in our budget, then we’re going to have no tax on tips, no tax on overtime. It’s going to take a while to get to that point, but at least he’s saying the things that — oh, this is what I’m going to do."
Although the report did not mention it, Harris unveiled a comprehensive economic package that included financial assistance for first time homebuyers and parents who wanted children. It's unclear if those messages got through.
Another "Latino man from Las Vegas spoke admiringly of Trump and Andrew Tate, a controversial influencer who has been accused of rape and sex trafficking, as 'always loved and hated, but they’re truthful, honest, to what they believe in.'”
But Hogue also said Democrats are just not speaking the same language as America's young men, and until that changes they "can’t win these folks over."
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4.5 Fear of a ‘‘green agenda’’
Another frequent conspiracy theory narrative positions climate policies and green technology
as a means of oppression by a tyrannical elite. I summarize all social, political, economic, and
technological pro-environmental measures as the “green agenda.” This discourse appears to be
most concerned with specific notions of freedom, such as the freedom to drive a gasoline-
powered car or the freedom to eat meat. Believers view pro-environment policies and
technologies as a means of government overreach. This is sometimes incorporated into a
broader conspiratorial belief in which these measures are a set of tools used by a malevolent.
evil group to work toward their goal of world domination. This framework considers LED
lights a tool for spying on civilians, electric cars a means to control people’s mobility, and
carbon footprint calculators a pretense for tracking individuals’ every move.
Many of these videos either directly mentioned or indirectly referred to components of the
“Great Reset” conspiracy, a narrative which emerged from “The Great Reset” initiative, an
economic recovery plan created by the World Economic Forum (WEF) to reduce global
inequality and advance environmental initiatives in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The
“Great Reset” is not so much a singular conspiracy narrative as an umbrella term for a loose
grouping of conspiracy theories, sometimes described as a “conspiracy smoothie” (Klein,
2020). However, the core theme is that Klaus Schwab and the WEF are acting as a
Machiavellian hidden hand, using the pandemic and climate change as an excuse to advance
their interests and potentially implement a tyrannical global regime. While “Great Reset” may
not be explicitly referred to in each of these narratives, it serves as a unifying theme under
which many of these conspiracy narratives exist.
Figure 13: A TikTok user films the sun shining through clouds as evidence of a geoengineering conspiracy.
29
The video depicted in Figure 14 offers an imagined future scenario in which criticizing the
government results in citizens losing access to their electric vehicles. Here, green technology
serves as a support mechanism for an oppressive regime.
The TikTok, which is composed of blocks of text sequentially shown over a cityscape
background and instrumental music, reads:
The year is 2030.
You try to start your electric vehicle but…
you recently questioned the new government mandates.
Your car won’t start for 48hrs.
Your social credit score isn’t high enough now.
The government has frozen your bank account.
You’re no longer the ideal citizen of the new world order.
Your freedoms are now ‘limited.’
Maybe next time… you will just comply.
Look how far complying has gotten you.
If you just comply you will get your freedoms back.
They promised us that after 2 weeks to flatten the curve.
They don’t have any reason to lie to us…. Right?
Figure 14: Great Reset video paints image of a near future in which EVs are a means of punishing civilians for dissent.
30
Several of the videos in the data set were concerned with loss of freedom with regard to eating
meat. In this sense, the green agenda threatens individuals’ perception of choice over the food
they eat. A video of internet personality Andrew Tate also featured a future scenario in which
green policy is used as a means for control. Tate says:
You can’t drive your car past 8 p.m. anymore because of the environment. You can’t
eat meat anymore because of the environment. Stay home. Eat the bugs. Be a slave. Be
a slave. Be a slave.
Another video referred to the conspiracy theory of “climate lockdowns,” a narrative which
emerged in response to COVID-19 lockdowns. According to this conspiracy theory,
governments will implement further lockdowns, supposedly to reduce greenhouse gas
emissions.
If the whole pandemic narrative is not what some of the evil powers that be are looking
for it to become, they will begin to cause ... and I'm going to say this again ... I've been
saying this for months, but there's going to be climate change. Now this sounds wild,
but listen to me ... lockdowns. You're going to see some of this begin to unfold, and you
say "climate change lockdowns?" Yep, I think that they'll begin to say all the urgency
Figure 15: Internet personality Andrew Tate claims that "You can't eat meat anymore because of the environment."
31
of the greenhouse gases and all the things that are happening are so severe that we
need to do this for the good of humanity.
While this genre of climate change conspiracy theory does not overtly deny the existence of
climate change, it considers climate policy to be a veiled attempt to implement oppressive
governmental regimes.
4.6 Supply control
Another prominent theme within this data set was an anxiety surrounding access to basic needs
like food, water, and electricity. This discourse featured food shortages, water shortages, and
power outages. Rather than depicting these problems as the results of a global market impacted
by climate, politics, economics, or technologies, this discourse considers these events
intentional. They are viewed as a means through which the powerful elite attempt to exert
control over the populace. These conspiracy theories offer alternative explanations for
ramifications of climate interacting with societY...
---
---
an 4 25
It’s always been like this: Al Capone wintered in Miami Beach; Richard Nixon escaped to his Key Biscayne compound so he could hang out with his mob-affiliated pal Bebe Rebozo; Charles Ponzimade a name for himself for selling Florida swampland — impossible to build on— to unsuspecting Yankees.
More recently, another shady real-estate type, found liable for sexually assaulting journalist E. Jean Carroll and accused of sexual abuse (and worse) by dozens more women, bought a Palm Beach estate and now claims Florida as his home.
So, it’s hardly surprising “influencers” Andrew and Tristan Tate, British-American brothers facing charges of human trafficking and rape in Romania, flew to Florida the minute their travel restrictions were lifted last month — possibly because Trump’s special envoy pressured the Romanian government.
The Tates have fans in TrumpWorld, including lawyer Alina Habba (on the losing side of the E. Jean Carroll case) and Donald Trump Jr., who called their detention “absolute insanity.”
Elon Musk, too: He says Andrew Tate, a former kickboxer who believes women exist only to serve men, should be U.K. prime minister.
But in a rare moment of good sense, Gov. Ron DeSantis bucked TrumpWorld and told those stars of the manosphere they’re “not welcome” in Florida.
Moreover, the state attorney general is investigating certain accusations, including claims they lured a Florida woman to Romania and tried to coerce herinto sex work.
Andrew Tate responded by taunting DeSantis on X: “Your wife will never win governor unless you arrest me, @GovRonDeSantis,” calling the governor a “communist” and declaring, “When Americans who are unfairly imprisoned abroad return home you betray them. You better nail me now.”
At least none of our institutions of higher learning have invited the Tates to speak on campus.
Yet.
Socratic dialog
You might keep an eye on New College, though.
Our once-renowned honors school has not exactly covered itself in glory over the past few years, what with dumping top-tier faculty, tanking in the rankings, admitting low-scoring jocks, mismanaging funds, and grossly over-paying its under-achieving president, but inviting British “comedian” Russell Brandto appear its “Socratic Stage Series” adds insult to injury.
Brand was supposed to be “in conversation” with NCF president Richard Corcoran on April 12.
New College announced the Brand appearance in February. On April 4, the British Crown Prosecution Service charged himwith one count of rape, one count of indecent assault, one count of oral rape, and two counts of sexual assault.
In a press release, New College defended bringing in Brand, wrapping itself in the flag of free speech: “After thoughtful consideration, we have decided to move forward with Russell Brand’s scheduled appearance,” citing the institution’s responsibility “to ensure a space where ideas — especially those that invite dialogue such as the topic of cancel culture and free speech, can be explored with respect, critical thought, and intellectual integrity.”
Not quite 48 hours later, New College thought better of it, announcing this “important and possibly never more relevant” conversation would be rescheduled at a later date.
NCF blamed problems with the venue (problems which apparently didn’t exist a few days ago) and those pesky journalists: “the current media climateis a distraction from the deeper purpose of the event to explore free speech.”
Brand has a court date in London on May 2.
Magic amulet
Now, you might be wondering exactly what qualifies Brand to be a guest lecturer for a public college in Florida.
He’s best known as host of a “Big Brother” spinoff called “Big Brother’s Big Mouth,” as the star of several films, including “Forgetting Sarah Marshall,” often-fired radio host, and general provocateur.
He used to be a progressive (of sorts), praising Barack Obama, meeting with the Dalai Lama, and saying rude things about George W. Bush, but has lately become a conspiracy theorist who, in 2024, took to selling a $250 “magic amulet” which supposedly keeps you safe from “all sorts of evil energies.”
Right.
There’s this thing we do in higher ed called “research.” You’d think a few minutes perusal of Russell Brand’s baby talk-titled memoir, “My Booky Wook” with gleeful accounts of spitting in a woman’s face and furiously smashing a sex worker’s phone because it kept ringing while they were in flagrante (a service “for which,” says Brand, “I’d paid a lot of money”) might suggest perhaps he’s not someone likely to enrich the culture.
None of this proves Brand is a rapist, but it’s pretty clear he’s a misogynist jerk.
Brand insists that while he was once epically promiscuous, all his liaisons were “consensual,” even the ones with teenagers.
Besides, he says, he has now been washed clean by the Holy Spirit, baptized last year in the River Thames by adventure reality TV star Bear Grylls.
Criminal investigation
Well, the Lord may have forgiven him, but the justice system doesn’t work like that: In addition to charges in the U.K., Brand faces a U.S. civil suit and possible criminal investigation into allegations that he exposed himself and assaulted a woman on the set of the film “Arthur.”
The question remains: Why is New College spending taxpayer money on this guy?
Other “Socratic” speakers are (mostly) defensible: Steven Donziger, who famously sued Chevron over oil operations in Ecuador which wreaked monstrous environmental damage. (The oil company accused him of misconduct in the case; he spent three years in home detention for refusing to turn over his phone and trial records; Amnesty International fruitlessly urged former President Joe Biden to issue a pardon.)
Also scheduled for appearances at New College are Judith Butler, the distinguished gender theorist, and Stanley Fish, lawyer and literary scholar, disliked by both the right and the left.
There is also, as you’d expect, a bunch of conservatives ranging from the intellectually respectable — Mollie Hemingway, editor of “The Federalist” — to the anti-vax doctor Scott Atlas.
But casting Russell Brand as some free speech hero is flat out stupid.
Milton intervention
It’s not the first time NCF has embarrassed itself. In 2024 the college invited white supremacist “eugenicon” Steve Sailer, who says Black men are in thrall to a “primal African cult of fertility,” to “debate” Black historian Dr. Marvin Dunn.
As if you can argue “both sides” on racism. There are not two sides — unless you think the KKK makes a lot of good points.
When Hurricane Milton forced the cancellation of what promised to be a particularly unlovely spectacle, you could almost believe in the wrath of God.
Despite MAGA hissy fit-pitching and anti-DEI squawking over “censorship” and “indoctrination” on campus, conservative ideas are not suppressed or censored.
