The Tate Brothers' Should Be The Trumps' Second Epstein Scandal
The truth is much worse than most people realize, and they knew a lot of it.
I’ve had Heidi Blake’s lengthy New Yorker exposé about Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan open in a browser tab for over a month.
I finally read it yesterday, straight through.
If you’ve already done the same, you’ll know why I felt compelled to write this. If you’ve been on to the true depths of the Tate brothers’ predations for months or years, I imagine you’ve found yourself incredibly frustrated that more people weren’t aware, or didn’t really seem to care. I get it now!
If you haven’t read the feature—if it was on your to-do list, or this is the first you’ve heard about it—and your time today is limited, I’d encourage you to save this piece for later and devote your time to the profile instead. It’s long. It might take you an hour to read beginning to end. It’s also one of the most disturbing pieces of journalism I’ve ever read. But it is important.
Why yesterday: There’s another piece I’ve had in mind to write about the politics of masculinity in America, and I thought I might be able to use the Tate brothers’ recent arrest and pending extradition to the United Kingdom as a peg.
Hopefully I’ll get around to that one at some point.
But I couldn’t write it credibly without reading the New Yorker story first. I hadn’t done it already because I assumed (naively it turns out) that I already knew the key facts about the Tates. A few peers who read the article when it came out posted their astonishment at its revelations—they used terms like “evil”—but I assumed they were just catching up with what most of us already knew: The Tates were accused sex traffickers and rapists, and avatars of a large global movement of “masculinists.” That’s all true, of course. But the tenor is way off. The way they’re depicted in our discourse, even by critics who find them repugnant, turns out to be unhelpfully euphemistic. To a casual observer, they come across like so many other right-wing influencers with big online followings—except that they may have committed some ugly crimes in a parallel realm of their lives. Misogynistic. The worst of the manosphere. Icky.
No, no.
If you’ve decided to file the Tate profile away for later, let me just distill for you why I think it’s unusually important.
First is the scale of the depravity. It’ll drain the color from your face. It’s weird to say that the terms “sex trafficking” and “rape” are insufficient to convey the depth of evil Blake uncovered. But there’s really no other way to put it. There was nothing incidental or concealed or limited about their crimes. They quite openly ran something like a global multilevel-marketing scheme, but for sexual exploitation, arguably even sex slavery.
Second is the reach of complicity. Because of how we talk about right-wing influencers, and how rightists plead innocence and naïveté whenever they get caught, I think there’s a widespread assumption within the political establishment that Trump world was attracted to the Tates for politically transactional reasons. They had a big audience of impressionable potential voters; the Trumps could grant them access to the corridors of power; everybody wins.
Not that this would be exculpatory, but it’s an alibi of a sort. Occam’s razor pointed to another case of malign indifference or neglect. Just another couple scumbags in or adjacent to Trump world. The Tates were useful, so Trump world arranged to spring them from Romanian captivity without asking too many questions. Then, when Trump cut them loose this month, declining to intervene against their extradition to the U.K., a further inference was straightforward: Before, Trump and his advisers didn’t know; now they know, and the truth is too hot even for them.
This appears to be false.
People well ensconced in Trump world, including members of his administration and even his family were participants in, or at least aware of, what went down in the Tates’ online and in-person network, which they called the War Room. The War Room was a paid-access forum for instruction on, and sharing stories about, violently or psychologically coercing women and girls into nonconsensual sex and pornography.
Last week, I noticed Yassamin Ansari, a Democratic congresswoman from Arizona, had asked Republicans to open an investigation into these ties, and, as part of it, to subpoena Barron Trump. Her letter cites different reporting, but when you read the Blake article, it’ll dispel any reflexive notion you might have that Ansari is pulling a stunt, or trying to dirty up Trump’s college-age youngest son. She is completely correct. If Barron Trump is truly put off by physical abuse of women, he’ll be happy to share what he knows.
I want to be generous here and note that Democrats don’t control oversight committees in either chamber. So they can’t do much more than make a stink.
But Ansari shouldn’t be demanding answers alone.
Among many thoughts I had reading the article was that this reporting ought to be an existential emergency for the American right-wing elite, MAGA, Inc., and even elements of the international far right. But the reaction is eerily mute due (I’d hypothesize) to the decline of reading and (yes) weak political opposition.
It’s like a second Epstein scandal, except with the veneer of worldly sophistication and intellectual ferment swapped out for the aesthetics and physicality of a snuff film. In some ways it’s worse. Say what you will about Jeffrey Epstein (the worst way to start a sentence) but he at least didn’t openly attempt to build an international movement of copycats.
Also, in this case, the Trump family and Trump world connections are much clearer and more recent.
There is no way for any decent person to read this article and not feel physically ill. And yet, here in the vertical video era, readers are so fragmented and few and far between that their organic disgust hasn’t coalesced into any kind of organized backlash. So I’m writing this to do my small part to make that happen. Read and share the piece, and maybe even contact your representatives about it. This simply has to be on the Democrats’ oversight agenda in January.
A LOT of women are well aware of who and what these scum of the earth are as well as their deep ties to the Trump family and right wing in general.
I’m beyond exhausted that these “men” continue to be allowed to operate because powerful men and their enablers, all over the world, allow them to.
While Democrats should 100% get on board with Rep Ansari & go hard right now after the Trump family, including Baron who is a Trump through and through, the abject failure of the press to only now be digging into this is yet another huge stain.
This is the second known wide spread, ‘open secret’ sex trafficking rapist group tied directly to Trump and the fact it’s just a tiny little blip just reminds me that very few in this country actually care about women and girls.
It took me about a week to get through it! It is just horrific what they did . And as usual, when women went to authorities, the brothers lied and then continued on!!! Yes, everyone should read this. Epstein is still the worst, he had wealthy and successful men in his orbit . Yet , this country still will not support the women!!!! Thank you for doing your part!!!