Andrew and Tristan Tate are back in the U.S. as of early Thursday. Until this week, the self-described misogynist influencers who promote violence against women, and were first arrested in Romania in December 2022, had been required to stay there since 2023 on charges of human trafficking, sexual misconduct, money laundering, and starting an organized crime group. In late August, Romania opened a second case against the Tates on allegations of human trafficking, trafficking minors, sexual intercourse with a minor, and money laundering.
Now, the brothers are in Florida, reportedly with the help of the Trump administration. And Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) isn’t best pleased, teeing up a potential conflict between the president and his favorite 2023 campaign trail punching bag, “Meatball Ron.”
The Tates’ return to the U.S. comes after the Financial Times recently reported on a quiet push by the Trump administration to apply pressure to Romanian officials to lift travel restrictions on the brothers. But Romanian officials claim the brothers’ release is unrelated to U.S. pressure. Per the Associated Press, a Romanian anti-organized crime agency says prosecutors approved a request to lift the travel restrictions but didn’t specify who made the request. The Trump administration hasn’t publicly commented on the Tates’ case. Joseph McBride, the attorney for the brothers in the U.S., told the New York Times he couldn’t comment on any actions from U.S. lawmakers to secure the brothers’ travel freedom, but unsubtly quipped, “Do the math. These guys are on the plane.”
Speaking to reporters early Thursday, DeSantis said his state has “no involvement” in the Tates’ release from Romania. “I read about it through the media. Clearly the federal government has jurisdiction, whether they want to rebuff his [Andrew Tate’s] entry into the United States, and I have confidence whether it’s [Attorney General] Pam Bondi or [Homeland Security Secretary] Kristi Noem that they will be looking at that.” DeSantis then suggested he’s weighing how to remove the brothers from his state: “I do know our [Florida’s] attorney general, James Uthmeier, is looking at what state hooks and jurisdiction we may have to be able to deal with this. But the reality is, no, Florida is not a place where you’re welcome with that type of conduct in the air. And I don’t know how it came to this. We were not involved, we were not notified.”
To be clear, there’s no world where you have to hand anything to DeSantis. That being said, given the strong evidence and reports of Trump’s involvement in securing the Tates’ freedom, I’m surprised DeSantis would make such a show of potentially defying the president on this. Republicans aren’t exactly known for their backbone against Trump—or, for that matter, having the baseline morals to disagree with Trump at all.
In a tweet earlier this month, Andrew Tate wrote, “The Tates will be free, Trump is the president. The good old days are back.” The NYT also reports that since the election, the brothers expected to find sympathy with the Trump administration, given their boneheaded claims that they’re the victims of a weaponized legal system in Romania, persecuting them with false charges of gender-based violence. Trump, too, has echoed similar bogus claims about his own many legal woes, including when a jury found Trump liable for sexual abuse in 2023.
As for the Tate brothers, despite denying the allegations against them, they’ve arguably provided the most evidence. Andrew sent one of the four women in the U.K. accusing him of rape a text saying, “I love raping you.” In their videos, the brothers openly instruct young men on how to abuse women, even glorifying hitting and choking women. Andrew himself has bragged about breaking a woman’s jaw. Their own self-described business model, which they’ve repeatedly boasted about for the last few years, amounts to trafficking: In a since-deleted page on their website, Andrew wrote, “My job was to meet a girl, go on a few dates, sleep with her, test if she’s quality, get her to fall in love with me to where she’d do anything I say, and then get her on webcam so we could become rich together,” adding that he’s worked with “over 75 girls.”
The charges against the Tate brothers in Romania still stand, and they’re required to “appear before judicial authorities whenever summoned.” In December, a Romanian court ruled that the cases couldn’t go to trial yet due to “irregularities,” and sent it back to prosecutors. But the two cases remain open. At the same time, the U.K. is seeking to extradite the Tates, as they face rape and human trafficking allegations there, too; the brothers were set to face extradition following the outcome of their trial in Romania, but the path forward for that is now unclear. An attorney for one of the British women who accused Andrew of rape told the NYT that the brothers’ return to the U.S. is “disgusting and dismaying,” and called on the British government to “take immediate steps” to ensure the Tates face the charges against them in Britain.
But in the U.S., the Trump administration strongly appears to have Andrew and Tristan’s backs, given the brothers’ loyalty to Trump. In a lengthy tweet from November, Tristan claimed Trump won because “millions of young men in Europe and the USA have a healthy rightwing approach to politics that they would NOT have if Andrew Tate had never appeared on their phone screens.” And, over the last month, as the Trump administration has dismantled key government programs including USAID, the administration and Tristan began promoting a baseless conspiracy theory that under Biden, USAID bribed the Romanian government to target conservatives like the Tate brothers. “The USAid programs were weaponized against people and politicians who weren’t woke,” Trump’s special envoy to Romania, Richard Grenell, tweeted on February 3. Grenell reportedly raised the Tates’ case to a Romanian foreign minister around the time of this tweet. “The Biden team spent US taxpayer money to support left wing programs and candidates around the world. Conservatives around the world were targeted. Romania is the latest example.” Again: There is zero evidence of this.
The NYT noted that McBride has been lobbying with members of Congress on the Tates’ behalf since the brothers first faced charges in Romania in 2023—to no avail until Trump came to power. The solidarity between sexual predators is frankly remarkable.
Several British women have offered brutal accounts of surviving sexual violence perpetrated by the brothers. A Florida woman also accused Tate of trafficking before his 2022 arrest. Numerous women from several different countries have accused the Tates of trafficking, sexually assaulting, and strangling and beating them. Some of the women recount first being ensnared by the brothers’ romantic overtures, then being coerced by the brothers to do sex work to enrich them.
Even as the Trump administration avoids publicly commenting on the Tates, the administration’s ties to the brothers are chilling. They’ve openly embraced close associates of the Tate brothers, including fellow, popular “manosphere” influencers like Adin Ross. In December, Vice President JD Vance followed Andrew on Twitter. Several of Elon Musk’s DOGE staffers follow the Tate brothers, and one was an enrolled “student” of the Tates’ Hustlers University, their grift to teach young, male enrollees how to pick up and abuse women.
Alas, Trump’s repulsiveness has reached a new depth: Momentarily making DeSantis look like the vaguely reasonable one.
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