FSU recently hosted economist and Reagan acolyte Glenn Loury; the University of Florida’s Hamilton Center has showcased Republican pollsters and American Enterprise Institute luminaries.
This is as it should be.
But there’s a difference between a university fostering honest discussion of academic freedom, ideology, and prejudice, and promoting a man who could soon be convicted of sexual assault.
Scrubbing the record
Florida’s Republican junta has convinced itself higher education turns innocent students into tree-hugging transgender Marxists who read nothing but books on critical race theory.
Terrified they’ll be penalized financially and every other way, colleges and universities have busied themselves scrubbing websites of incendiary words such as “women,” “Black,” “institutional” and “trauma.”
FSU has deleted and “archived” its posts on high-achieving students before 2023, claiming, in fluent bureaucratic nonsense-speak, they did it to get rid of “outdated information to enhance user experience and ensuring our webpages load quickly and efficiently on all devices.”
In case you’re not buying that one, they’re also calling it “routine maintenance.”
A cynical person might think this is really about obscuring official praise of students who might be queer or working in currently disfavored fields of study.
A cynical person might also wonder if state government wants to use higher education to return us to an imagined past when white Christian men were in charge of everything and everything was absolutely great, especially for white Christian men.
One of the governor’s picks for the Board of Trustees at University of West Florida, an institution he calls “a left-wing college,” wanted to take us back to the 1950s.
Scott Yenor, an academic nonentity at Boise State in Idaho, thinks only “non-Jewish white men” should be in leadership positions.
He says “independent women” are “medicated, meddlesome and quarrelsome” and proclaims, “If we want a great nation, we should be preparing young women to become mothers,” not have successful careers, certainly not in the manly fields of science, medicine, and the law.
Even some of Florida’s loudest and proudest reactionaries objected to Yenor’s weird ideas about women and obvious antisemitism.
Sen. Randy Fine, the state’s only Jewish Republican legislator (until he was elected to Congress on April 1) raised the alarm.
Back to Idaho
Indeed, Yenor is so out there that several hundred citizens, including students, alumni, former trustees, and donors, held a town hall in Pensacola — deep red Pensacola — urging the Florida Senate to reject his nomination.
Former Republican legislators, business leaders, donors, local officials, and members of the Jewish community expressed dismay. UWF President Emerita Judy Bense urged people to tell the governor “this is wrong.”
The amazing thing is, they won. Yenor, who had not yet been confirmed by the Senate, withdrew from consideration.
Sen. Don Gaetz, father of the egregious Matt, celebrated Yenor’s decision: “Gentlemen don’t go where no one wants them.”
Unacquainted with what gentlemen do, the governor is throwing a tantrum, blaming Fine, whom he describes as “repellent,” snarling, “Let’s just consider the source. I mean, that same senator called me antisemitic,” and accusing others of distorting Yenor’s record, “trying to dredge up statements” he calls “flimsy.”
Booting Yenor back to Idaho is a small victory for UWF and the basic decency we should expect from Florida’s state institutions.
“Rescheduling” Brand is, too, although New College is probably beyond redemption: Opening the campus to white supremacists and accused rapists does not demonstrate a commitment to vigorous examination of social norms and political pieties, or a bold assertion of free speech.
It’s evidence of decay.
NCF is now an educational ruin, lovely buildings perched on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, intellectually and morally empty.
Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Michael Moline for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com.
---
yes, please do enlighten me. email me at smalldickenergy@getalife.com
Andrew Tate
@Cobratate
Hello
@GretaThunberg
I have 33 cars.
My Bugatti has a w16 8.0L quad turbo.
My TWO Ferrari 812 competizione have 6.5L v12s.
This is just the start.
Please provide your email address so I can send a complete list of my car collection and their respective enormous emissions.
https://www.mediamatters.org/climate-deniers/internet-misogynist-and-alleged-rapist-andrew-tate-no-stranger-climate-change
no lnx twt
Internet misogynist and alleged rapist Andrew Tate is no stranger to climate change conspiracy theories
Tate’s recent attacks on Greta Thunberg track with his anti-science and anti-woman views
Special PROGRAMS
CLIMATE & ENERGY
WRITTEN BY ILANA BERGER
PUBLISHED 01/09/23
On December 27, just a month after returning to Twitter following a five-year ban, misogynist influencer Andrew Tate attempted to pick a fight with Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg. Her response is now one of the most-liked tweets ever.
Two days later, after an incoherent response video from Tate, he and his brother were arrested in Romania for charges of sex trafficking and rape — reportedly at least his second arrest for alleged rape since 2015. The latest arrest and the online feud are not related, despite initial speculation, but the entire exchange left many people wondering about Tate’s background and what may have been behind his outburst at the climate activist.
In addition to spreading narrow-minded and often violent ideas about masculinity, Tate has a history of buying into climate conspiracy theories and has made contradictory statements about climate change, sometimes altogether denying its impacts. He has also repeatedly targeted Thunberg in his content.
Andrew Tate has adopted right-wing rhetoric about climate change policy and solutions
Both Tate and his brother have rambled about the climate crisis and “the green agenda” during interviews, livestreams, and in their own content. Tate calls climate action a creation of “the matrix,” which has long been an important cultural reference for the online far right. For Tate, climate policy is seemingly a tool for people behind “the new world order” who “want more control” and aim to enslave the public. This is strikingly similar to the globalist cabal at the center of the Great Reset conspiracy theory often discussed by other right-wing media influencers and climate deniers.
Tate has gone back and forth between whether he thinks climate change is a legitimate issue. In a 2019 interview with 21 Studios, a media company dedicated to “abolishing the feminist establishment,” he said, “I don’t care about global warming. Is it happening? Maybe, don’t give a shit.” Last July, he insisted, “I’m not saying climate change isn’t real, I’m not saying that climate isn’t important, I’m not saying the world is not important.” But regardless of how much Tate truly cares about climate change, he has repeatedly and publicly attacked and mischaracterized any viable solutions.
Tate has parroted misinformation sparked by big government paranoia and promoted by the likes of Fox News. In an October 2022 interview, he falsely claimed that lithium batteries for electric cars are “doing more damage to the environment than a fucking petrol engine could ever do,” and said that “the people who are in charge of the world” will force the masses to adopt electric vehicles in order to control them. During the same interview, he also claimed that environmental policies are being used as a “Trojan horse” that will force people to stop eating meat.
The matrix is often central to Tate’s climate commentary. “All of these things that the matrix purports, it’s all fucking bullshit because the people who are actually fucking involved and purporting it are not concerned by it on any level,” he insisted last October. In a June interview, Tate claimed that “every single multimillion- and billionaire buy a house on the beach” despite supposedly rising sea levels because “this green agenda they’re pushing has nothing to do with the environment. … It’s all to do with control.” Climate adaptation and mitigation efforts, Tate claims, would turn people into “peasants” or “slaves.”
Over the summer of 2022, Tate commented on protests that occurred in the Netherlands over emissions cuts. During a livestream with other YouTubers, he contended that “the matrix” was bankrupting farmers in order to buy up all of their land. “Every single movement on the planet to some degree has been corrupted by the people who are in charge of the world aiming to get more and more power from the populace,” he said. In the same livestream, Tate claimed that “the matrix sits there and decides we want Greta all over the news now, because we want to talk about the climate, and then what we want to do is put taxes up because of the climate.” Moving to outright climate denial, he concluded that “no one’s going to give a shit because we know the sea level ain’t going to rise. … ‘Climate change’ is new world order bullshit.”
Not only has Tate been a source of climate change misinformation, he has fantasized about violence against climate protesters at a time those engaging in nonviolent direct action are facing increased threats and governments are attempting to suppress peaceful protest over the climate crisis.
In a TikTok video posted in June 2022, Tate described a hypothetical scenario and suggested he would run over Extinction Rebellion protesters in his Aston Martin, saying: “Yeah, I’ll show you an extinction.”
His brother, Tristan Tate, has echoed the sentiment about Just Stop Oil activists. “Hope I’m not at the front of that line … and close enough to see you stuck in my car,” he said in a video. “And I feel like everyone in England should adopt the exact same attitude.”
Tate is just the latest right-wing media influencer targeting Greta Thunberg
Since her rise to fame in 2019, Thunberg’s activism has attracted the ire of angry men and right-wing media figures who accused her of being both a Marxist pawn, a propagandist, and a victim of child abuse. Fox News blamed Thunberg for Europe’s energy crisis and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. YouTuber Dave Rubin and Dinesh D’Souza have even likened her to a Nazi. Other right-wing media influencers have mocked her autism diagnosis, called her psychotic and mentally ill, and even advocated for violence against her.
She has also been the target of sexual harassment. In 2020, when Thunberg was 17, employees at a Canadian oil company created and circulated a cartoon sticker of her being sexually assaulted.
It’s no surprise that Tate has been triggered by an influential young woman who is outspoken about the climate crisis and its intersection with gender inequality, has demanded change and accountability from world leaders, and has inspired other women and girls to become involved in issues they care about. For his part, Tate has repeatedly insisted that women are generally incompetent, that they are property, and that society will function successfully only if they are confined to the roles of wife and mother. Tate’s content often features his sports cars and his grift, Hustler University, claims to help young men get rich and “escape the matrix,” while Thunberg has supported an overall shift away from gas-powered cars toward electric vehicles and alternative transportation options and highlighted the ecological consequences of capitalism, consumerism, and unfettered economic growth.
Climate denial will continue to attract more niche right-wing influencers like Tate
Andrew Tate is yet another example of a right-wing culture warrior foraying into climate change denial in order to fully immerse followers in a paranoid and cynical worldview that is detached from nuance and reality. If Tate felt that taking up the issue publicly would benefit his influence over the far-right online fever swamps, even though it arguably backfired this time, others who share his views will continue to emulate him.
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---
mma
March 13, 2025, edition of CNN's The Lead with Jake Tapper
JAKE TAPPER (HOST): They're pretty explicitly not only misogynistic, but I think Andrew Tate's been accused of antisemitism, too. How widespread is their influence in the MAGA movement?
MATT SHEA (GUEST): It's incredibly widespread, and they are allied to the highest levels of the Trump administration. I mean, for example, Paul Ingrassia, one of Tate's lawyers who defended him in the human trafficking case he's being investigated for, is now a top White House official. And, so, the alliance is there, and Trump probably thinks that the Tate brothers helped to radicalize a large portion of young men towards the MAGA movement and helped him get elected.
TAPPER: There's obviously a right of free speech, and they and their supporters have a right to express their views, however repugnant, misogynistic, antisemitic others may find them. But one wonders, is there a risk for people in the MAGA movement, Don Jr. or whomever, embracing them?
