Bulwark Takes - Trump Trying To Bail Out Creep Andrew Tate Over His Sex Trafficking Charges

Episode Date: February 16, 2025

Tim Miller and Andrew Egger discuss Donald Trump’s reported pressure on Romania to lift restrictions on Andrew Tate, self-proclaimed misogynist influencer and alleged human sex trafficker.

All right. Hey, guys, it's Tim over from the Bullwark. I'm back here with Andrew Egger. There was this news item out of the White House that I think is worth all of us kind of focusing on what what it is that they're doing and why they're doing it. It's related to Andrew Tate. He's a self-described misogynist influencer. He's kind of like the worst of the bros in the manosphere. And he had been arrested in 2022. He was charged with human trafficking, sexual misconduct and money laundering, as well as starting an organized crime group. He denies wrongdoing. But since then, he has had travel restrictions as a result of these charges by the Romanian authorities. And the Trump administration today decided that they wanted to get involved with that. They're pressuring the Romanians to lift the restrictions to let Andrew Tate free to spread his bile. Andrew, what do we Andrew Egger, not Andrew Tate. What do you think about that? Your namesake?

I mean, this is one of those that's just like, can we get one story out of this White House that is not just like the the stupidest vilest most like cruel most evil i just like so this this guy i don't know i i don't we were talking a little about this i don't know like how much you have paid attention to andrew tate but i mean like like truly truly like the worst of the worst this kind of person who like is is just truly vile on a personal level in in terms of like his own. And then also just like an insanely toxic presence as like a member of the public life. He's a former kickboxer turned like in his own estimation, drug pusher for a while who then, you know,

stood up a webcam business and made like an insane amount of money, basically pimping out women that he would like pick up across Europe, like like poor women who he would like kind of entice into a supposed life of of like luxury and just better things than they were accustomed to, who would then basically like entrap into these abusive relationships and and make do webcam modeling for for his company and make him a bunch of money. I mean, like it's like a bad, bad person who then kind of became like, like you say, this manosphere influencer, whose basic like message to, to a bunch of like, to an audience of high school boys is basically like, all of the things that are good about society are actually just shackles for you to cast off, you know, no, you shouldn't work, you shouldn't like,

like have a respectable normal life, you need to realize that those things are constraints on alphas like you and you need to to you know like just go out and like be horrible to women and be a terror to your society and just sort of like let your 14 year old id like determine the rest of the course of your entire life i mean he's just like a bad person um i'm a realist when you're a realist you're sexist there's no way you can be rooted in reality and not be sexist. Women are intrinsically lazy. You can't slander me because I will state right now that I am absolutely sexist and I'm absolutely a misogynist. Only should women clean up. Women should clean up unprompted. If you're the kind of person who feels like they need therapy, you're useless.

Never say go into bed. Go into bed is emasculate. By masculine standards, the majority of beautiful women are losers. I like Trump. He's grabbing bitches by the pussy i like that guy there's no such thing as being an independent female if you're going to be an alpha you should be spreading your seed as wide as possible not just with one woman i mean it's just a taste i don't i don't have it in front of me in this article but i feel like he's also been kind of like anti-anti-ephebophilia well no that's that's a big part of the the kind of like actual like criminal stuff against him is that some of these girls that he was uh you know in a personal

relationship with and and then making perform uh for his company were underage at the time you know um and uh and yeah i mean just like uh so maybe pro-ephebophilia maybe i was too kind to him to say yeah yeah um but but also like in his own personal i mean, he has talked about all this stuff on podcasts and stuff. You know, it's in his own voice all over the place. And like you just you continue to scratch and scratch. And it's just vile thing after vile thing. It's his whole brand. He's been doing it for years anyway. The one other important thing is that he kind of likes Donald Trump. And so like that's that is kind of like the main thing here, right? He's kind of like a test case, like an edge case maybe for like, is there any human being in the world who would embrace the Trump train, who Trump would not be like,

good enough for me? You know what I mean? That's kind of the- Clearly no. If Andrew Tate were Andrew Tate down to his bones, but also weirdly like coconut pilled in the last cycle, I don't think he'd be getting the call. Maybe you disagree, Tim. But like, I think, don't you think that's kind of the main thing here is like he's just posting about Trump all the time. And, you know, that gets you something in this day and age.

