Misogyny is nothing to celebrate

Trump's team confuse online trolling with real world politics

Picture: X

The Tate brothers have been rescued. At the end of last week, Andrew and Tristan left Romania where they were being investigated for allegations of human trafficking, money laundering and rape. The pair, who hold dual American and British citizenship, arrived by private jet in Florida 12 hours later. They insist they are ‘misunderstood’ and that the charges against them are a ‘conspiracy’. Some in the White House, it seems, who agree.

Although Trump claims to know nothing about the Tates’ release from Romania - where the legal case against them has not been dropped and they remain ‘under judicial control’ - it looks likely that prosecutors there acquiesced to a request from Trump’s team to remove travel restrictions on the brothers. Florida’s governor, Ron De Santis, was said to be surprised by their arrival - which he apparently learnt of through the media.

The Tates, it’s fair to say, divide opinion. To some, they represent the downfall of civilization, the corruption of youth and a two-man justification for restrictions on free speech. To others, the brothers are persecuted role models who embody the kind of no-nonsense, tough-guy masculinity that could save a generation of lost young men. Both of these extremes speak more to commentators’ concerns and fears about the world today and teenage boys in particular than the far more pathetic - and ugly - reality of the brothers’ existence. Yet many in Trump’s orbit seem to fall firmly into the latter camp and imagine the Tates not as the vile misogynists they clearly are, but as truth-speaking, macho-martyrs.

Every time he opens his mouth, kickboxer and self-declared misogynist Andrew Tate proves himself to be a gross stain on humanity. He has expressed a preference for nineteen-year-olds over older women because they are ‘fresh’ and easier for him to ‘put [his] imprint on’. And he’s said he prefers petite women, because ‘I will pick you up with one hand, by your titty’. In a video captioned ‘How Tate handles his Girls’, he enacts hitting an imaginary woman: ‘slap, slap, grab, choke, shut up bitch, sex.’ In another, he imagines what he would do if a woman accused him of cheating: ‘It’s bang out the machete, boom in her face and grip her by the neck. Shut up bitch.’

Sadly this is not just fantasy: there are videos of Andrew Tate hitting a woman with a belt and another of him telling a woman to count the bruises he apparently caused to her. He claims that ‘probably 40 per cent of the reason’ he moved to Romania is because it’s easier to evade rape charges there. And then, of course, there are the charges being brought against him in the US, the UK and Romania for, variously, rape, trafficking, money laundering, tax evasion and forming an organised crime group to sexually exploit women.

And yet, despite all this, the Sunday Times reports that the brothers were free to travel to Florida after Romanian prosecutors ceded to a request from Trump’s administration to lift travel restrictions on the pair. Romania's Foreign Minister previously said that Trump’s envoy for special missions had raised the brothers during a conversation at the Munich Security Conference in Germany a fortnight ago. The question is: why? Why go out on a limb to rescue these scumbags from potential criminal proceedings?

It is becoming increasingly apparent that the MAGA movement, at times, struggles to differentiate between being popular with the general public - being a populist party - and being popular on social media. In reality, those who are most online are far from representative of the population as a whole, as the Tate brothers neatly demonstrate. Yet Andrew Tate’s more than 10million followers on X-alone seems to cast a spell over the online right. Trump is said to appreciate loyalty and Tate used his platform to urge people to vote for Trump - a fact he is rumoured to have reminded the President’s team about in the past few weeks. Safe passage could be repayment.

If social media followings do not equate to public support neither do they necessarily represent agreement. Followers are not always fans; some are there to be outraged and titilated rather than being told what to think. But this capacity to generate outrage - to ‘own the libs’ - also seems to appeal to those in Trump’s circle who carry social media trolling over into the real world. Stupid stunts like mimicking Nazi salutes garner furious column inches and cause widespread offence. Winding up your opponents might be good for a laugh but it is not real politics and won’t improve voters’ lives.

More disturbing is the prospect that sheltering the Tate brothers is neither a reward for online loyalty nor a pathetic attempt at trolling but a sign of genuine admiration. Several years ago now, Donald Trump Jr met Andrew Tate and posted on Facebook afterwards: ‘The tate family support trump FULLY. MAGA!’. Tate is not the only macho ‘hard man’ America’s online right seems to admire. Trump himself has publicly praised Putin’s ‘genius’ and Xi Jingpin’s ‘iron fist’. And then there’s Elon Musk with his 14 children and the podcasting bros’ apparent idolisation of Tommy Robinson. This model of ‘strong-man’ sexist and racist machismo flies in the face of democracy, most people’s daily reality and the socially conservative ‘family values’ of many Trump voters.

Those advising Trump need to get better at doing their research and they need to stop confusing online trolling with real world politics.

An edited version of this article first appeared on Spiked: https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/03/03/team-trump-should-want-nothing-to-do-with-the-tates/