SHEA: 100%. I mean, I think in terms of pure crazy factor, this might be the craziest thing the Trump administration has done so far. I mean, allegedly pressuring the Romanian government to release two people who are being investigated for human trafficking and serial rape -- charges that they deny. But I've spoken to some of these alleged victims. There's at least 48 alleged victims in all of the cases against the Tates currently.
I mean, why is it not political suicide to align yourself with these people? That's the question, and it may turn out to be. But I think it's very surprising Dana White hasn't said anything about this yet. The UFC hasn't said anything about this yet. I'm wondering if Mark Zuckerberg is worried because he, of course, recently added Dana White to the board for Meta, presumably because, you know, it gave him some sort of cool factor in his new drive to be considered more masculine.
---
---
3 25 intercept
Trump Helps Alleged Sex Trafficker Andrew Tate Back Into U.S.
the Republican Party is obsessed with sex trafficking, grooming, and pedophilia.
For years, the GOP has built its brand on a bizarre, often conspiratorial fixation with sex trafficking, invoking this trafficking panic to justify border militarization and its assault on LGBTQ+ adults and children.
And yet, when an actual accused rapist and alleged human trafficker comes along, Republicans rush to his defense — and lobby to bring him back to the United States.
When an actual accused rapist and alleged human trafficker comes along, Republicans rush to his defense.
President Donald Trump’s administration has successfully lobbied to bring Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan back to the U.S. from Romania, where Tate faces charges of human trafficking, sexual misconduct, and money laundering.
American officials first brought up Tate’s case in a call with the Romanian government last week. At an international conference, Trump’s special envoy Richard Grenell pressed Romanian authorities to lift travel restrictions on the self-described misogynist influencer, the Financial Times reported.
Tate, a former professional kickboxer and avid Trump supporter, has used his massive social media following to spread his reactionary politics and violent hatred of women, influencing a generation of boys and young men by preying on their insecurities and promising quick riches through affiliate marketing schemes.
Prosecutors in Romania allege that Tate and his brother set up a criminal enterprise and used it to sexually exploit multiple people.
Despite these serious allegations, Republican figures and influencers have repeatedly defended Tate.
Former Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., who has been investigated for sex trafficking himself, previously offered support to Tate, saying that the charges always seemed “suspect.” Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson traveled to Romania for a softball interview with Tate, allowing the influencer to portray himself as a family man who is merely a victim of “the matrix” and the mainstream media.
Allegations of sexual harassment and assault are no longer a line that can’t be crossed in conservative politics. Trump himself has been repeatedly accused of sexual assault and harassment, found liable by a jury of sexual abuse, and notoriously had a close friendship with the serial sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
Despite a sex trafficking probe that closed without charges, Gaetz took the stage for a speech at the Republican National Convention.
And when former Republican Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert pleaded guilty to trying to pay off men he had sexually abused as a high school wrestling coach, prominent Republicans, including three former congressmen, supported him enough to write letters in defense of his character to a federal judge. (To be clear, the Democratic Party is also guilty of downplaying or defending abusers within its own ranks; this is not a partisan problem.)
But the GOP’s embrace of Tate, and other sex criminals on the right, reveals the hollowness of the Republican Party’s anti-trafficking campaign. Trafficking is not a real issue for Republican lawmakers — it’s a rhetorical weapon used to advance draconian crackdowns, delegitimize political opponents, and launch broader attacks on progressive and feminist movements.
If they were serious about fighting trafficking, then they would focus instead on labor protections and expanding social safety net services for the most vulnerable populations.
They will lobby for Andrew Tate before they ever lift a finger for an actual victim.
Even Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis sought to distance himself from the Tate brothers, saying that Florida is not a place where they’re welcome.
“I don’t know how it came to this,” DeSantis said. “We were not involved, we were not notified. I found out through the media.”
As Republican politicians continue their fixation on the supposed trafficking epidemic, demanding border crackdowns and pretending to be champions for exploited children, remember where their loyalties lie. They will lobby for Andrew Tate before they ever lift a finger for an actual victim.
For the Trump administration, trafficking is not a crisis to solve. It’s a crisis to exploit.
---
MMA
March 5, 2025, edition of Full Send Podcast streamed on YouTube
ANDREW TATE (INFLUENCER): We have more in common with Russia than we do with England currently. The average Russian man will understand the average American man just fine. You won't understand the average Brit who thinks it's wrong to tweet about the native people getting raped and murdered because there's unchecked migration. The average Brit will sit there and go, "That's racist" --
KYLE FORGEARD (HOST): Well, I guess you can't do too much free speech against Putin as well in Russia probably, right?
TATE: Of course you can. No, you can't.
FORGEARD: You can?
TATE: No, you can't.
FORGEARD: Can't. Yeah.
TATE: No, you can't. But this is actually interesting, so let's analyze this. Free speech. This is a interesting conversation because America believes it has free speech. It doesn't. But every single country in the world has things you cannot talk about. Every single country in the world has off topics -- off-limit topics. In Russia, it's Putin, in the Middle East, it's Islam, in Turkey, it's Erdogan. If you talk against them, you're going to get in a lot trouble. Do you know what the American one is?
FORGEARD: What, speaking out against the Dems?
TATE: Speaking out against the Jews. If you speak out —
FORGEARD: Oh, the Jews.
TATE: — against the Jews in America, you're going to get in a lot of trouble.
---
rww
02/28/2025
by
- Steve Benen @ The Maddow Blog: Trump and Vance berate Ukraine’s Zelenskyy in ugly Oval Office meeting
Instead of a cordial and respectful diplomatic gathering, Trump’s meeting with Zelenskyy more closely resembled a shouting match.
- Dan Ladden-Hall @ The Daily Beast: Hegseth’s Lackey Berates Reporters for Not Cheering for Trump
The Defense Department’s new chief spokesperson, Sean Parnell, held a tense meeting with reporters in which he asked if they were “rooting” for President Donald Trump and questioned why it would be unfair to expect them to cheer on the MAGA leader, according to a report.
- Joshua Kaplan, Justin Elliott and Alex Mierjeski @ ProPublica: Speaker Mike Johnson Is Living in a D.C. House That Is the Center of a Pastor’s Secretive Influence Campaign
In 2021, Steve Berger, an evangelical pastor who has attacked the separation of church and state as “a delusional lie” and called multinational institutions “demonic,” set off on an ambitious project. His stated goal: minister to members of Congress so that what “they learn is then translated into policy.” His base of operations would be a six-bedroom, $3.7 million townhouse blocks from the U.S. Capitol. Recently, the pastor scored a remarkable coup for a political influence project that has until now managed to avoid public scrutiny. He got a new roommate.
- Christian Paz @ Vox: How Andrew Tate’s release is splintering the American right
The far-right influencer’s return to America has sparked new divisions among some of Donald Trump’s biggest supporters.
- Alanna Vagianos @ HuffPost: Andrew Tate’s Return Is A Huge Win For The Internet’s Most Influential Misogynists
The Trump administration reportedly pressed Romania to free Tate — signaling that the sexual abuse of women won’t just be brushed under the rug, but rewarded.
===
an 2 25
A Florida Republican group is facing backlash after extending a formal invitation to Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan, who arrived in Florida on Thursday from Romania. The accused human traffickers were reportedly granted travel clearance following intervention from high-ranking Trump administration officials who “took an interest in their case.”
38-year old Andrew Tate, along with Tristan, 36, are under investigation in both Romania and the UK.
According to the BBC, they were first arrested in Romania in 2022, where they “face trial on allegations of rape, trafficking minors and money laundering, all of which they deny.” They are also, BBC reported separately, “facing separate, unrelated charges of rape and human trafficking in the UK.”
The Tates are “vocal supporters” of President Donald Trump, “have a large US following and are popular figures among some elements of the American right.” Andrew Tate has been called a self-professed misogynist influencer.
READ MORE: ‘Did I Say That? I Can’t Believe I Said That’: Trump’s Remarks Again Fuel Memory Questions
President Trump’s special envoy Richard Grenell, “raised the Tate brothers with Romania’s Foreign Minister Emil Hurezeanu at the Munich Security Conference,” BBC notes. “Hurezeanu said he had not considered Grenell’s approach as a ‘form of pressure.’ Grenell told the Financial Times his support for the brothers was evident.”
On Thursday, Vox reported on the “intra-MAGA fight playing out right now over Andrew Tate,” and explained that “Tate became a far-right podcasting star in the 2020s with his explicitly sexist philosophy of masculinity. He quickly gained a wide following among both young men specifically, and several
MAGA
, including Trump’s own former personal attorney and current adviser
, Elon Musk, and Donald Trump Jr.”
Indeed, last month Tate appeared on “The Benny Show,” with guest Alina Habba, formerly President Donald Trump’s personal attorney and now Counselor to the President.
“I’m a big fan,” Habba told Tate, as Mediaite reported.
READ MORE: Trump’s DHS Can Now Spy More Easily on LGBTQ Americans
“I think that your anger is the same that President Trump has for our country and the time is now for us to stop being wimps. I think that’s exactly the right sentiment. And I also have to say that I sympathize with you 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.”
Currently pinned to the top of the Tampa Bay Young Republicans’ page on the social media site X is their invitation to the Tate brothers.
Bipartisan condemnation against the Tampa Bay Young Republicans came quickly.
“They BRAGGED about their abuse of women. On VIDEO. What the hell has happened to the Republican Party?” asked former Republican Ron Filipkowski, now the editor-in-chief of MeidasTouch.
Well-known veteran journalist Charlie Sykes, the former Bulwark editor-in-chief, remarked, “Florida YRs embrace sex traffickers.. because of course.”
Mediaite contributing editor Sarah Rumpf commented, “Tampa Bay YRs endorsing abusing women and sex trafficking. Take note, YR women. The Tates’ criminal cases in multiple countries are still pending, but what they’ve admitted — bragged about! — is enough to make the moral decision clear here.”
CNN’s S.E. Cupp, a Republican, wrote: “YRs…I know it seems that way, but you don’t HAVE to embrace every evil asshole just to ‘own the libs.'”
Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis said the Tate brothers are not welcome in his state. His communications director, Bryan Griffin, separately wrote: “It’s not a matter of speech. It’s a matter of conduct. Conservatism is not impartial to morality. In fact, the right must become more selective about the people we amplify. This is a different situation from the smear campaigns of the left. Their admissions alone are repugnant.”
“Wrong move,” remarked Florida State Senator and former Florida Republican Party Chair Blaise Ingoglia. “You can believe in free speech and still not give women-abusing scumbags a platform.”
One of the sharpest criticisms came from Rafael E. Struve, the Director of Communications at Bienvenido, which he describes as “a national political organization that specializes in mobilizing Hispanic conservative voters” to elect Republicans.
“As a former YR club chair,” Struve wrote, “I get it—any press is good press, and controversy’s a cheap thrill. I’ve seen some dumb moves for clicks, but come on Tampa Bay…what the hell is this? You’re rolling out the red carpet for a pair of self-styled pimps and predators, calling it ‘free speech’ as if you’re some sort of First Amendment heroes? These creeps are on record bragging about pimping out and battering women, and you’re still handing them a mic—and then you have the gall to compare them to President Trump?”
“I’m trying to understand what broke in your heads to greenlight this,” he continued. “Platforming trafficking suspects and porn peddlers doesn’t make you free speech rebels—it makes you look desperate and dumb. Dragging President Trump into this, as if his fight’s anything like their circus, is especially insulting. You’re better than this—for your club’s sake, I genuinely hope you’ll ditch the graphic, delete the post, and figure out why you thought this was a win.”
Watch the video above or at this link.
===
rww
02/27/2025
by
- Malcolm Ferguson @ The New Republic: Andrew Tate Is on His Way to the U.S. Thanks to Trump
The misogynist facing charges of human trafficking is on a plane back to the United States.
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rww
02/25/2025
by
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- Matt Shuham @ HuffPost: New FBI Deputy Director Is 'Significant Shareholder' In Right-Wing Video Platform
Dan Bongino, the new deputy director of the FBI, doesn’t have any experience with the bureau. But he’s majorly influential in conservative media.
- Ben Makuch @ The Guardian: Neo-Nazi group plots rebuild as Trump’s FBI chief takes helm, audio reveals
Terrorist group the Base appears defiant as new administration aims to deprioritize threat from far right.
- Brian Slodysko and Byron Tau @ The Associated Press: Federal technology staffers resign rather than help Musk and DOGE
More than 20 civil service employees resigned Tuesday from billionaire Trump adviser Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, saying they were refusing to use their technical expertise to “dismantle critical public services.”
- Aja Romano @ Vox: Why the Trump administration is publicly supporting an alleged human trafficker
This latest high-profile turn in Tate’s ongoing legal saga has again brought the horrifying allegations against him to the forefront — this time with apparent approval from the US government.
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vox
no lnx
Why the Trump administration is publicly supporting an alleged human trafficker
In short? His massive influence.
by Aja Romano
:{Feb 25, 2025,
TOPSHOT-ROMANIA-BRITAIN-US-COURT-CRIME
Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan Tate (back right) speak to journalists after having been released from detention in Bucharest, Romania on March 12, 2024. Daniel Mihailescu/AFP via Getty Images
:
Aja Romano writes about pop culture, media, and ethics. Before joining Vox in 2016, they were a staff reporter at the Daily Dot. A 2019 fellow of the National Critics Institute, they’re considered an authority on fandom, the internet, and the culture wars.
Andrew Tate made his name as a misogynist podcast star, but has more recently been known as an alleged rapist and human trafficker as he awaits criminal trial in Romania with his brother Tristan. Last week, the Financial Times reported that the Trump administration, through special envoy Richard Grenell, had tried to pressure the Romanian government to lift travel restrictions on the brothers.
Andrew Tate, whose online course “Hustler’s University” morphed into a platform with nearly a million users, became a powder keg among far-right media influencers in the early 2020s due to his explicitly sexist worldview and its profound influence over millions of teen boys and young men.
This latest high-profile turn in Tate’s ongoing legal saga has again brought the horrifying allegations against him to the forefront — this time with apparent approval from the US government. It’s also a reminder of the cultural reach of the so-called manosphere that Tate helped popularize.
RelatedHow Andrew Tate sells men on toxic masculinity
Andrew Tate’s enormous influence rests on intense misogyny — and a lot of alleged criminal activity
Tate’s rise started with a successful kickboxing career, was followed by his removal from the British version of Big Brother, and culminated in a hugely popular podcast that anointed him the “King of Toxic Masculinity.” As Rebecca Jennings explained for Vox in 2022, his “inflammatory diatribes against women, whom he compares to property” became viral fodder on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. He was born in the US, raised in the UK, but now lives in Romania — first moving there in part because, he said, “the rape laws are more lenient,” but has stayed since; following his arrest, he has largely not been allowed to leave the country.
Tate helped bring to mainstream concerns about the “manosphere,” the term for the internet’s loose network of right-wing male influencers and their associated communities. Early on, Tate seemed to be such an obviously extremist node of the manosphere that he should be, as Jennings wrote, easy to ignore.
But Tate’s confident, blatant misogyny proved wildly popular: His dictums, which ranged from bragging about never having read a book to flaunting an aggressive emotional and physical dominance over women, seemed to enthrall boys and men who admired him for his flashy lifestyle, vaunted wealth, and commitment to the bit. Tate’s maxims swept across teen culture, generating horror stories from parents and teachers about his seemingly pervasive and pernicious influence. Originally, Tate presented his schtick as pure fiction, a deliberately exaggerated regressive persona. It soon appeared that was far from the case, as allegations against Tate and his brother began mounting.
Romanian officials have pursued Andrew and Tristan Tate since April 2022, when they first raided one of the pair’s mansions after receiving a tip that the Tates had allegedly abducted a woman and were holding her there against her will. The following year, the brothers and two Romanian accomplices were indicted on charges of rape, forming a criminal gang, and human trafficking. Authorities alleged that Andrew and Tristan Tate had trafficked seven women from the US and the UK to Romania by grooming them and subjecting them to physical, sexual, and psychological abuse. (The brothers promptly responded with a civil suit against two of their alleged victims.) In early 2024, the two faced new UK allegations of human trafficking, stemming from an investigation launched more than a decade prior.
Then, in August, the Tates faced additional charges of human trafficking after police raided their estate again and detained six people. The brothers have also faced multiple civil lawsuits filed by alleged victims. One such woman recently filed a suit against them in Florida, claiming they defamed her after she agreed to be a witness in the Romanian criminal trial.
Despite the severity and breadth of the charges against them, things have been going fairly well for the Tates. Last month, Andrew Tate was released from house arrest, though he and his brother are still not allowed to leave Romania and are under court supervision. This followed the return of their luxury assets in October, and a November appeals court ruling that major evidence in the first Romanian criminal case, including testimony from alleged victims, was inadmissible. A judge, citing flaws in the indictment, sent the case back to prosecutors for revision. This left the case on shaky ground — and that was before the American government came calling.
Romania’s foreign minister, Emil Hurezeanu, dismissed his conversation last week with Grenell, which took place briefly during the Munich Security Conference, as “just a repeat of a known stance.” Grenell’s position as “special missions envoy” seems to be an informal one based mainly on his status as a longtime Trump loyalist and his previous role as ambassador to Germany, but he’s made his interest in the Tate brothers public — and explicitly political.
On February 3, before the trip to Munich, Grenell quote-tweeted a reply to Tristan Tate on X and alleged that Romania had used funds from the beleaguered USAID agency to target conservatives, saying the program was “weaponized against people and politicians who weren’t woke.” There appears to be no factual basis for this claim, but it bolsters the Tates’ longtime argument that they are the victims of a political witch hunt.
“I support the Tate brothers as evident by my publicly available tweets,” Grenell told the Financial Times.
Tate’s cultural impact has been felt for years, but is this just the start?
Andrew and Tristan Tate now face three different criminal cases and multiple civil lawsuits in different countries, most for extremely serious allegations of violence and sexual abuse against women. Their most expansive alleged crime, human trafficking, became part of Andrew Tate’s online brand. He actually sold an online course to his followers on how to do it, what he called the “Pimping Hoes Degree.”
Experts say that the techniques Tate taught in this course and elsewhere could be seen as a textbook for how to engage in literal, criminal human trafficking — and the messages Tate espouses across the manosphere are replete with boasting about violence towards women, sexual assault, grooming underage girls, and emotional abuse.
RelatedHow Andrew Tate sells men on toxic masculinity
The “Andrew Tate effect” on young men has been so profound that counteracting it has become a mission across multiple public service sectors, from education to public health. Researchers in Sweden found that boys exposed to manosphere influencers were more likely to dehumanize women, while researchers in Australia found “widespread experience of sexual harassment, sexism, and misogyny perpetrated by boys towards women teachers, and the ominous presence of Andrew Tate shaping their behaviour.”
Concerns about Tate encompass real concerns about public safety, and whether boys who have prolonged exposure to him could become more aggressive toward the women around them. At the same time, Tate and others in the manosphere have been credited with helping swing the 2024 US election resoundingly for Trump among young men.
Tate is already a manifestation of extreme misogyny, the worst of what the manosphere has wrought — and his cultural, and now political, elevation is part of a larger, grimmer regression we are perhaps only just at the beginning of.
===
RWW
02/18/2025
by
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While Trump’s first administration was heavily influenced by traditional Republican figures, his second one is far more influenced by a burgeoning new establishment — a very online one.
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State Sen. David Bullard wants to force the Bible into classrooms. He just doesn't want atheist teachers having a say in how it's taught.
- Edith Olmstead @ The New Republic: Trump Pressures Romania on Andrew Tate in Stunning New Low
The Trump administration is harassing Romania about easing up on the far-right misogynist accused of sex trafficking.
- Angry White Men: Joel Webbon: ‘Under Christian Nationalism’ There Will Be ‘No Female Leadership Ever’
In a Friday livestream, white Christian nationalist Joel Webbon and his co-hosts complained about women having abortions, using birth control, and holding positions of power. Webbon also declared that when Christian nationalists take control, “at least for the next 50 years in all Western countries, there will be no female leadership ever in any sphere of human society whatsoever.”
- Asawin Suebsaeng @ Rolling Stone: Trump Publicly Admits He Thinks He Can Break Any Law He Wants
On Saturday afternoon, during Presidents Day weekend, the twice-impeached president and convicted felon was, to his credit, honest about it: He believes he’s allowed to break any law he wants.
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MMA
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thugswarm overwhelm
mma 1 24
misogynistic “manosphere” influencers including Andrew Tate, Sneako, and Jon Zherka are promoting violence against women and finding virality on TikTok via fan accounts posting their content. Some of these figures, including Sneako and Zherka, have over 100 fan accounts dedicated to sharing their toxic content, making it difficult for the platform to moderate and track the hateful rhetoric that these figures push.
While manosphere influencers themselves are not posting their content to TikTok, their large fan bases are flooding the platform with these influencers’ misogynistic and toxic content. This method — using swaths of devotees to overrun a platform with a particular figure’s content — is not new and has been used by fans of white nationalist and conspiracy theorist figures on TikTok to promote fringe and extremist content. TikTok has not successfully counteracted the massive fan account uploads that violate its Community Guidelines.
These influencers are part of the manosphere, an online community of right-wing websites, bloggers, and personalities cultivating a worldview based on conservative and regressive gender politics repackaged for the internet age.
Figures in this group often push extremism and antisemitism while blaming women for myriad societal woes and treating them as an inferior sex. Rhetoric from these influencers can sometimes be overtly cruel and promote hitting, degrading, and shaming women.
Manosphere personalities use other topics that interest young men — like weightlifting, video games, and boxing — to draw in viewers before diving into extremist content and misogyny, creating a dangerous pipeline for their fans.
TikTok is a uniquely dangerous place for these influencers to infiltrate, as the platform is extremely popular with kids and teens — one survey found that phone users aged 11-17 spend a median time of one hour and 52 minutes per day on the app. Additionally, TikTok’s For You Page algorithm feeds toxic content to users even if they are not seeking it out, which could lead to accidental radicalization; an issue that already plagues men who fall prey to the extreme online communities.
Misogynistic content has previously been singled out as an “enforcement gap” on TikTok, meaning the platform has struggled to moderate content that has promoted sexism. According to TikTok’s Community Guidelines, it does “not allow sexual exploitation or gender-based violence, including non-consensual sexual acts, image-based sexual abuse, sextortion, physical abuse, and sexual harassment."
examples of manosphere influencers promoting violence on TikTok}:
- Here are several examples of the kind of violent manosphere content that is currently on TikTok and violating the platform’s Community Guidelines.
In one video, right-wing streamer Sneako (real name Nico Kenn De Balinthazy) is seen hitting a woman in the face. “Yeah, she’s been acting up all night,” he says in response to an onlooker asking if he hit her.
- :{:{Video}:
CitationTikTok video uploaded by user @n3on_kicktv
- Sneako is a manosphere influencer and associate of pro-Hitler rapper Ye (formerly Kanye West) and has been described as “a cheap imitation” of misogynist, media personality, and alleged human trafficker Andrew Tate. Sneako is banned on TikTok and YouTube and has promoted the abuse of women.
Additionally, Sneako has refused to condemn Adolf Hitler and attacked Jewish people online, saying that “the Nazis had drip” and that the swastika is “aesthetically pleasing.” He is also an associate of white supremacist and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes and spoke at one of Fuentes’ antisemitic rallies.
And in various TikTok videos, self-proclaimed woman-hater and manosphere influencer Jon Zherka is seen promoting violence against women. Zherka has previously described Hitler as a “good guy,” praised Fuentes, flirted with underage girls online, and shared content promoting violent attacks and abuse against women.
During one video, Zherka claimed that it is acceptable to beat a woman if he is fighting a couple over public displays of affection.
“If you’re a straight dude doing all that fucking nasty shit, making out with your girl at the park, I try and fight both of them, at the same time,” Zherka said. “I go, you know, it’s a two verse one, so I guess I can hit a woman."
“We need some Saudi energy,” Zherka continued. “We need to start cutting tongues for this kind of shit."
- Video file
:{:{Video}:
CitationTikTok video uploaded by user @jonzherkaa
- In another TikTok pulled from the misogynistic Fresh & Fitpodcast, Zherka said that if he had a daughter he would “beat the shit out of her and disown her” if she made an OnlyFans account, after making bizarre comments about dating and having a child with his own daughter.
- Video file
:{:{Video}:
CitationTikTok video uploaded by user @redpillvault
- Zherka said, “We have to discipline children, we have to beat the shit out of children” in a different TikTok video.
- Video file
:{:{Video}:
CitationTikTok video uploaded by user @ZherkaOnTop
- ## Tracking virality and views of manosphere influencers on TikTok
- Several of these misogynistic figures have millions of views under hashtags associated with them.
For example, there are 6.4 billion views under the “sneako” hashtag on the platform, and 2 billion under the hashtag “sneakoclips.”
- The “jonzherka” hashtag has 227.8 million views.
- Tate, who is perhaps the most well-known influencer in the manosphere space, is banned on TikTok but has many hashtags associated with him on the platform, through which users can encounter his content. The alleged human trafficker was banned for promoting sexist and violent content.
Many of the Tate-associated hashtags have millions of views.
- TikTok videos that include manosphere-aligned hashtags only represent a fraction of all the toxic content on the app that features these influencers, as these videos don’t always include manosphere hashtags or captions.
Manosphere fan accounts run amok on TikTok}:}:
- When Tate was first banned from TikTok, several fan accounts began to reshare his misogynistic content across the platform. TikTok has never been successful in cracking down on fan accounts that post Tate content, and it continues to be an issue on the platform.
Now several other manosphere influencers have similar fan account networks.
These accounts regularly repost content from manosphere influencers and share links that are associated with these personalities. It is unclear if these networks of fan accounts are connected or acting independently.
According to a Media Matters analysis, there are over 175 fan accounts dedicated to Sneako on TikTok.
- Similarly, there are over 100 fan accounts dedicated to Zherka and 55 accounts dedicated to Tate.
There are likely fewer accounts and hashtags dedicated to Tate despite his fame because TikTok has previously pledged to crack down on the influencer’s content on the platform.
- Other manosphere programs, including the misogynistic Fresh & Fit podcast and Whatever’s Dating Talk podcast, also have multiple fan accounts on TikTok.
- ## Influence on young users
- Tate has had a big impact on young boys and men since his rise to fame in 2022. Reporting shows how easily toxic rhetoric from manosphere influencers like Tate can infiltrate the minds of young audiences, even among users as young as 11 years old.
The videos of these manosphere influencers meeting their fans are a reminder of just how young some of these viewers and devotees are.
- IFrame Content
- In one clip, young Sneako fans are repeating his toxic rhetoric back to him, saying, “Fuck the women,” and, “All gays can die.” He seems to half-jokingly ask the camera, “What have I done?”
- IFrame Content
- Misogynistic and extremist rhetoric from these influencers does not live in a vacuum online; it can lead to real-world violence and harassment.
- ## What can TikTok do?
- To protect its young users, TikTok must be proactive, making sure that influencers who promote violence against women are not finding success or a home on its platform.
Some bad actors are getting better at dodging moderation and are using terms that may not be picked up by the platform's “automated moderation technology,” an AI tool used by TikTok to determine if content violates the Community Guidelines. Human content moderators should take precedence when uploaded content concerns the manosphere or any influencer in this space, and should be reviewed more than once to ensure that violent and misogynistic content is not slipping through the cracks, and on to millions of young users’ screens.
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- ## channels which attract young viewers with misogyny and push right-wing extremism have appeared on the leaderboard more frequently in recent months
- Videos from channels that push rhetoric associated with the “manosphere” — a far-right community that recruits susceptible young men with toxic masculinity and misogyny, accounted for 3% of the videos we identified on the leaderboard between February 1 and July 31, earning over 46 million views and at least 1 million likes.
Notably, videos from these channels have appeared more frequently of late: They accounted for just 27 appearances on the leaderboard in February, but 94 appearances on the leaderboard in July.
- graph]
- The right-wing misogynistic channels that have appeared most frequently on the leaderboard include “SNEAKO,” “FreshandFit,” and “TateSpeech by Andrew Tate”:
- Videos from Sneako, who has repeatedly promoted white Christian nationalist Nick Fuentes on his channel, appeared on the leaderboard at least 84 times, earning over 8.5 million views and at least 161,000 likes. On May 30, Sneako held a harrowingly antisemitic and homophobic six-hour livestream with Fuentes that appeared on Rumble’s leaderboard as the fourth most-liked video on the platform from that day. In Sneako’s video, which Rumble removed but Fuentes then reposted to his own channel, Fuentes effectively denied that the Holocaust was genocide and parroted the antisemitic propaganda of blood libel from the Middle Ages, accusing Jews of “communing with demons” and of “using Christian blood in their rituals.”
- Videos from FreshandFit — which describes itself as the “the #1 men’s podcast in the world” covering “females, fitness, and finances” — appeared on the leaderboard at least 74 times, earning over 19.5 million views and at least 331,000 likes. Hosts of the Fresh & Fit podcast include Why Women Deserve Less author Myron Gaines and dating and lifestyle coach Walter Weekes, who both regularly spew misogynistic and anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and demean a panel of young women who appear on the show’s “After Hours” streams. The show has also embraced Holocaust denial and extreme antisemitism.
- Videos from misogynist Andrew Tate appeared on the leaderboard at least 43 times, earning more than 10 million views and at least 340,000 likes. Tate, who is banned from Meta, YouTube, and TikTok for his hateful and violent rhetoric, is known for serving as a misogynist guru for young boys and men. He has encouraged a “mass exodus” from other platforms toRumble and repeatedly promoted the platform (which has repeatedly promoted him in turn, even reportedly paying him $9 million to make Rumble his streaming platform of choice, even though he is banned from most others). Several of Tate’s videos appeared on the leaderboard while he was imprisoned and later under house arrest in Romania, awaiting a trial for charges relating to an alleged sex trafficking operation he ran with his brother along with several charges of rape.
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out on bail? 4 23?
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https://www.mediamatters.org/diversity-discrimination/manosphere-influencers-are-teaming-anime-obsessed-content-creator-who
no lnx etc
violent misogynist and alleged human trafficker Andrew Tate is now promoting dangerous incel culture to his audience of millions.
:{:{}:
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Tate and his associates have teamed up with and are promoting an anime-obsessed content creator and misanthrope who glorifies school shooters, pushes Holocaust denial, and promotes the hyper-sexualization of underage girls.
:{:{}:
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Tate and his acolytes Justin Waller and “Sneako” have aligned themselves with “Waifu Watchers,” a viral content creator who appears to be obsessed with sexualizing underage cartoon anime girls. Waifu Watchers’ content promotes an incel-aligned and misogynistic ideology; the same kind of extremist rhetoric that has led to real-world violence, harassment, and is correlated with mass shootings.
This is an example of Tate and his adherents leaning into and helping to popularize violent incel culture while using Tate’s massively viral nature to push a new set of dangerous misogynistic ideas to his followers. This could be dangerous for Tate’s large fanbase, which includes susceptible kids and teens who idolize him.
In May 2022, Tate bestowed Waifu Watchers with the title of “G of the week” after he made a TikTok gloating about being legally allowed to be sexually attracted to underage anime girls because they aren’t real.
“I want you to follow this guy, Waifu Watchers. This is an official shoutout.” Tate’s co-host and brother Tristian said. “Can you follow this guy, everybody. He’s a fucking hero.”
“Hero. He ain’t taking shit,” Tate added.
Recently, Tate posted a photo of himself wearing a “Waifu Watchers” jacket standing alongside two female anime characters. Tate and the influencer have been pictured together numerous times. Waifu Watchers claimed that he stayed with Tate for a week, and that Tate gifted him cryptocurrency.
WW Tate
CitationScreenshot from Waifu Watchers' Instagram page
Tate and his adherents' decision to platform and promote an anime-obsessed misogynistic edgelord continues the pattern of far-right figures using anime and Japanese entertainment to push dubious narratives.
What is a waifu?
According to Dictionary.com, a “waifu” is “a term for a fictional character, usually in anime or related media, that someone has great, and sometimes romantic, affection for.” The term is taken from the English word for “wife.”
Some anime consumers have a “pseudo-intimate relationship” with waifus. This becomes insidious when anime watchers fixate on underage female characters as waifus, as some of these characters are drawn to be hyper-sexualized and fit coming of age stories.
