The Tates: Trump’s tribute to the manosphere

'The manosphere' helped get Trump elected

(Image credit: Marta Lavandier / AP)

published 11 March 2025

The Trump administration’s intervention to free accused sex traffickers Andrew and Tristan Tate may be “shocking,” said Michelle Goldberg in The New York Times, but it’s “not surprising.” The notorious brothers—kickboxers turned right-wing influencers—had been held in Romania on human-trafficking and money-laundering charges since 2022. They were released and flew to Florida last week, after U.S. special envoy Richard Grenell reportedly pressured Romania’s government to let them go. “On the surface, it makes little political sense for the Trump team to support Andrew Tate,” a “self-described misogynist” and pimp who has been accused of grotesque crimes, including rape, sex with a minor, and running a sex ring of minors. Trump denied any involvement in his release, but “Tate is Trump’s kind of guy.” He is a vocal supporter of the president and the poster child of the MAGA manosphere. Trump is fulfilling his implicit promise to restore the patriarchy—not “the softer, pious kind of patriarchy,” but “unfettered male domination.”

“The manosphere” helped get Trump elected, said Helen Lewis in The Atlantic, and the release of the Tates is Trump’s way of showing his appreciation. While some Republicans — including Trump’s rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — denounced their return to the U.S., others are celebrating “to own the libs.” The Tampa Bay Young Republicans, for example, have already invited Andrew Tate to speak. Sadly, the Tates have a “huge following among disaffected young males,” said Jeffrey Blehar in National Review. These lonely nerds don’t know how to deal with educated, assertive women and “feel lost in modern society.” So they’re turning to “hypermasculine” celebrity predators who openly preach that women should be bullied, subjugated, and sexually exploited. “And parts of our party are welcoming it.”

It’s all part of Trump’s project to erase conventional norms and morality, said Nick Catoggio in The Dispatch, and replace them with tribal loyalty to Trump and MAGA. This is why he pardoned Jan. 6 rioters convicted of the physical assault of police officers and nominated Matt Gaetz, an accused sexual abuser of a minor and sex trafficker, to his Cabinet. In Trump’s “new moral order,” anyone prosecuted or condemned by “the system” should be embraced and celebrated as a heroic victim—including “perverts, rapists, and pimps.” People who voted for Trump “signed up for a presidency unrestrained by morality; they’re getting what they voted for.”