To the disturbance of many, alleged sex trafficker Andrew Tate has returned to America after living most of his life in Britain and Romania. Tate and his brother, Tristan, who faces the same charges, were under Romanian travel restrictions as their case was investigated until the two were freed and brought to Miami.
The situation looks like a coalition power play from the Trump administration. On the whole, though, details of how it happened are pretty obscured. Absent speculation, all we know for sure is that President Donald Trump’s special envoy Richard Grenell spoke with Romanian Foreign Affairs Minister Emil Hurezeanu about the matter, per the Financial Times.
But speculate we might as well, given how disappointing the news is to most viewers. This includes Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), who has made clear that the Tate brothers are not welcome in the state and that he was “not involved” and “found out through the media.”
On the same day that DeSantis found out, presumably online, that his state was to receive the Tates, many were waiting for preliminary information on the Epstein files from the same media sources. This introduces an irony: An administration obsessed with the injustice of hidden information about one sex trafficker, Epstein, could be the champion of another.
Along with political inconsistency, the argument could be made that the Tates are worse than Epstein, depending on how one considers the specifics of their cases. Violence and rape still abound, but motivations and methods look different between the two.
That the Trump administration likely had a hand in the Tates’ release is bewildering, to say the least. The efforts that led to its fruition probably came from the influence of three members of the administration: Paul Ingrassia, the current White House liaison for the Department of Homeland Security, who was formerly on Andrew Tate’s legal team; Alina Habba, counselor to the president, who has said she is “a big fan” of Andrew Tate, virtually drooling over him at their meeting on a podcast; and Grenell, who has voiced support for the Tate brothers.
THE FALSE PROMISE OF THE TECH-UTOPIA
Grenell’s brief interaction with Hurezeanu may have been the last push for the Tates’ transferral to America. Hurezeanu claims he “did not perceive this statement as pressure, just a repeat of a known stance.” Well, sure — a repeat of the known stance that Trump is willing to strong-arm Romania to accomplish the goal.
Of everything that is uncertain, the administration’s value system is clear: The grander scheme of fixing government operations is higher than the value of principles, and sex still sells even on this front, as colluding with Tate, intellectually and otherwise, is worth the moral perversion.
