The White House Says It Won’t Intervene in the Tate Brothers’ Case. The Tate Brothers Don’t Think That’s Wise.

Earlier this month, Andrew and Tristan Tate strutted around Washington as MAGA royalty.

There was an appearance at a private summer party hosted by Paolo Zampolli, a former modeling agent and a special envoy for Donald Trump, who introduced him to Melania in 1998, followed by a stop at the Ned, DC’s premier members club as of this presidential term. There was a meeting and photo op with Texas congressman Wesley Hunt. In the early days of Trump’s return to office, Romanian prosecutors who charged the ubiquitous masculinity influencers with human trafficking in 2023 had lifted a travel ban against them after reported lobbying from US officials. The Tate brothers documented their Washington welcome extensively on social media, carrying themselves less like accused rapists and pimps than bulletproof dignitaries.

It was surprising, then, to see the footage that emerged after the Tates returned last weekend to the manosphere hub of Miami. Federal agents arrested Andrew, wearing a half-buttoned purple mesh shirt and his customary ultracropped, ultratight pants, and Tristan, in a rigid three-piece suit, after British authorities brought 38 new sex-crime charges against the brothers, bringing the total counts against them there to 59, and made an extradition request that left prosecutors working for Trump’s Justice Department fighting on the United Kingdom’s behalf. (The brothers, whose adult webcam business powered their initial 2010s rise, have denied all allegations against them in the UK, US, and Romania. They are currently being held in Miami federal detention without bail as the UK extradition process plays out; their case in Romania has faced delays pending procedural issues, and the country’s then foreign minister denied facing US pressure to lift their travel ban in February 2025.)

Footage of Andrew Tate’s arrest in Miami immediately ricocheted across social media.

PINE/Backgrid

Despite the recent fanfare in Trump’s DC and the alleged intervention in the travel ban, the administration seems content to let the extradition process unfold as usual. “There’s no role for us to play at this moment,” Marco Rubio, who holds final say over the process as secretary of state, told reporters last week, “or maybe ever in that regard. But I’m not going to opine on [that].” The following day, Karoline Leavitt offered a flat “no” in the White House press briefing room when asked whether the administration plans to intervene in the extradition.

Did the Tate brothers take a wrong turn in Trumpworld? Is it simply too much to expect that the US would make a rare exception to its long-standing extradition treaty with the UK? Or are the stars of the manosphere, once considered a vital pathway to the young, male electorate of 2024, no longer influential enough to go to bat for?

Over two interviews with Vanity Fair, Joseph McBride, a longtime lawyer for the brothers, said that any hypothetical intervention from Trump “would take away from the fact that we could say that we were right all along.” Still, he insisted that such backing would be warranted.

“Andrew Tate was a material participant in ensuring President Trump’s victory,” McBride says. “And if Trump doesn’t support him, and if the next people who are going to be running for office potentially are just like, yeah, down the river he goes, that young cohort of people will break with the Republican Party in the next election.”

McBride saw it as a given that MAGA couldn’t afford to lose his clients, writing on Instagram, “AOC will be the next President without the Manosphere and Andrew Tate.”

“If your superhero is betrayed by somebody,” he tells me, “the person who’s betrayed them, how can you support them ever again?”

Bombastic as he sounded, McBride, a strident Brooklyn-bred content creator otherwise known for his representation of January 6 rioters and prominent Trump advisor Alex Bruesewitz, wasn’t too far off from the mainstream consensus that formed around the 2024 campaign. The Tates are among the most extreme influencers targeting the hordes of young men whom Trump visibly courted with his run of comedy and sports podcast appearances that year; they often compared the accusations they’ve faced to those made against Trump, once earning a Truth Social shout-out for it. (McBride drew the same parallel in regard to E. Jean Carroll and Stormy Daniels when we spoke, saying, “If they want to throw stuff at the wall at you, this is what they do.”) With their self-help doctrine of masculine conquest and female subordination, the brothers have inspired social media bans, fear in the hearts of teenage boys’ parents across the globe, and a Netflix series wrestling with the consequences of their message. But their popularity, along with their trademark theory of an unseen “Matrix” suppressing independent thought, helped them make inroads with conservative personalities. “I guess some Americans call [the Matrix] the deep state,” Andrew said in an appearance on Tucker Carlson’s podcast in 2023, “but I like to look at it in a more global way.”

The Tates’ self-described “third brother,” influencer Justin Waller, and their longtime lawyer Joseph McBride.