Yeah, I do. I think it's not a test. It's an affirmation of the fact that there's like not, like there's no level of awful you could be that Trump and his cronies would not make apologies for you as long as you put on the MAGA hat. I think that that theory has been tested and proven true over and over again at this point. We're not even learning anything at this point, right? It's not like, oh, this shows us something new.

It's just like yet another, you know, kicking the balls. Like everything sucks. They're going to reward the best people or the worst people, you know, just for, yeah, it's not great. The thing that I think is, I don't know if we're necessarily learning it, but I think that it's interesting and maybe telling about the next few years of the Trump administration. And I think it's potentially a political vulnerability for them at some level, is this to me shows two things. One, that they are going to be uber responsive to the desires of like the most online MAGA bros, right? Like if you are super, you know, if you're like posting 80 bleats per day on twitter or on truth social and if you

like know all the characters in the extended mega universe like your opinion is going to be heard in this white house and i think that that eventually becomes a vulnerability because i do i think that there are a lot of cat more casual trump supporters who like didn't sign up for all this not that they're gonna like be offended by by the Andrew Tate thing in particular and micro. I just mean like is a mindset. I think it's going to lead them to focus on some things that probably won't be politically advantageous. And the related is just kind of obvious to your point. You've been on paternity leave here.

So you have like a little bit more distance. So I'm curious your take on this. But you could have imagined a first month of the administration where Trump is really digging in on econ stuff. Where he's picking his culture war fights over, and he's still going to do immigration and stuff, but picking cultural fights over economy-related things, doing the type of thing he did a little bit of the first couple of days, like having press conferences with rich guys about how they're going to invest into the economy and doing all this talk about how people are going to get rich and the stock market's going to go up. not really doing that like like they've been spending most of their energy on gulf of america and like like shit like this and i think that if the economy doesn't improve right like like this is not a short-term thing i think that if people's lives if they do not feel like their economic lives are getting better like eventually not with the core weirdos but with kind of the broader

public it's going to be kind of like, why are you guys doing all that? Like, why aren't we focused more on the actual material needs? And, and I think that that becomes a little bit of a vulnerability for them over time. I don't know what you think about that. Yeah. I mean, I think that I do think that's true. Like, I think that, that, uh, you know, if, if, if the question is like, does Trump retain or does he lose the median voter that he won over in 2024? I think a lot of that stuff ends up, you know, and it at least has the possibility of coming back to hurt him. But I don't know. I've been thinking about this stuff a lot, actually, while I've been kind of like out and just kind of turning it over in my mind. Because because it seems like all the normies in my life,

one are just either not noticing it yet, you know, like not paying attention to really any of this stuff. And it's weird. It's like, it's like a, it's like an intensified version of what's good, what was going on in the,

during the campaign where he would say, where he would just promise to do the most insane stuff. And by the time it kind of filtered down to the normal level, like people, people couldn't almost believe that he'd even said those things because like, well, that'd be crazy. Right. So like at some point in the chain of information, uh, it must've gotten a little garbled and like, probably he said something that, that I would, I would have agreed with. Right. And now he's actually doing the things and it's still kind of the same, right. It's still kind of like, well,

you know, they're out there, they're trying to find the waste and the fraud and you know, all that stuff. Um, and I guess you're right. Like, like if, if, if's still kind of like, well, you know, they're out there, they're trying to find the waste and the fraud and, you know, all that stuff. And I guess you're right. Like, like, if, if, if the economy doesn't improve, that's a thing that cuts through those narratives and maybe has has a chance to shake people loose. But I do think like, I don't know, I don't know how far Wiley Coyote can run off of the cliff and just keep pedaling. Maybe he flies now. Maybe it's just maybe he just never plummets. And it's just, just, you know, this is just the way it is from now on i'm dooming a little you know maybe maybe i'm doing too much it's my first day back you know i'm just kind of crabby you are very you're an uncomfortable company for doing here um as we uh have again one of i i'm talking a lot about how the worst americans are

in charge now and i guess andrew is technically an american who was born here but then he moved overseas but like one of the worst world citizens yeah one of the worst what did i say well you said i just thought you meant me when you said oh no andrew tate yeah no i'm not including you as one of the worst world citizens andrew tate one of the worst world citizens uh potentially um getting getting a bonus from donald trump getting in uh and having his travel restrictions for, again, human trafficking, sexual misconduct, and money laundering lifted. We'll see how that shakes out. We'll keep monitoring it.

Andrew Egger, thanks for hanging out with me.