Across the vast swampy landscape of MAGA-world — though receding, it would appear, knock-wood — there’s no paucity of reprehensibles and repellents and despicables.
But a couple of blackguards do stand out. At least they will stand up on Thursday when The Brothers Tate are scheduled to appear before a judge in a Miami federal courthouse and make their pitch for bail.
Andrew and Tristan Tate, superstars of the so-called “manosphere,” have been cooling their heels in jail since they were arrested and thrown into detention by U.S. Marshals on July 18 acting upon an extradition request from the United Kingdom’s Crown Prosecution Service. The gruesome twosome, kick-boxers and media influencers of the first order — promoters of rabid male empowerment, misogyny, pornography, the alt-right, Donald Trump and pretty much the whole spectrum of sexual predation — are facing charges of rape and sex trafficking, including a new batch of indictments announced by British authorities involving four alleged victims.
Andrew: Seven counts of rape, three counts of arranging or facilitating trafficking for sexual exploitation, three counts of assault causing bodily harm, 19 charges for offences connected to indecent images of a child and “extreme pornography.”
Tristan: One count of sexual assault, two counts of rape — the allegation is that he choked and beat the women to the point of unconsciousness — and three counts of arranging or facilitating trafficking for sexual exploitation.
In Romania, where they had been living for a time, the brothers face charges of coercing dozens of young women into pornography, while Andrew was also under investigation over allegations he raped one of the women and had sex with a 15-year-old girl. They’d been prohibited from leaving that country but for inexplicable reasons authorities lifted the travel restrictions. After bouncing between Dubai, Moscow and Cyprus, the pair flew to Florida in 2025 on a private plane and resumed their jet-setting high living.
Between the old and the new, that’s a total of 59 charges levelled against the Tates by the Brits in the latest chapter of a long-running international legal saga spanning from Romania to the U.K.
Guilty or not — and hopefully a British court will get the chance to decide; the U.S. has never denied an extradition ask from its one-time sovereign ruler — the Tates are indisputably crud. Yet they continue to enjoy ties to powerful figures, particularly in the president’s army, and including with Trump’s 20-year-old son Barron. The New York Times and other media outlets reported that Barron spoke to Andrew Tate on Zoom in 2024, purportedly about the upcoming U.S. elections. Donald Trump Jr., as well, reportedly met with Tate at Trump Tower in 2017. President Trump’s former attorney, Alina Habba — lead counsel in the civil lawsuits for sexual abuse and defamation against E. Jean Carroll, which he keeps losing — described herself as a “big fan” during a January 2025 podcast.
For the detention warrant to be executed required sign-off by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio. He’ll make the final call on whether the brothers will actually be extradited. Trump could block it. But if the Tates are looking for an arm-around from the White House, it doesn’t sound like they’ll be getting it. Pressed by reporters during an overseas trip and after deferring to the legal process, Rubio said: “There’s no role for us to play at this moment or maybe ever in that regard.”
The reprobate siblings — they have dual American and British citizenship — discovered the slimy underbelly of women-hating men, primarily young men, turning it into a digital platform empire that’s generated at least $27.5 million in profits, a figure confirmed by the Westminster Magistrates’ Court. The enrichment is likely far higher than that, if not into the trillionaire stratosphere of which the brothers have boasted online. They prey on disaffected, delusional young men who blame everything on the female sex.
It was a booming business.
The brothers, who first came to fame on British reality TV, launched their enterprise by selling webcam online courses — because they’re banned by TikTok, Instagram and Facebook, though reinstated on X — on how to treat women and be masculine. To wit: In an online network called “The War Room,” the Tates offered lessons on pimping, or as Andrew once put it, recruiting women into “sexual slavery.’’ On one occasion, Andrew instructed his students: “You have to f—- them, and have to love you. It’s essential to the business. You have to be militant with your f——- pimping.”
Women who worked for him allegedly had to get a “Tate owned” tattoo.
At one time and for a long time, Andrew was an open admirer of pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. In a later deleted tweet he reportedly wrote about his own sway by referencing the convicted sex offender and pedophile who (allegedly) died by suicide in 2019 whilst in a Manhattan prison cell: “EVERYONE wants to be friends with the pimp. Doubt me? EPSTEIN HAD ACCESS to P—-Y. Look at his friends list.”
The Tates have courted other boldfaces on the far right, such as Tucker Carlson. So far none of these ‘bros have come out rooting for the Tates as high priests of free speech.
Looks like nobody wants to be friends with the Brothers Grim these days.