Manosphere celebrities—including alleged sexual predators like Tate—are a symptom of a politically resurgent misogyny.
Andrew Tate and his brother, Tristan Tate, talk to the media outside their residence on March 23, 2025, in Bucharest, Romania. (Andrei Pungovschi / Getty Images)
On Saturday, federal marshals in Miami arrested Andrew and Tristan Tate—two brothers who run a social-media empire in which they purport to be the voice of male empowerment—on charges of rape and sex trafficking. The arrest was made after an extradition request by British authorities (the Tates are dual UK-US nationals). The brothers had previously been arrested on rape and trafficking charges in Romania and the United Kingdom. As The New York Times reports, the new charges against the brothers are grave, as are the accusations in an ongoing criminal case against them in Romania:
The new charges against Andrew Tate, 39, include seven counts of rape; three counts of sex trafficking; three counts of assault; and 19 more charges relating to sexual images of children and “extreme pornography.”
Tristan Tate, 38, faces two new charges of rape; one count of sexual assault; and three counts of sex trafficking….
In Romania, where the Tates previously lived, prosecutors have been investigating allegations that they coerced dozens of women, including a 17-year-old girl, into pornography. They have also investigated Andrew Tate over allegations that he raped one of the women and had sex with a 15-year-old.
In June, The New Yorker published an extensive report by Heidi Blake that made clear, in harrowing detail, the despicable nature of these alleged crimes. Multiple women told Blake that they had been manipulated, sexually tortured, and raped by the Tate brothers. (The Tates have denied any wrongdoing.) These acts, Blake wrote, were motivated by a bluntly misogynist ideology often expressed by the brothers and also served an economic purpose.
The Tates ran a webcam-pornography empire where many of the women they employed had been groomed into the job. The business model relied on paying these employees as little as possible. The verbal and sexual abuse allegedly inflicted upon them seems to have served as a way of keeping wages low.
In an online network called The War Room, Andrew Tate offers lessons on pimping, or as he once put it, recruiting women into “sexual slavery.” On one occasion, Tate instructed his students, “You have to fuck them, and they have to love you. It’s essential to the business. You have to be militant with your fucking pimping.” He would have the women who work for him get a “Tate owned” tattoo.
These allegations are horrifying enough on their own. But they are compounded by the level of Tates’ influence, which stretches far beyond the online reaches of the so-called “manosphere.” The Tate brothers have been deeply allied with MAGA for years, with Andrew Tate cultivating personal relationships with key figures in the Trump orbit—including Trump’s youngest son, Barron.
As The New York Times reported in December 2025:
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.
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Editor and Publisher, The NationBarron, 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.
These relationships paid off handsomely; as Donald Trump prepared to retake the White House in January 2025, his incoming administration successfully pressured the Romanian government to remove travel restrictions preventing the Tates from leaving the country and returning to the United States.
There is an obviously self-serving element to forming these bonds. But there is also plenty of evidence that the Tates and their MAGA allies share the same hateful worldview.
Andrew Tate had started cultivating a relationship with Donald Trump Jr. shortly after the 2016 election. After a visit to Trump Tower, Tate posted a photo of himself clasping the hand of the president’s eldest son, accompanied with a note reading “The tate family support trump FULLY. MAGA!” On another occasion, Tate praised Donald Trump by saying, “He’s grabbing bitches by the pussy. I like that guy.”
Andrew Tate is also an open admirer of longtime Trump friend Jeffrey Epstein. In a deleted tweet, he once wrote, “EVERYONE wants to be friends with the pimp. Doubt me? EPSTEIN HAD ACCESS TO PUSSY. Look at his fucking friends list.”
In describing Tate’s “empire of abuse,” Blake makes clear that the accused predator is a low-rent Jeffrey Epstein. Both men recruited young women (some of them allegedly children) via modeling agencies. They would shower these prospective victims with attention and affection. They both operated in murky political jurisdictions to avoid the law (Epstein’s private island, Romania). Both benefited from friendships with elite political and media figures. Both justified their actions with a nihilistic philosophy of a Darwinian right of the strong to dominate the weak.
Perhaps the main difference between Epstein and Tate is one of cultural style. Epstein was a centrist elitist who cultivated connections with Ivy League scholars, particularly at Harvard. As such, he belonged to a historical period where even monstrous criminals tried to give their actions the sheen of respectability. Tate is emblematic of a cruder and more populist period—a social-media influencer whose clout comes from his unabashed, hateful vulgarity.
It’s hardly surprising that Donald Trump had a quondam close companion in Epstein, while two of his sons fell under the sway of Tate.
The connecting thread in this story is misogyny. Trump’s own sexual predations (the infamous “grab ’em by the pussy” remark, the sexual assault on E. Jean Carroll) might embarrass some of his supporters, but they also excite others. Trump and Trumpism have become rallying points for a misogynist backlash against feminism. This reactionary movement has only intensified in reaction to the #MeToo movement.
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As Blake reports, Tate’s unabashedly misogynist and abusive actions had strong support from many MAGA luminaries:
When Tate was arrested on human-trafficking charges, his allies defended him. Donald Trump, Jr., called the case “absolute insanity,” and [Elon] Musk suggested that the authorities were targeting the Tates while ignoring “actual sex trafficking.” [Tucker] Carlson, who had just released a documentary called “The End of Men,” devoted hours of airtime to proclaiming Tate’s innocence; so did the right-wing podcaster Candace Owens. The activist Charlie Kirk praised him onstage. “What he says is so powerful,” Kirk said. “Our society is configured towards collapsing the American man.”
To be sure, not everyone in MAGAworld was on board. There were significant dissents from Ben Shapiro and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. The former Fox News host Megyn Kelly said about Tate, “This actually is toxic masculinity.” But these critiques were minority voices in MAGA.
If a feminist wanted to insult MAGA, she might say Andrew Tate is the ultimate embodiment of right-wing masculinity. Tellingly enough, all too many in MAGA would likely agree.
Jeet HeerTwitterJeet Heer is a national affairs correspondent for The Nation and host of the weekly Nation podcast, The Time of Monsters. He also pens the monthly column “Morbid Symptoms.” The author of In Love with Art: Francoise Mouly’s Adventures in Comics with Art Spiegelman (2013) and Sweet Lechery: Reviews, Essays and Profiles (2014), Heer has written for numerous publications, including The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, The American Prospect, The Guardian, The New Republic, and The Boston Globe.