Joe Raedle/Getty Images

The alignment appeared to pay off when the Tates were allowed to leave Romania. Trump special envoy Ric Grenell, a public supporter of the Tates, had reportedly raised their case with Romanian officials at an international security conference in Munich. The Tates’ triumphant return to Miami functioned as something of a litmus test for conservative personalities, with some declaring that their brand of masculinity had no place in the party. Trump himself took a decidedly neutral stance that didn’t ostracize his celebrity fans. When asked in the Oval Office whether his administration had lobbied Romania to lift the travel ban, he said, “I know nothing about that.”

After a hearing last week, McBride fielded a question about whether he expected an intervention from the president or secretary of state. “I believe that Marco Rubio and the rest of the Trump administration are not fans of communism,” McBride told reporters, wearing sunglasses and a snug suit in the style of his clients and their self-described “third brother,” the influencer Justin Waller, who stood by his side. “They’re not fans of prosecuting people for free speech.”

The Tate brothers attend a UFC fight, as they did soon after returning to the US last year.

Julia Demaree Nikhinson/Getty Images

As I reported last year, Waller, an Alabaman steel entrepreneur who later pivoted to selling online mentorship under banners such as “Hustlers University” alongside the Tates, visited Trump’s then 18-year-old son Barron at Mar-a-Lago shortly before the president’s second inauguration—he connected the 6’9” teenager with a tailor to get him suited for the day. They chatted in a canopy area while Trump, Don Jr., and Elon Musk circulated nearby. Barron is known to be a fan of Andrew’s, and Don Jr. once appeared on a livestream with Tate to promote a MAGA meme coin, saying, “You’ve got people attacking you, as far as I’m concerned.” After the assassination attempt on Trump in July 2024, Tate told reporters that he was “very close with the Trump family” and had spoken to Barron about the shooting.

The social ties between Tateworld and Trumpworld runneth over from there—it all looked like a comfortable cultural fit. McBride and Waller attended Bruesewitz’s wedding this year along with Leavitt and Don Jr. (and Nicki Minaj); when the Tates’ travel ban was lifted, UFC CEO Dana White greeted the brothers at a Las Vegas fight by hugging them and saying, “Welcome to the States, boys.” After the Tates’ arrest this month, one leading far-right masculinity podcaster called on Barron to “pull pops to the side.”

But while former Trump lawyer Alina Habba appeared on a podcast with Andrew in early 2025, describing herself to him as a “big fan,” The New York Times reported last week that when one of the brothers’ representatives reached out to her hours after their arrest, Habba didn’t respond.

When the Tates were stuck in Romania, the jet-setting social media output that defined the playboy image they were selling hit a significant snag. “Content is stale,” their cousin and business associate Luke Leilas said, according to a recent New Yorker report. “We need Andrew and Tristan free.” In the fickle economy of online fame, the Tates’ total saturation had an inevitable sell-by date. After Andrew’s recent arrest, his social media accounts published a three-hour-long video podcast that he had prepared in the event that he was arrested. But while the self-proclaimed “most googled man on Earth” claimed this week that he was struggling to read the signs being held up by supporters outside his jail, a content creator arriving on the scene found only a single protester.

The brothers reached their peak social media saturation in the lead-up to the 2024 election.

Vadim Ghirda/Getty Images

With the 2024 election firmly in the rearview, the feverish hunt to weaponize the manosphere for political gain has largely subsided—what more could be wrung from the Tates at this stage? In some instances, Democrats have already sought to exploit Republicans’ proximity to the brothers in the aftermath of the arrest: Arizona congresswoman Yassamin Ansari called for an investigation into the Tates’ ties to the White House, even requesting that Barron testify.

“Losing the Tates will not have an electoral impact going forward,” conservative media strategist Nathan Brand tells VF. “Young men have bigger issues than what these professional provocateurs have to say about women and societal norms.”

“They may disappear, and another influencer will emerge,” he adds. “Life will go on.”

McBride, however, was adamant that his clients’ political influence had not waned and that Trump and his allies would regret turning their backs, citing an indecipherable conspiracy involving a collusion of local actors in Florida and the UK with low-level elements in the US government to explain their recent arrest.

“There were people who saw Andrew and Tristan in some very elite establishments in halls of power,” he says, “and some of their enemies didn’t like that.”

It was similarly difficult to make sense of McBride’s claim that the Tates’ legal troubles would make them “the 2026 version of Nelson Mandela twins if they are incarcerated in England,” even as he insisted that it might not come to that—that the White House press secretary’s “no” was not as final as it sounded.

“Just because Karoline Leavitt gets up there and says Trump’s not going to do anything,” the lawyer says, “Trump changes his mind like he changes his underwear. At the end of the day, he’s going to do what the fuck he wants to do.”