Andrew Tate’s alliance with Trump has been in the making for a long time

Trump’s attempts to intervene in Tate’s rape and human trafficking cases in Romania might seem strange, but their worlds are intimately linked. Ever since I began reporting on Andrew Tate four years ago (during which time my colleague Jamie Tahsin and I made two documentaries, wrote a book on him and interviewed his alleged rape victims), I’ve been sounding the alarm on the far-right disinformation network that connects him to Trump’s inner circle.

Earlier this month, the US special envoy Richard Grenell, a vocal supporter of Andrew Tate, pressured the Romanian government to remove judicial control restrictions on the Tate brothers, demanding that the alleged human traffickers be allowed to travel freely, according to sources who spoke to the Financial Times. The Romanian government has since confirmed this was a request but denied there was political “pressure”.

The alliance between the Trump administration and the Tate brothers has been in the making for a long time. Paul Ingrassia, one of the lawyers Andrew Tate hired to fight his human trafficking case, was recently sworn in as the White House liaison for the Department of Justice. According to him, the Tate brothers were “sacrificed on the altar of the Matrix under the banner of egregious crimes they never committed”.

Andrew Tate has been friends since 2016 with Donald Trump Jr, who called Tate’s detention “absolute insanity”. Donald Trump himself also appeared on a stream with the Andrew Tate sycophant and collaborator Adin Ross in August 2024. Around the same time, JD Vance appeared on the pro-Tate podcast the Nelk Boys.

Elon Musk responded to Tate’s plan to “run for prime minister of the UK” by saying “he’s not wrong” and JD Vance followed both Tate brothers on X in December. Alina Habba, who now holds the high-ranking political adviser role of counselor to the president, has said she is a “big fan” of Andrew Tate. “I sympathize with you,” Habba told Tate on a rightwing podcast, “because I think you go through a lot of the same ‘show-me-the-person-I’ll-find-the-crime’ that President Trump has gone through … I agree with everything you say, and I have your back, out here in the States.”.

After Trump won the 2024 election, Tate tweeted that his case would be “dismissed”. “Watch this space ;-),” he said. Tate has access to the highest levels of Trump’s inner circle. If, as he is insinuating, he has convinced the administration to act on his behalf, they would be attempting to interfere with dozens of alleged human trafficking and rape victims’ quest for justice.

Trump and Tate have a lot in common, and both stand to gain much from each other. They are disinformation virtuosos, having sought to delegitimize criminal allegations against them through information warfare. They both mastered their loud, obnoxious performance of self under the lights and cameras of reality TV (The Apprentice for Trump, Big Brother for Tate), before using the same model to dominate social media. There, among the likes and the shares and the algorithms, they learned that while truth and integrity get you nothing, controversy, lies and extremism can be easily transmuted into fame, wealth and power.

Tate is aware of the value he can offer politicians. In January he instructed his associates to call two Romanian rightwing politicians to tell them: “You will get a lot of votes when Tate says you took their side,” according to prosecutors who tapped his phone. Whereas this Romanian politician ultimately turned Andrew Tate down, the Trump administration apparently has fewer scruples.

But the Tate-Trump alliance is about more than just votes, especially now Trump has won. The Trump administration and Tate are both promoting a conspiracy theory that USAid and the mainstream media have worked together to fabricate charges against Tate. By supporting him, the Trump administration is forging a new axis of disinformation to go after the press and the very idea of justice and due process.

Before we get into that, let’s remind ourselves of what exactly the Tate brothers are being accused of. Andrew Tate is a misogynist influencer and conspiracy theorist. The charges against him and his brother mostly relate to the webcam sex businesses they operated first in the UK and then in Romania.

Tate and his brother are accused of either trafficking, raping, grooming or abusing at least 48 alleged victims in total. They have denied all charges. Four of these women are pursuing a civil case in the UK against Andrew for rape or physical abuse (three of them had previously reported Tate to the UK police for sexual violence and physical abuse, but the Crown Prosecution Service decided against bringing charges in 2019). Both brothers are also being investigated for crimes of sexual aggression relating to at least two separate women by Bedfordshire police, who have obtained a European arrest warrant for them.

In 2023 Romanian authorities formally charged the Tate brothers with rape, human trafficking and forming an organised crime group to sexually exploit women, naming seven alleged victims. Prosecutors allege Andrew Tate raped at least one of them repeatedly and coerced the women through threats of violence and financial ruin. In 2024 they filed a second indictment which mentions 35 alleged victims of trafficking, including one who was 15 years old at the time. Both Tate brothers deny all of these allegations, and have repeatedly characterised them as a coordinated attack by “the Matrix”.