Waifu Watchers promotes extremist and predatory views to his audience
Online, Waifu Watchers has promoted the sexualization of underage cartoon girls, Holocaust denial, and the glorification of school shooters.The influencer goes by “chaiinmail chase” in some of his videos.
Here’s a breakdown of the content creator’s history of pushing extremist views:
In a YouTube Shorts video, the influencer douses himself with what he pretends is the urine of an underage-looking anime girl.
In another YouTube Shorts video, the content creator celebrated the sound of a female anime character getting her finger broken and screaming.
On various occasions, Waifu Watchers has posted misogynistic content about women.
The content creator made a fake Joe Rogan interview with an anime character where she defends Hitler and promotes Holocaust denial.
During a vlog, the influencer said “I would never shoot up a school” unless it was a place that was “indoctrinating” kids into believing that three million Jews died during the Holocaust. He bleeped out the word Holocaust during the entirety of the vlog.
During the same vlog, he told his audience, “I hope you’re keeping those streets clean and those schools empty.”
The influencer sells t-shirts that glorify school shooters, rapper Ye’s (formerly Kanye West) “White Lives Matter” stunt, and convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
The content creator posted a photo of himself holding what appear to be firearms with the words “don’t log into twitter tomorrow,” appearing to refer to the phrase “don’t come to school tomorrow,” which was popularized as a meme following the Umpqua Community College shooting.
He admitted to making a fake, racist article that went viral on social media.
Some of the influencer’s YouTube content may violate the platform's terms of service against hate speech. Earlier this year, YouTube began monetizing YouTube Shorts for creators. Some of the short videos feature outright bigotry and misogyny. Tate’s own content is reportedly all over YouTube Shorts, despite being banned from the platform.
Online misogyny leads to real-world violence
Online misogyny has led to real-world violence and harassment. Incel culture and domestic violence have inspired mass shootings across the country.
Early manosphere influencers were a critical driver of Gamergate, a harassment campaign against women who worked in the video game industry that pushed violent misogyny and anti-feminism. Several women received death and rape threats for years from online harassers.
Viral influencers like Tate and Sneako promoting hateful or misogynistic content online have reminded some audiences online of the rhetoric that was used to attack women during Gamergate.
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TINA GLANDIAN (GUEST): Right now, unfortunately, because there is an ongoing criminal investigation, we aren't allowed to actually discuss all of the evidence that is very favorable that shows that they didn't commit any crimes in this case.
TUCKER CARLSON (HOST): Pretty obviously a set-up, Tina. I mean, let's stop lying. These guys were super unpopular with the people in charge and now they're in a "Romanian jail" under "Romanian law." Like, obviously no?
GLANDIAN: I think you said it yourself, Tucker.
CARLSON: Yeah, I did. Because let's stop pretending. Let's stop playing. That's exactly what this is. But I appreciate the update.
GLANDIAN: Sure. I was going to say it's frustrating to be on the defense right now, unable to respond to all of the one-sided leaks that have come out when we have exculpatory evidence but we're not able at this point to discuss it yet and to put it out for the world to see and for the brothers to start to get the truth out and to clear their names.
CARLSON: Yeah, because we know for a fact they tried to set him up for sexual assault before. The woman who was supposedly assaulted by him said, "No, that's my boyfriend." Right. So there's a lot of lying going on here, a lot. And everyone in our country seems to be believing it but we don't.
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- ryan McCarthy @ Vox: Why the redacted affidavit for the search of Trump’s home is so concerning.
- Aidan McLaughlin @ Mediaite: Blake Masters Scrubs Abortion Stance From Website as Polls Continue to Show Him Down to Mark Kelly.
- David Gilbert @ Vice News: MAGA School Board Candidates Celebrated Victory with Proud Boys Flashing White Power Signs.
- Anne Nelson @ The New Republic: A Rare Peek Inside the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy.
- Sophie Lawton & Jacina Hollins-Borges @ Media Matters: Tucker Carlson hosted violent misogynist influencer Andrew Tate. Here are some examples of Tate’s wildly bigoted commentary.
- Nathalie Baptiste @ HuffPost: Doug Mastriano Says Discouraging ‘Conversion Therapy’ Is ‘Disgusting.’
- Michael Sallah, Jonathan D. Silver, Kevin G. Hall, and Brian Fitzpatrick @ The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Inventing Anna: A Tale of a Fake Heiress, Mar-A-Lago, and an FBI Investigation.
Tags: Andrew TateBlake Masters Doug Mastriano Tucker Carlson Round-Up Council for National Policy Proud Boys
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andrew Tate appeared on Tucker Carlson Tonightlast night following a string of bans from social media platforms including Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok for his misogynistic and violent messaging.
Tate first came into the public eye as a kickboxer and then appeared on the reality show Big Brother until he was removed from the show after homophobic and racist tweets and a video of Tate beating a woman surfaced online. He started a reported multimillion-dollar webcam scheme with his brother Tristan in which viewers paid to interact with women online and said it made him a “pimp,” defining that as a “positively inspirational and motivating person” to the women he employed.
Tate has been appearing on right-wing media since at least 2017, when he appeared on an
of Paul Joseph Watson’s InfoWars show titled “What They're Not Telling You About Depression” after tweeting “depression isn’t real” (Tate has also expressed this idea on TikTok). In 2019 Tate guest-hosted The Alex Jones Show, where he praised Jones and focused on “personal sovereignty.” He also appeared on the show in 2020 to advocate against coronavirus mandates.
Tate owes at least some of his viral fame to his online course “Hustlers University,” which Insider says “functions similarly to a multi-level marketing scheme, where users primarily make money by convincing others to join their network.” For $49 a month, users receive “advice from ‘experts’ on a variety of topics, including cryptocurrency, copywriting, real estate, and stock analysis” and can make money when they recruit others to join the program. To fuel recruitment, fans repost Tate’s commentary across social media, most notably on TikTok.
YouTuber Philip DeFranco
a number ofexamples of the worst of Tate’s toxic commentary, which include:
- While holding a machete, Tate described how he would use one to attack a woman in his bed: “Have you ever seen a woman try and do anything competently? Oh, you cheated, you cheated. It’s bang out the machete, boom in her face, then grip her up by the neck.”
- Addressing a girl DeFranco claimed is underage, Tate told her, “Once you’re 18, if you want to get yourself a real man, I know a guy.”
- Tate said that if a woman performs on the paid subscription website OnlyFans and has a boyfriend, “she owes him some money because she’s his.”
- Tate compared women to children and dogs, saying, “If I have responsibility over her, then I must have a degree of authority” as would a parent or pet owner.
- Tate said, “Women should clean up. Not only should women clean up, women should clean up unprompted.”
- He also said, “I will not administer CPR unless you’re a hot female.”
- Tate’s commented that “ rape victims should “bear some responsibility” for their attacks and dates women aged 18–19 because he can “‘make an imprint” on them, according to videos posted online, and made a statement that, “I’m not a rapist, but I like the idea of just being able to do what I want. I like being free.”
Here are more of his awful comments regarding women and gender from the past two years:
Misogyny
- On the Full Send podcast, Tate said, “In general – this is also one of the reasons men find youth attractive … the reason 18- and 19-year-olds are more attractive than 25-year-olds is because they've been through less dick. I'll say this right here on the fucking internet. I don't give a shit. People will sit there and go, ‘Oh you can't say that.’ Yes, I can. A 19-year-old is more attractive than a 26-year-old woman.”
- Tate dubiously claimed that in “99% of the world besides the USA” it is acceptable for a man to cheat on his female partner but she must stay faithful because “women show their love through sexual loyalty.”
- Defending the idea that men should be able to cheat on their female partners, Tate said, “Every single book you can read from history says that females who are promiscuous should either be stoned to death or at least cast out from society. Female promiscuity is a brand new concept — this is brand new amongst society. The idea that women can sleep with a bunch of dudes and it doesn't matter is a brand new idea.”
- Tate stated that the number of sexual partners a woman has had “is probably the number one most easiest way to judge the value of a female,” and later added, “I think 99% of the world's problems would be solved if females walked through life with their body count on their forehead because it would prevent, because it would prevent all of the disintegration of morals.”
- Speaking about competing for attention on social media, Tate complained that men no longer receive anything in return for paying attention to women: “In the old days, man would give attention in return for sex, but nowadays men just give attention and don't get any sex back, and that's what you have to be very very careful of.”
- When asked how he would react if his significant other started an OnlyFans account, Tate made clear that he expected to be in control of its content: “I don't think there's anything intrinsically wrong with women doing Only Fans, as long as I had influence and control over it. … I’m not doing any real work, but just like taking all the money … because you're my woman, you're doing Only Fans, you're selling my product.”
- In a conversation about the power he would expect to hold in a hypothetical relationship with Kylie Jenner, Tate said, “If she's my chick, then you know she's mine. So her things are now mine too — my jet, my house. This is my jet, young lady, sit down. Be quiet. It's gonna be fine. Don't worry about it.”
- During a podcast appearance uploaded to TikTok, Tate
, “Most women I know can't even park a car. Why is a woman flying my plane?” - During a July YouTube livestream, Tate erroneously
, “If you ask most women, they say, I don’t like having a woman boss, I’d rather work for a man.” “Women actually … prefer to work for a male boss because it’s a stronger, more clear leadership structure.” - In a discussion on women joining the military Tate said,“I think that’s the biggest mistake a female could possibly make,” adding, “You’re shit at it.”
Promoting hyper-masculinity and regressive gender roles
- Tate
“society functions better as a patriarchy” and America is not a patriarchal society because “females have more rights under the law than men” which he said will lead to its downfall. - In a TikTok pulled from a podcast appearance, Tate admonished women in modern society and
, “The modern society we live in has been built by men.” He went on to state, “I believe men are still doing their job, but I don’t know if women are doing their job.” - Tate claimed the Western world ”is trying to turn females masculine” in order to “destroy the will of man.”
- Tate
“there’s no need” for men “to prepare food” and they should instead “instruct a female to provide sustenance. And get back to world conquest. You have better things to do.” - Tate
, “It’s extremely off-putting when a man goes on a date with one of them real confident girls.” He explained that “it’s not because I’m insecure; it’s because I’ve just picked you up, you don’t know me, I'm a 6-foot-3 kickboxing world champion. I could be a psycho; you don’t know me. You’re sitting next to me, you’re confident as fuck. … This should be unfamiliar. You should be a bit nervous.” - Tate stated that relationships only work if the woman “obeys like she’s supposed to” and claimed, “I think the world can be a beautiful place as long as gender roles are not misconstrued or misunderstood.”
- On Stand Out TV’s Grilling, Tate stated, “The truth is about the masculine-feminine dynamic is that females like men who are completely in charge and run their life exactly how they want and they comply and bend to the man's wills and lifestyle.”
