On December 10, The New York Times released a report laying out how “Andrew Tate courted powerful figures on the American right, from Tucker Carlson to Barron Trump” ahead of his and his brother's release from Romania in February, where they are facing charges. The report was based on “interviews with dozens of people in Romania, the United States and Britain, as well as a review of hundreds of pages of court documents and private messages.”

Tate is one of the most well-known influencers in the manosphere, a collection of conservative online personalities known for promoting abuse and extreme violence against women. Andrew and his brother Tristan Tate are facing charges that include rape and human trafficking in Romania, and they are under investigation for similar charges in the UK.

The brothers had long been prohibited from leaving Romania, while prosecutors in the country worked to build their case. According to The New York Times, Romanian prosecutors “received their marching orders and handed the Tates the freedom to travel” within days of the second of two conversations between Trump's diplomatic envoy, Richard Grenell, and Romanian officials.

In their report, The New York Times’ Megan Twohey and Isabella Kwai delved into how the Tates and their lawyer Joseph D. McBride leveraged right-wing media, specifically Tucker Carlson, who interviewed Andrew Tate in Romania in 2023, to their advantage. They also looked at how he “nurtured relationships with Donald Trump Jr. and his younger brother Barron, who recognized the role that young male voters could play in their father’s return to power.”

As they described, Tate “shrewdly courted Tucker Carlson and other media stars of the right, who in turn tapped into the brothers’ loyal following to expand their own reach.” (Following the interview with Carlson, Media Matters found that videos of the interview widely circulated on YouTube and Facebook, despite Tate’s bans from the platforms.)

As Media Matters previously reported, MAGA and manosphere podcasts, and the Tate brothers, leveraged their mutually beneficial relationship during the Tates’ return to the United States, garnering tens of millions of views across social media on content with them.

During that tour, Tate appeared on 5 different right-leaning podcasts — the Hodgetwins’ Twins Pod, the Nelk Boys’ Full Send, Sean Kelly’s Digital Social Hour, Patrick Bet-David’s PBD Podcast, and Candace Owens’ Candace — and arrived with the Nelk Boys at a UFC Power Slap event, where UFC President and Trump ally Dana White welcomed them, hugging Andrew and saying, “Welcome to the States, boys.”

The Tates’ right-leaning content tour demonstrated how increasingly intertwined the manosphere had become with Trump and his media allies — a trend that has since continued.

In fact, a Media Matters study in May found that after we interacted with the TikTok content of five popular right-leaning comedy podcasters, including Nelk Boys’ Full Send, the platform's “For You” page recommendation algorithm catapulted our account down a right-wing rabbit hole of conspiracy theories and toxic masculinity content — such as videos positively promoting Tate — over the span of just a few hours.

According to Twohey and Kwai’s report in the Times: