According to a thorough investigation by Heidi Blake in the New Yorker, the Trump administration intervened last year to buffer Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan from the consequences of their criminal charges in Romania. The Tate and Trump circles, she also reports, have overlapped at Mar-a-Lago.
Trump family connections to Tate
A December New York Times report by Megan Twohey and Isabella Kwai quotes a text message by Tate, reviewed by the outlet, from January 2025: “I had word from The Trump admin that theyre on top of things. Ive been told ill be free soon but Trump needs to see me in Miami.” Two Trump sons, Don Jr and Barron, have reportedly cultivated friendships with Andrew, though the White House told the Times that it was not involved in the Tates’ legal matters, and the Tates’ lawyer said the outlet’s findings about Andrew and Barron were “fake news”.
Tate's background and exploitation
A former mixed-martial arts fighter, Tate became, in his own words, a pimp, recruiting women by pursuing relationships with them and then allegedly coercing and manipulating them into webcam sex work. Blake reports that in 2014, as he realized his career as a kickboxer had limited financial possibilities, he moved on: “Webcam porn, now a multibillion-dollar industry, was then a nascent phenomenon, and Tate considered himself a pioneer,” she writes. Blake describes how Tate exploited his first recruit, a 17-year-old, and “persuaded her to get a tattoo of a cobra down one side of her body and another reading ‘Tate Property’ above her crotch … Andrew said that more than thirty women had his name tattooed on their skin.”
Legal troubles and impunity
The Tate brothers left the UK “after three British women accused Andrew of rape and strangulation”, Blake continues, and relocated to Romania, where they operated with impunity for almost a decade, building a webcam empire with women and girls who were recruited. According to messages from Andrew reviewed by the Times, some of them became essentially captive, prevented from leaving and punished and threatened, if they succeeded in doing so. At one point, 75 women were working for them.
Shift to online misogyny
By the time of the Tate brothers’ arrest in Romania, Andrew’s primary income came not from women performing sex acts for webcams; it was videos of himself for a vast audience of boys and young men he was instructing in misogyny, exploitation, and cartoonish versions of masculinity. Their US lawyers said the two “have maintained their innocence, arguing the accusations against them are defamatory and false”.
Role of Rumble and US pressure
His major platform was Rumble, in which Peter Thiel and JD Vance were new investors, and Rumble paid him lavishly as he posted his lessons in abuse, according to a confidential contract reviewed by Blake. (Rumble condemned human trafficking and sexual abuse and said allegations against him do not relate to content on its platform.) Buzzfeed reported that he offered a course titled “Pimpin’ Hoes Degree” on his website from 2018 to 2022. Shortly after Trump returned to the White House, “under pressure from the U.S., Romania lifted the Tates’ travel ban,” the New Yorker reported.
Broader implications
While Epstein abused victims directly, the Tates were most impactful for how, their accusers say, they taught countless other males to abuse, exploit and dehumanize females. But, Blake reports, they did continue to brutalize women. Allegations of rape and strangulation recur in Blake’s account, all the way through charges by an American woman last year that Andrew Tate beat and choked her, which he denies. But “he has repeatedly advocated throttling women during sex as a way to assert masculine power,” states the New Yorker report.
Trump administration's values
There are many ways that Trump and his associates have told us that human rights and human life mean nothing to them, from the 2024 campaign lies about Haitian immigrants in Ohio to the brutalities of masked ICE goons across the USA, to the dismantling of USAID, to the murder of civilians in small boats in the Caribbean to the bombing of a girls’ school in Iran, to name only a few more dramatic examples. But who they are is shown not just by who they choose to harm. It’s shown by who the Trump family has sought to ally with and protect.
