Trump Denies Having a Hand in Tate Duo’s Release. Terminally Online Antisemites Back Sex Perverts
DeSantis says misogynist brothers charged with human trafficking ‘not welcome’ in Florida
FORT LAUDERDALE, FLORIDA - FEBRUARY 27: Andrew Tate (C) and Tristan Tate (obscured) arrive in the United States after a travel ban on them was lifted, at the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport on February 27, 2025 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The influencer brothers were arrested in late 2022 and charged with human trafficking, alleging that they participated in a criminal ring that lured women to Romania, where they were sexually exploited. Andrew Tate was also charged with rape. (Photo by Alon Skuy/Getty Images)
The return of Andrew and Tristan Tate to the U.S. late last week is exposing a significant rift among Trump supporters. While Florida Governor Ron DeSantis disavows the Tates, the brothers – online “influencers” who are globally known for misogyny — are finding support from online antisemites like Candace Owens and Nick Fuentes.
The duo, who were arrested in 2022 and charged with rape, human trafficking, exploiting women, and organized crime, left Bucharest in a private jet for Fort Lauderdale Thursday after Romanian authorities returned their passports. They had been held there under house arrest since 2023 on sex trafficking charges.
Asked by a reporter Thursday if his administration had influenced the Romanian government to release the Tates, President Donald Trump replied: “I know nothing about that. I don’t know, you’re saying he’s on a plane right now?”
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who was sitting next to Trump, interjected: “There’s an English element here, so obviously it’s important justice is done, and human trafficking is obviously, to my mind, a security risk.”
The Tate brothers have dual US-UK nationality and Britain is considering extraditing them, The Telegraph reported on Friday.
Trump’s Envoy Gone Rogue?
Romania’s Foreign Minister Emil Hurezeanu told G4Media that Trump’s envoy for special missions, Richard Grenell, had raised the issue of the Tate brothers’ detention during a conversation at the Munich Security Conference in Germany a fortnight ago.
Grenell, who describes himself as an “imperfect follower of Christ” on his Twitter bio, has denied pressing Romania to return the Tates’ passports. “I never met with the [Romanian foreign minister],” he told the Financial Times. “He saw me in the hallway and asked for a meeting. I didn’t know who he was … I had no substantive conversation with him. I support the Tate brothers, as evident by my publicly available tweets.”
Two Romanian officials said that before the Munich Security Conference, members of the Trump administration also called the government in Bucharest to plead on the Tates’ behalf, the FT reported.
Outraged Trump supporters blasted Grenfell on social media, complaining that the U.S. envoy had gone rogue and should be fired for lobbying the Romanian authorities on behalf of the Tate brothers behind Trump’s back.
After Romanian authorities placed Andrew Tate, 38, and his brother, 36, under house arrest in 2023, Andrew claimed: “I’m very close with the Trump family. I know them well. I spoke to Barron [Trump’s youngest son] after the incident.” When he posted a video from Romania saying he was “locked in my house,” Trump’s eldest son, Don Jr. replied on X: “Absolute insanity.”
And on February 12, Tate tweeted, “The Tates will be free, Trump is the president. The good old days are back. And they will be better than ever.”
Pornographic Trafficker
The elder Tate, a former kickboxer who has more than 10 million followers on X, first gained fame in 2016 when he was kicked off the British reality-TV show Big Brother over a video that appeared to show him repeatedly hitting a woman with a belt and threatening her.
Romanian prosecutors alleged that the Tates’ gang had lured seven female victims to Romania by promising them romantic relationships and then forced them to participate in pornographic films that were shared online, using physical threats and violence, as well as placing them under constant surveillance.
New accusations of money laundering and the trafficking of minors surfaced last August. The brothers also are wanted by British police on charges of rape and human trafficking as well as tax evasion. A British court ruled in December 2024 that police could seize more than £2million ($2.4 million) from them for failing to pay tax on £21 million in revenue from their online businesses.
