Opinion: People like Andrew Tate have no place in the American conservative movement

On Thursday, disgraced “manosphere” influencer Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan boarded a private jet from Romania, where they have lived for years, to Florida. That these moral monsters have been welcomed to our shores with open arms is appalling and shameful. The saga also exposes an unfortunate fault line on the American right — one the right must correctly sort out if it is to have any meaningful staying power as a political force.

In 2023, Romanian authorities charged the Tate brothers with human trafficking, sexual abuse, money laundering and forming an organized crime group to exploit and traffic women; Andrew Tate was also charged with rape. He faces sexual misconduct charges in Britain as well. A convert to Islam and an unapologetic defender of Hamas, he has used “manliness” to claim that men should impregnate as many women as possible and has denied all rape and sex trafficking allegations. The Tates’ relocation from Romania to Florida became possible because Romanian authorities lifted travel restrictions, which was surprising given that the nation had invested so much time and resources in the case and had not completed its prosecution.

Andrew Tate posted on X a few weeks ago: “The Tates will be free, Trump is the president. The good old days are back. And they will be better than ever. Hold on.” And then, according to the Associated Press, the foreign minister of Romania said that at a gathering in Munich, Germany, an official from the Trump administration “expressed interest in the brothers’ case.”

Did the administration push for their release? The timing and statements point to yes. Therein lies the rub.

Various people close to President Trump have spoken highly of Andrew Tate. Alina Habba, a former Trump lawyer now serving in the White House as counselor to the president, fawned over him during a joint appearance last month on Benny Johnson’s podcast. “I’m a big fan!” Habba gushed to Andrew Tate at the time. Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News star now moonlighting as an anti-Western provocateur, traveled to Romania in 2023 just to interview the influencer during his house arrest. Carlson’s approach in that conversation was, unsurprisingly, deeply sympathetic.

The basic problem with some conservatives’ embrace of this man is that Andrew Tate is an abominable human being. We don’t need to await the outcome of the criminal cases against him; he has shown and told us himself for years. No decent person, let alone a political movement downstream of the biblical, Judeo-Christian tradition as American conservatism necessarily is, should lift a finger to welcome such a wretched reprobate to our shores or shield him from justice.

Andrew Tate is a self-described misogynist and self-proclaimed pimp, having described his online course on pimping as “my recruitment system.” From his massive platform, he urges his largely male audience to treat women as mere sexual objects and sperm receptacles. He bragged on a podcast about hitting a woman and breaking her jaw, saying he “got away with it.”

How any political movement claiming the mantle of “family values” can support such an individual is inexplicable.

And if that weren’t problematic enough, Andrew Tate has praised radical jihadist Islam, even posting on X after Israeli Defense Forces killed the mastermind of the Oct. 7, 2023, attack: “I can only pray for a death as heroic as Yahya Sinwar. Brave, defiant in the face of evil and dedicated to his lifes purpose. He deserves eternal rest.” A British U.S. citizen, the influencer has similarly clamored for a Muslim takeover of Britain: “Allah is the best of planners and I look forward to seeing The Islamic republic of Great Britistan in her final form.”

The new Trump administration, through word and deed, has already supported the dignity of women, including through an executive order to remove transgender women from women’s federal prisons. And the administration has certainly supported our Israeli allies in their war against Hamas. The administration has also been tough on radical Islam, more generally, as evidenced by its return of the Houthis to the status of State Department-designated foreign terrorist organization and the return of its “maximum pressure” campaign against the Iranian regime.

So why might the administration have assisted the Tate brothers?

In recent years, there has been a rise of neo-Nietzschean sentiment in pockets of the nominal “right.” These personalities, such as Andrew Tate and the pseudonymous reactionary “Bronze Age Pervert,” advance a fundamentally pagan vision that is alien to, and ultimately irreconcilable with, the right’s centuries-long biblical, Judeo-Christian inheritance.

If being a “conservative” means anything, then it must mean “conserving” biblical teachings and the two great religions — Judaism and Christianity — that created what we today call “the West.” But the right-Nietzscheans scorn this. They don’t actually believe in the genuine human equality that flows from the Book of Genesis’ world-altering claim that all of humankind, man and woman alike, is made in God’s image. Like those on the woke left they insincerely claim to oppose, they engage in their own forms of group-based identity politics. For Tate, that means the superiority of men over women and the superiority of Islam over Judaism and Christianity.

It’s ugly stuff. And it is absolutely crucial that genuine conservatives respond to this threat correctly — including for the right’s own self-interest. The Tate brothers’ agenda is not only abhorrent but also wildly unpopular, to boot. It would not be a smart political move for the Trump administration to help them.

If any parties in the administration pressured Romania or otherwise aided the Tates, they should be disciplined. Anyone who praises the brothers should be persona non grata within any movement calling itself the right. Good riddance.

Josh Hammer is senior editor-at-large for Newsweek. This article was produced in collaboration with Creators Syndicate. @josh_hammer