Why are Democrats so quiet about the Tate brothers?
It’s not exactly strange that elements of the Magaverse have embraced Andrew Tate. What’s strange is that the Democrats do not seem interested in holding the Trump movement to account for it.
Andrew Tate, the misogynist influencer who is accused by numerous women around the world and now British prosecutors of rape and strangulation, as well as assault, sex trafficking, possession of child abuse images and extreme pornography, and various other forms of gender violence and exploitation, was arrested in Miami last week, along with Tristan, his brother and sidekick. Or I should say, they were rearrested: the men were previously charged in Romania, where they were under house arrest until, following some conveniently timed diplomatic moves from the Trump administration, they were allowed to leave the country and resettled in the US. When asked if the Trump administration had secured their release from Romania back then, the Tates’ lawyer said: “Do the math. These guys are on the plane.” Now, finally, they are awaiting extradition to the UK, where they are dual citizens.
The Tate brothers have long made their living by making provocative, contemptuous statements about women online. But in June, the New Yorker’s Heidi Blake published a long investigation that centered not on what the Tates have said, but on what they’re said to have done – detailing a long and documented history of alleged sex trafficking, violence, and sexual assault along with a disturbing pattern of police mismanagement, incompetence and indifference that allowed the men to go free. The Tates denied wrongdoing in that piece; their lawyer called the new British charges against them “garbage”. But if anyone thought the Tates’ misogynistic influencer career was mere bluster, the Blake investigation offered a formidable bit of counterevidence: she painted a picture of the men acting exactly the way that they talked.
In a world where people take misogyny as seriously as they claim to, the Tates would long ago have been ostracized, and condemned, for their hatefully sexist rhetoric and alleged violence against women. In this world, they got rich, and ingratiated themselves to powerful figures in the Republican party. [Continue reading…]
On Sunday morning, hours after the manosphere influencers Andrew and Tristan Tate were arrested by federal agents in Miami, one of their representatives reached out to Alina Habba.
Not long ago, Ms. Habba, a lawyer, was a vocal supporter of the Tate brothers as they faced allegations of human trafficking and other serious crimes in Romania and Britain. In a podcast appearance in January 2025, shortly after being named a counselor to President Trump, she told Andrew Tate, “I got your back over here.”
Now the brothers were in a federal detention center after Britain requested their extradition for a slew of new criminal charges there. Their representative wanted to know: Was Ms. Habba free to talk?
She did not respond, according to two people familiar with the outreach. It was a sign of the brothers’ eroding support among their onetime allies on the American right.
In recent years, the Tates had leveraged their enormous following of young men to cultivate support among Mr. Trump’s advisers, family members and other prominent conservatives. Those efforts paid off last year when, feeling pressure from members of the new Trump administration, Romanian prosecutors lifted a travel ban on the brothers, freeing them to leave the country and jet-set around the world.
But they are now facing a new level of legal jeopardy. Britain has issued 38 charges against them, including rape and sex trafficking; Andrew Tate was also charged with extreme pornography and indecent images of children. The brothers have denied all of the criminal accusations and called the charges politically motivated.
The extradition request has forced the Trump administration to participate in the process: Federal prosecutors are representing the British government’s case in a Miami court.
Mr. Trump does not plan to intervene in the case, said the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, on Thursday. And many of the Tates’ allies in the president’s orbit, who were once happy to be associated with their brand of hyper-masculinity, now appear to be backing away.
Ms. Habba, who is no longer in the administration but still speaks with Mr. Trump, wants nothing to do with the Tates, according to people familiar with her thinking.
Paul Ingrassia, the acting general counsel of the General Services Administration, who previously served on the Tates’ legal team and has lavished praise on Andrew, wrote a post on X shortly after the arrests criticizing “politically driven prosecutions.” In a call with The New York Times on Thursday, Mr. Ingrassia said the post was simply articulating his beliefs about the Constitution.
Asked if he still supported the Tates, he said, “I have no ongoing connection to them now.” [Continue reading…]
In July, 2023, Paul Ingrassia posted on X:
Andrew Tate is an extraordinary human being – not only in terms of sheer physical prowess, though he is that in spades, but perhaps even more impressively, he is sharp as a tack and has the willpower and spirit to match.
He is the embodiment of the ancient ideal of excellence:… pic.twitter.com/ITrrPr3UXn
— Paul Ingrassia (@PaulIngrassia) July 5, 2023