Tate, who has boasted that he is “absolutely a misogynist,” teaches his acolytes that women are inferior and morally deficient beings who are good only for sex, helping build a man’s status, and deserve to be physically, sexually, and emotionally abused.
“I’m a realist and when you’re a realist, you’re sexist,” he said in a YouTube interview. “There’s no way you can be rooted in reality and not be sexist.” In a text seen by BBC Panorama, he wrote to one woman: “I love raping you.”
In 2022, he announced that he had converted to Islam.
“Evangelist for Pimping”
Gov. Ron de Santis, however, told the Tate brothers on Thursday while their jet was en route: “No, Florida is not a place where you’re welcome with that type of conduct.” The governor said that state Attorney General James Uthmeier was “looking into what state hooks and jurisdictions we have to deal with this.”
While social media giants like Candace Owen, Tucker Carlson, and Benny Johnson have featured Tate on their shows, faithful Christians have distanced themselves from him.
Megan Basham, the evangelical author of Shepherds for Sale, wrote on her X account: “There’s nothing more pathetic than a man who thinks it makes him look tough to brag about choking women and shattering their cheekbones before raping them. There IS a religion that allows for such ‘masculinity’ but it sure ain’t Christianity.”
An investigation by The European Conservative describes Andrew Tate’s modus operandi as “the process of taking a ‘low exposure female — that is, a girl with a limited public profile — and slowly and methodically guiding her, through psychological manipulation, on a path toward sex work.”
Noting that influencers like Candace Owens (and Tucker Carlson) have served as Tate’s “useful idiots,” the report concludes:
His approach of ‘empowering masculinity’ includes promiscuity and sexual aggression; and while he publicly claims to oppose the ‘slave mind,’ in private, he continues to instruct young men how to groom young, vulnerable women for the very purpose of sexual exploitation. This is not someone to admire.
Catholic Antisemites Support Pervert
Owens, a recent and very public Catholic convert who has become notorious for her antisemitism, attacked DeSantis on X for saying the Tates are not welcome in Florida, noting that it was an “utterly deranged thing for a governor of any state to say.”
“If the mainstream media doesn’t like you, you will not be allowed into America. Your citizenship does not matter,” Owens wrote in a second tweet. “This is what happens when you respond to the emotions of your donors rather than the sensibility of the Constitution”
DeSantis, Owens complained, “has lost the plot.”
“For those of us who actually read through their case, the restrictions that were placed on the Tate brothers in Romania were always an act of intergovernmental corruption,” she claimed in a third tweet. “Do not follow or listen to people who support government corruption because they do not like a person’s character, beliefs, or past actions.”
Nick Fuentes, a Jew-baiting, nominally Catholic social influencer with over half a million followers on X, tweeted: “Conservatives are only attacking the Tate brothers because they criticized Israel and raised money for Palestine.”
In response to a post by Jewish commentator Ben Shapiro, Fuentes tweeted, “Everyone knows you only attack the Tates because they don’t bow down to Israel like the rest of Con Inc. Nobody is buying it anymore. Your company is imploding while Candace, Tucker, and Andrew Tate are ascendant. You are losing.”
Romanian prosecutors said the case against the brothers has not been dropped and that they remain “under judicial control,” which would involve regularly reporting to Romanian authorities and eventually returning to Bucharest.
Upon arriving in Florida, Andrew Tate told reporters, “We live in a democratic society where it’s innocent until proven guilty, and I think my brother and I are largely misunderstood.
“There’s a lot of opinions about us, a lot of things that got around about us on the internet,” he said, adding that they are “yet to be convicted of any crime in our lives ever.”
Dr. Jules Gomes, (BA, BD, MTh, PhD), has a doctorate in biblical studies from the University of Cambridge. Currently a Vatican-accredited journalist based in Rome, he is the author of five books and several academic articles. Gomes lectured at Catholic and Protestant seminaries and universities and was canon theologian and artistic director at Liverpool Cathedral.