- Tate stated during a podcast appearance that women’s liberation is a “psy-op” and a “new world order” to keep control. He went on to claim that “most men are clinically depressed, working jobs they hate, in sexless marriages, and they know they can’t leave because they lose the house and they lose the kids and they’ll lose everything else.”
- Tate
men who don’t engage in toxic masculinity and said, “The second you’re physically assaulted or physically threatened, the first thing you do is you call a toxically masculine police officer to turn up with a weapon to protect you because you cannot protect yourself.”
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an 6 22 no lnx pix twt
MAGA's ‘King of Toxic Masculinity’ faces police raid in Romania in human trafficking investigation
Romanian police in 2015, Wikimedia Commons
Alex Henderson April 22, 2022
In one of his YouTube videos, American expatriate Andrew Tate — a professional kickboxer and far-right Donald Trump supporter known as “the King of Toxic Masculinity” — stated that “40%” of the reason he moved to Romania was because Romanian law enforcement are less likely to pursue sexual assault allegations. But on April 10, according to Daily Beast reporter Will Sommer, Tate’s home was raided by Romanian police as part of a human trafficking investigation.
“Video from the raid shows police officers armed with rifles milling among the Tates’ sports cars, with a neon ‘TATE’ logo on a wall in the background,” Sommer explains. “Another video showed Tate and his brother, (Tristan Tate), being shoved into vans by police officers before being driven away from their homes.”
The Romanian publication Gândul, according to Sommer, “reported that the raid was sparked over reports that anAmerican woman was being held captive at the Tate house. Police found both the American and a Romanian woman in the building during the raid, according to the report.”
Andrew Tate was dubbed “the King of Toxic Masculinity” by one of his admirers. The term “toxic masculinity” has a very negative connotation among feminists, but to Tate’s admirers, it’s a badge of honor — and in the video discussing his decision to move to Romania, Tate angrily railed against the #MeToo movement. Romania, as the MAGA kickboxer saw it, wasn’t as #MeToo-friendly as the United States, the U.K. or Germany.
In that video, Tate told viewers, “People say, ‘Why do you live in Romania?,’ and I explain my five reasons. One of them is the #MeToo era…. This #MeToo era bullshit has not protected women. It’s just destroyed the safety of men.”
The Daily Beast discussed Andrew Tate’s case with Romanian police. According to Sommer, “In a statement provided to the Daily Beast, Romania’s Directorate for Investigating Organized Crime and Terrorism said the raid on the Tates’ house was part of an investigation that began after a woman was reported to be held at the house against her will. As the probe continued, it escalated to include ‘crimes of human trafficking and rape.’”
Sommer reports that “in a statement on the raid to the Daily Beast, a U.S. State Department spokesperson alluded to a reported abduction of an American citizen but declined to comment further.”
That spokesperson told the Beast, “We are aware of reports of a U.S. citizen held against their will in Romania. Due to privacy considerations, we have no further comment.”
Tate, Sommer notes, has often been a guest on far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ Infowars show and has “links with the stars of the Trumpian right.”
“In 2019,” Sommer observes, “Tate palled around Washington, D.C. with prominent online Trump activists and conspiracy theorists. He shared a meal with far-right cable news commentator Jack Posobiec and Infowars host Paul Joseph Watkins, and appeared multiple times on Infowars shows. In Trump’s Washington hotel, Tate posed for a picture with Brexit advocate Nigel Farage, and sat in a group in the Trump hotel lobby with the likes of Pizzagate conspiracy theorist Mike Cernovich and future January 6, (2021) protest organizer Ali Alexander.”
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SEEMS EMBELATIC, IMMUNE TO FACT/ REALITY
Right-wing media deny climate change in face of deadly and record-breaking extreme ...
https://www.mediamatters.org/climate-deniers/right-wing-media-deny-climate-change-face-deadly-and-record-breaking-extreme
Media Matters for America
Fox Business host Stuart Varney indulged climate change denier Marc Morano and said climate change is “a good debate.” When discussing extreme ...
as the climate crisis becomes more evident and destructive, even exceeding climate scientists’ earlier predictions, Fox News and other influential right-wing outlets and figures are downplaying the severity of climate-fueled events and pushing dangerous climate denial.
This summer has been marked by a series of record-breaking extreme weather events, illustrative of the rapidly intensifying effects of global warming. Unprecedented heat waves, wildfires, and floods have wreaked havoc across North America. Meanwhile, global sea surface temperatures have reached alarming levels, and the world just experienced its hottest day on record — four days in a row. These events align with scientists' warnings, but the acceleration of warming and the intensity of this summer’s extreme heat suggest that the climate crisis is unfolding faster than expected.
Last month, when smoke from hundreds of wildfires raging across Canada polluted the air over major population centers in the U.S., Fox News dismissed the link between the fires and climate change; meanwhile conspiracy theories seeking alternative explanations for Canada’s record-breaking wildfire season flourished online. In response to news that Earth had reached its hottest temperatures ever recorded, bad actors attempted to distract from the unsettling milestone by focusing on CNN’s use of the phrase “hottest day ever.” As deadly heat continues to scorch parts of the U.S., Asia, and Europe with no end in sight, and with a 1,000-year flood event having left parts of Vermont and New York state underwater, right-wing media cling to talking points that deny climate science.
By flooding the zone with climate denial right when the climate crisis is most evident, right-wing media run cover for Republican decision-makers who are actively obstructing climate action, ward off accountability for the fossil fuel industry, and pollute information systems for those attempting to understand the link between extreme weather and our dependence on fossil fuels. This tactic, like the extreme heat, has no end in sight.
Right-wing media responded to deadly climate change-fueled heat and flooding with denial and delay
Fox Business host Stuart Varney indulged climate change denier Marc Morano and said climate change is “a good debate.” When discussing extreme heat in Phoenix, Arizona, Morano said, “This is not outside the normal bounds of hot summer weather,” and claimed that CNN, The New York Times, and others are “weaponizing hot summer heat waves to turn it into some kind of climate action.” Varney asked Morano whether “that is not the result of CO2 emissions'' and said, “It's a good debate. This is a very good debate.” [Fox Business, Varney & Co., 7/19/23]
Far-right radio host Steven Crowder hosted climate contrarian Bjorn Lomborg, who downplayed the climate crisis by arguing that more people die from cold than heat: “We are not talking about a world where most people die from heat. No, most people die from cold. Cold is fantastically more dangerous for a lot of different reasons.” [Rumble, Louder with Crowder, 7/19/23]
The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh suggests that the extreme heat is normal for summer: “Well it’s summertime and that means it's hot outside … This is when the media, as it does every year, claims that the hot weather is a sign of our impending planetary doom.” [The Daily Wire, The Matt Walsh Show, 7/18/23]
Far-right pundit James Lindsay: “Climate struggle sessions ramping up. They're going to try and fail to make that transition again. The propaganda isn't going to work this time either, though.” [Twitter, 7/18/23]
Fox News host Laura Ingraham, in response to an Axios article about extreme weather: “I'm not taking @Axios seriously until they start crusading against coal burning in China — anyone who claims to worry about carbon emissions should start there or button it. Even the ‘best states for climate change’ get hit with extreme weather” [Twitter, 7/18/23]
COVID-19 conspiracy theorist Dr. Naomi Wolf: “Oh! Conclusions: this will happen more and more often because climate change so: stay indoors, do remote work, ‘mask’. Back where we were again.” [Twitter, 7/18/23]
Right-wing Irish political activist and conspiracy theorist Ben Gilroy: “Today media continue to propagandise weather showing high temperatures in Death Valley USA — yet the park rangers wear jackets and gloves? The elites UN climate scam is really about securing a world government plutocracy, depopulation, and severely cutting your quality of life.” [Twitter, 7/18/23]
Fox host Jesse Watters downplayed the extreme heat as simply “summer”: “It's been a hot July. Some call it ‘global warming,’ some call it ‘summer.’ But what's the best way to beat the heat? Ice cream.” [Fox News, Jesse Watters Primetime, 7/17/23]
Lindsay mocked conditions in the southern U.S. that were so humid they had the potential to interfere with humans’ ability to sweat, pushing the limits of survivability. [Twitter, 7/17/23]
Longtime fossil fuel shill Steve Milloy: “@AP: 'Around the world, millions feel the heat of an unrelenting summer.' Two points: 1. It is summer. It gets hot. 2. There 8 billion in the world. If only 'millions' are experiencing extreme heat, that doesn't sound much like 'climate change.'” [Twitter, 7/17/23]
Misogynist influencer and alleged sex trafficker Tristan Tate:“They’re naming heatwaves like they used to name new ‘Covid variants’. Can somebody in the government give me the job of whoever makes the names up? I’ll do it for free. Watch out! The ‘lovely warm summer’ heatwave has just hit Europe.” [Twitter, 7/15/23]
COVID-19 conspiracy theorist and anti-vaccine influencer Dr. Eli David: “When the weather is a bit warmer than usual: Experts™: IT'S PROOF OF GLOBAL WARMING!!!!! When the weather is colder than usual: Experts™: WEATHER AND CLIMATE ARE TWO DIFFERENT THINGS YOU MORONS!!!!!” [Twitter, 7/17/23]
Newsmax host Chris Salcedo mocked concern over the record heat: “Newsflash folks, it gets hot in the summer.” He continued, “After a few particularly hot days on the Fourth of July weekend, the left — they went into full fearmongering mode.” Salcedo then interviewed Milloy, who warned that climate activists would call for climate lockdowns. [Newsmax, The Chris Salcedo Show, 7/17/23]
On The Five, Jesse Watters attacked “the left” for connecting climate change to heat waves across the globe and mocked climate activists: “The left rushing to blame global warming for that dangerous heat wave gripping the nation and the world right now. But I think the heat's getting to their heads. Climate change-obsessed liberals are actually acting crazier than usual, with eco-extremists in Germany literally gluing their hands to airport runways as a way to sound the alarm on how the planet's cooked.” [Fox News, The Five, 7/17/23]
Fox host Greg Gutfeld also attempted to downplay the record-breaking heat with bizarre logic: “The problem with using weather — like saying, ‘This place broke records’ — how many states, how many countries didn't break records? Nobody ever provides you the context. They’re going, ‘Three countries had record breaking heat waves.’ It’s like, well, ‘How many countries are there?’” [Fox News, The Five, 7/17/23]
On America’s Newsroom, Lomborg suggested that more air conditioning is the way to address extreme heat: “The way to fix this, of course, is to make sure that people get lots of air conditioning and that they can actually afford the energy that they will run their air conditioning on. That’s one. The second one is to remember that, yes, there are many people dying from heat, but many, many more people dying from cold.” [Fox News, America’s Newsroom, 7/17/23]
Climate change denier and former University of Alabama professor Matthew Wielicki: “We used to call this summer. Now we call this a climate crisis.” [Twitter, 7/15/23]
Milloy: “India's monsoon season is not affected by emissions. Indians have died in monsoon flooding since there have been Indians and monsoons. It is really dishonest and disgusting to surf tragic deaths for climate.” [Twitter, 7/14/23]
Right-wing British pundit Brendan O’Neill, who has been praised by anti-renewable energy activist Michael Shellenberger, wrote that “global warming could be good for humankind.” Citing Lomborg, O’Neill wrote that “the truth is that global warming could be good for humankind” because more people die from the cold than heat. “It’s pissing down in Britain,” he continued, “Where’s our global warming? Even the name of the heatwave is designed to conjure up visions of hellfire and torment.” [Spiked, 7/14/23]
On Fox News at Night, Carl Demaio, a political operative and conservative radio host, called a California campaign to warn residents about climate-driven extreme heat “wasteful spending” and “fear porn.” [Fox News, Fox News at Night, 7/12/23]
Newsmax host Eric Bolling, in response to calls for climate action after flooding in the Northeast, denied that human activity is responsible for warming: “It's raining, so we all must change our behavior. Unprecedented weather events — look flooding’s terrible, loss of property is a disaster, and our hearts go out to those affected. But just imagine, for one moment, the ridiculousness and the pompousness to think that: one, our behavior has any real impact on weather and the Earth, and two, even if that were true — which it’s not — that we could do anything about it without making things worse.” [Newsmax, Eric Bolling The Balance, 7/11/23]
Fox host Laura Ingraham also mocked the extreme heat and calls to action, suggesting that climate change is a made-up crisis: “It's hot, hot, hot all right. After all, we're in the middle of a season called ‘summer.’” Ingraham later played a clip from a previous show, arguing that “COVID lockdowns set the predicate for more to come.” She said, “Their so-called public health experts were wrong on everything from lockdowns to masks to social distancing. And yet now we see the usual suspects lining up to exploit another hyped crisis: of course, I’m talking about climate change.” [Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 7/11/23]
Right-wing journalist and author Alex Berenson: As climate change hysteria reaches a new level of screeching (1-in-1000 this, world's hottest that), remember that weather-related deaths have PLUNGED since 1970. The wealthier the world becomes, the easier managing climate change will be. And wealth requires energy. Period. [Twitter, 7/10/23]
On Jesse Watters Primetime, guest host Pete Hegseth mocked reports of record-breaking heat and blamed media for “hyping climate insanity”: If there is one thing the mindless left loves to magically discover every year, it’s that summer is hot. Hegseth continued, “It was hotter in New York in April. And it’s not even the hottest June we’ve ever had. The data shows that the 80s and 90s … were a lot hotter.” [Fox News, Jesse Watters Primetime, 7/7/23]
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vice
alleged human traffickers Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan are suing two of their accusers in a Romanian criminal case against them – insisting that it’s them, not the women, who are the real victims.
