They have variously been charged with, or are under investigation for, alleged crimes including exploiting women for financial gain, rape, and human trafficking.
Self-described misogynists, brothers Andrew and Tristan Tate are en route to Florida today after being detained for years in Romania. Romanian authorities lifted their travel ban this week.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said on Thursday, however, that the Tate brothers are not welcome in his state, and that “our attorney general, James Uthmeier, is looking into what state hooks and jurisdiction we may have to be able to deal with this. . . . The reality is no, Florida is not a place where you’re welcome with that type of conduct.” He is confident that federal authorities will look into the case, DeSantis added.
Both brothers were charged in 2022 with exploiting women for financial gain and forming an organized crime group; they deny the charges. Andrew is charged with rape; he denies the charge. The U.K. is also investigating “allegations of rape and human trafficking” against the brothers, who are U.S.-British citizens.
Expert instigators, the Tate brothers are wildly popular on social media and are avid Trump supporters. They preach about masculinity and stand against the “woke mind virus” they say has permeated every aspect of manhood. The Tate brothers identified early on that a crisis of masculinity exists today in the West, which is true: Young men are suffering, committing suicide at alarming rates, becoming depressed at even more alarming rates, and are being led astray by a culture that otherwise prioritizes feminine virtues over masculine ones. Theirs is a message that has resonated with young men desperate for role models.
But the Tate brothers’ prescription for young men who lack purpose is to go find it in materialism, sexual promiscuity, brute strength, and just being tougher in general. Boys have become slaves to the “matrix,” a label the Tate brothers use to describe what they think is a conspiratorial, shadowy conglomeration of bankers, the government bureaucracy, media outlets, and others, all designed to fundamentally “enslave,” Andrew has said. Other right-wing personalities have somewhat or even wholeheartedly embraced the Tate worldview (Elon Musk has referred to “the matrix” many times, Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson are both sympathetic to the brothers’ cause, and many online MAGA supporters adore Andrew and Tristan).
The Tate brothers believe that enslaved men can achieve freedom through power and status and must earn respect through wealth. They define successful masculinity as one that amasses power at any expense. Worst of all, they attach no real dignity to the human person — most troublingly, to women.
Andrew, a former kickboxer, thinks women belong in the home as mothers and shouldn’t vote. If a woman accused Andrew of cheating, he would “bang out the machete, boom in her face and grip her by the neck. Shut up b****,” he said. “Slap, slap, grab, choke, ‘shut up, b****,’ sex, are the basic moves of pimpin,” he added. Women who put themselves “in a position to be raped” must “bear some responsibility,” he said in 2017. If a girl challenged him to a fight, he would “start beating the sh*t out of you, how about that. We walk in the bedroom, I just start kicking your a**.”
Andrew also believes that for a man in the Western world, there is “zero statistical advantage [to marriage]” because women cheat and are mere commodities for sexual pleasure and child-rearing, which Andrew believes is crucial for empire-building. A man can and should have sex and children with multiple women, but it is “disgusting or degrading” for a “woman [to have] sex with multiple men,” he once said. Andrew said that he can “love my woman with all my heart. I can die to protect her. And I can still f*** another b****”; but women who have multiple sexual partners are “just running through life being a hoe.”
There are thousands of other examples, older and more recent, of Andrew’s and Tristan’s filthy views on women, sex, masculinity, weakness, money, and family, each more grotesque than the last. On February 24, Andrew tweeted, “I dont buy that time of the month crap. Control your wh*** moans or get out of my house.” Again, on February 24, “I grew up with men on one table, kids and women on another. So the men could talk real things. Now every man is stuck with his wife. Tables full of men quietly listening while some dudes wife splutters bull**** into a mans conversation. The Nuclear family has nuked masculinity to zero.” On February 20: “Currency females cars reputation super powers all of it. It’s earnt through completing levels.” Marriage is “designed to control the peasantry” he said on February 16 and “Kings must reproduce at any cost.”
There’s speculation in the media that U.S. intervention played a part in the Tate brothers’ return to America. Bucharest approved a “request to modify the obligation preventing the defendants from leaving Romania,” the Associated Press reported on Thursday, but Romanian authorities would not say who made the request. The U.S. State Department and White House have not commented.
In mid-February, the Financial Times reported unconfirmed claims that officials from the Trump administration pressured Romanian authorities to lift the Tate brothers’ travel ban. Trump’s special envoy, Richard Grenell, discussed the brothers’ situation briefly with Romanian Foreign Minister Emil Hurezeanu during the Munich Security Conference. Hurezeanu, however, said that he did not classify Grenell’s demeanor as a “form of pressure,” though he confirmed that Grenell was in favor of the brothers bring able to travel freely.
DeSantis’s attitude is correct. The Tate brothers are not welcome.