Lawyers for the women said they believe the case has no merit, while other women who accuse Andrew Tate of serious abuse described the lawsuit as a “crude and malicious attempt to spread disinformation” and an attempt to silence the brothers’ victims.
News
Andrew Tate’s Legal Headaches Just Got a Whole Lot Worse
TIM HUME
06.14.23
Andrew Tate, a controversial British-American “manosphere” influencer and his brother, Tristan, are seeking at least $5 million in damages from five individuals they blame for their arrest in Romania on human trafficking charges. The lawsuit, a copy of which was obtained by VICE News, seeks damages on the grounds of defamation, loss of earnings, false imprisonment, conspiracy, and infliction of emotional distress.
The lawsuit names two women – one of whom is based in Florida, the other in the UK – who it says were responsible for triggering a raid by Romanian police on the brother’s Bucharest compound in April 2022, during which officials removed the women from the property. The others named in the lawsuit are the US woman’s parents, and a male friend of hers, also US-based, who the lawsuit said had notified the US Embassy in Romania of the trafficking allegations.
The suit has been filed in Palm Beach county, Florida, as the US-based woman and her parents supposedly live there.
Romanian officials arrested the Tates in December and eventually indicted them, along with two Romanian co-defendants, last month. They’re charged with forming a criminal group to traffick seven women into performing webcam pornography. Romanian authorities say the Tates used the so-called “loverboy” method, in which abusers groom women into sex work with the false promise of love and relationships, to exploit the women.
The Tates’ lawsuit attempts to flip this narrative on its head, claiming that to the contrary, it was Tristan Tate “who was the victim of a romance scam” by one of the women named in the lawsuit, while Andrew “was collateral damage in the fallout.”
The lawsuit said that Tristan Tate met the US-based woman on the dating app Hinge and invited her to an event in Miami in December 2021, after which they started a sexual relationship.
It claims that the woman had been the one pushing to come to Romania and do webcam work for the Tates, and that he had been resistant to the idea, before eventually relenting. But after she arrived in the country, the lawsuit claimed, she had swiftly become disappointed that the brothers were too busy with their business interests to devote time to her, and grew disillusioned. At that point, it claimed, she teamed up with the UK woman who was also working at the Tate property and cooked up a scheme to “defraud the Tate brothers – and ultimately accuse… them of human trafficking and other grave crimes.
The Tate brothers have denied the charges against them in Romania.
Prior to his arrest, Andrew Tate has spoken extensively online about his use of the “loverboy” method to groom women into webcam pornography, even selling online courses to men teaching them how to follow in his footsteps.
“My job was to get women to fall in love with me. Literally,” reads a since-deleted page on Tate’s website advertising his PHD (Pimping Hoes Degree) course. “[M]eet a girl, go on a few dates, sleep with her, test if she’s quality, get her to fall in love with me to where she’d do anything I say, and then get her on webcam so we could become rich together.”
His methods involved searching for potential recruits on dating apps. VICE News has spoken to women who matched with him on such apps, before he attempted to groom them into webcam work using the loverboy method.
READ: How Andrew Tate used Tinder and Instagram to try to groom women
Lawyers for the women targeted in the lawsuit, from the National Center on Sexual Exploitation in the US, told VICE News that they were aware of the filing, but did “not believe the lawsuit has any merit.”
“We are evaluating next steps as we wait for them to give formal notice,” the organisation said in a statement.
Benjamin Bull, a National Center on Sexual Exploitation lawyer for one of the witnesses in the Romanian case, told the BBC after the Tates sent a “cease-and-desist” letter to his client that their legal threats were designed to do "one thing and one thing only.”
“They want these young ladies to climb into a hole and hide, never come forward [or] describe what they saw and what happened to them. It's clearly an effort to intimidate,” he said.
A group of four women who say they were seriously abused by Andrew Tate when he was living in the UK about a decade ago said in a joint statement issued through their lawyers on Friday that they were alarmed by the Tates’ US lawsuit, which they saw as an attempt to intimidate their victims.
“We are deeply concerned by these developments, which in our view amount to nothing more than a crude and malicious attempt to spread disinformation, disclose personal and private information, and attack those brave enough to speak out against their abusers,” said the statement from the women, who have filed their own lawsuit against him in Britain.
The experiences of three of the women – two of whom were recruited by Tate to work for his webcam business, the other of whom was in a romantic relationship with him – were first revealed by VICE News earlier this year.
“We stand in solidarity with all of the alleged victims of the Tates, and commend all those who have come forward to date,” said the statement. “We will not be intimidated into silence.”
Lawyers for the Tate brothers did not respond to requests for comment.
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duck 7 23
https://www.independent.co.uk › news › world › europe › andrew-tristan-tate-brother-arrest-trial-b2260087.html
Who is Tristan Tate? All we know about Andrew Tate's brother arrested ...
Jan 11, 2023Tristan Tate, who is also a former kickboxer turned social media influencer, was detained in December as part of an investigation into human trafficking and rape by Romania's anti-organised...
https://nypost.com › 2023 › 07 › 14 › andrew-tate-and-brother-tristan-sue-their-accusers-in-human-trafficking-case
Andrew Tate and brother Tristan sue their accusers in human trafficking ...
Jul 14, 2023The widely followed former professional kickboxer and his brother, Tristan, are seeking at least $5 million in the lawsuit, which was filed in Palm Beach County against the woman, her parents,...
https://wikiabio.com › tristan-tate
Tristan Tate Age, Net Worth, Wiki, Height, Girlfriend - WikiaBio
Nov 3, 2022Tristan Tate is a British-American businessman, television personality, pundit, model, martial artist, and former kickboxer. He also has a background in martial arts. His success in kickboxing, business, being a commentator on fights, and other forms of martial arts contributed to the accumulation of his net worth.
https://www.vice.com › en › article › y3wbmj › andrew-tate-tristan-tate-lawsuit
Andrew Tate and His Brother Tristan Are Suing Their Alleged ... - VICE
Jun 14, 202306.14.23. Andrew Tate, a controversial British-American "manosphere" influencer and his brother, Tristan, are seeking at least $5 million in damages from five individuals they blame for their ...
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https://meaww.com › profile › tristan-tate
Tristan Tate - News, Bio, Facts (Updated on Fri, Jul 28 2023) - MEAWW
Tristan Tate is a British-American kickboxer, entrepreneur, and influencer. He is a successful businessman, media personality, commentator, model, martial artist, and former kickboxer. He was born and raised in the English town of Luton, United Kingdom. He is currently under house arrest in Bucharest, Romania on charges of human trafficking.
https://www.thesun.co.uk › tvandshowbiz › 18895508 › who-andrew-tates-brother-tristan-married
Who is Tristan Tate and what is his net worth? | The Sun
Dec 30, 2022TRISTAN TATE, like his brother, is a former professional kickboxer who became a popular social media influencer. He amassed a large following due his adventures and lavish lifestyle prior to...
https://twitter.com › TateTheTalisman
Tristan Tate (@TateTheTalisman) / Twitter
Tristan Tate (@TateTheTalisman) / Twitter Tristan Tate @TateTheTalisman Kickboxer, Father, Businessman. Brother of @cobratate rumble.com/tatespeech Bucharest, Romania cobratate.com/newsletter Joined December 2013 613 Following 2.1M Followers 1 Subscription Tweets Replies Media Likes Tristan Tate @TateTheTalisman · Apr 5 Iftar. 4,431 10.8K 215.6K
https://www.imdb.com › name › nm13892820
Tristan Tate - IMDb
Tristan Tate (born on July 15th, 1988) is an American-British internet personality, former kickboxer, Andrew Tate's brother, actor and television personality known for Kings of the Internet (2022). He is a 2x IKSA British Kickboxing Champion, entrepreneur, self-made multi-millionaire, and one of the world's most notorious international playboys
https://www.instagram.com › talismantate_tristantate
Tristan Tate (@talismantate_tristantate) - Instagram
96K Followers, 30 Following, 154 Posts - See Instagram photos and videos from Tristan Tate (@talismantate_tristantate) 96K Followers, 30 Following, 154 Posts - See Instagram photos and videos from Tristan Tate (@talismantate_tristantate) Something went wrong. There's an issue and the page could not be loaded. ...
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