Sexual predators are getting free passes from Donald Trump and the right-wing mediasphere.
Harvey Weinstein at a preliminary listening to final yr for his retrial on rape costs in New York
(Jefferson Siegel-Pool / Getty Pictures)
It’s raining poisonous males. On Friday, President Trump took questions within the Oval Workplace and addressed a difficulty solely Trump may carry to the presidential degree: the potential for pardoning Sean “Diddy” Combs in his sex-trafficking and racketeering trial—earlier than a verdict of any type has been reached. After warmly acknowledging their previous friendship from Combs’s days on The Apprentice in 2012, the president stated, “I will surely have a look at the info.”
No distancing, no “Sean Combs? I may need met him as soon as in passing…”? Trump, in a uncommon second of nonpartisanship, stated he would put Combs’s criticism of his politics apart to see if Combs had been handled pretty. This comes from the identical president who simply dumped NASA nominee Jared Issacman due to unseemly “prior associations”—which means Democrats, not sexual predators.
That very same day in Southwark Crown Court docket in London, Russell Model, a MAGA convert and vacation buddy of Well being and Human Providers Secretary RFK Jr., was charged on counts of rape, sexual assault, and indecent assault. Two days earlier, the UK additionally confirmed that Andrew and Tristan Tate will withstand 21 charges, together with rape, assault, and human trafficking. The Tates at the moment get pleasure from strong support throughout the Trump administration and household; their roster of White Home–aligned followers consists of Donald Trump Jr., FBI deputy director Dan Bongino, and Trump authorized counselor Alina Habba. The brothers are removed from garden-variety intercourse pests—they stand accused of forming a prison intercourse trafficking group within the UK and Romania.
Then, a brand new Harvey Weinstein interview dropped on The Candace Owens Show. And never lengthy afterward, it was reported that for his present trial, Weinstein might take the stand himself—a transfer he shunned in his earlier trials. He finally didn’t, and the case has gone to the jury. However that was earlier than seemingly any #Me Too’d man may depend on unqualified MAGA and manosphere assist, when the stunning character of the allegations in opposition to Weinstein squelched any hope that he may seem as a sympathetic determine to the general public.
MAGA’s tireless efforts on behalf of the credibly accused, the pretty convicted, and the justly imprisoned begin on the high. Trump himself has efficiently shrugged off #MeToo political injury ever for the reason that Entry Hollywood tape dropped in 2016, and after later lawsuits with porn stars and endlessly looped clips of him together with his personal creepy prior associations, like Jeffrey Epstein.
E. Jean Carroll’s costs that Trump sexually assaulted her are one other matter. Carroll’s profitable civil swimsuit in opposition to Trump might not have value him politically, however he can’t shrug off the $83.3 million judgment in opposition to him. He continues to battle Carroll in courtroom, and efficiently received ABC/Disney to pay a $15 million donation to his presidential library after the community’s information host George Stephanopoulos stated that Trump was “discovered responsible for rape” and “defaming the sufferer of that rape.”
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Trump’s sense of grievance apparently runs so deep that that he has taken it upon himself to vindicate nearly anybody accused or convicted of some type of sexual misconduct. Inside days of his reelection, he introduced that he would nominate the odious former consultant Matt Gaetz for lawyer basic, at the same time as Gaetz confronted a Home ethics committee investigation that accused him of paying a 17-year-old woman for intercourse. Trump then proceeded to appoint Fox Information character Pete Hegseth as secretary of protection, regardless of a sexual assault accusation that Hegseth settled for $50,000 (amongst many different questions on Hegseth’s conduct and character). Trump additionally nominated Linda McMahon, co-owner of World Wrestling Leisure (WWE), regardless of a number of lawsuits pending in opposition to WWE that name McMahon and her firm in reference to costs of sexual abuse by WWE workers involving minors as younger as 12.
Gaetz’s Home colleagues despised him lengthy earlier than Trump named him they usually scuttled his nomination, however the Senate accredited Hegseth and McMahon. The purpose in shrugging off these points is to normalize predatory habits. It’s all dangerous, however in contrast to the allied rollbacks of DEI and antidiscrimination regulation, the MeToo restoration venture isn’t principally about sanctioning insensitive language; it’s about turning sexual assault right into a victimless crime.
Throughout the Gaetz, Hegseth, and McMahon nominations, it grew to become clear, by way of the Tate case, that the administration’s zealous #MeToo rollback would prolong past the White Home correct. Andrew Tate rose to fame as an MMA fighter and a contestant on Large Brother, then grew to become a manosphere star spouting a gym-rat self-empowerment philosophy that additionally urged misogynistic views and attitudes on younger males.
In 2022, the Romanian authorities restricted the Tate brothers’ journey after authorities there formally charged them with rape and human trafficking. After Trump’s reelection, Tate hinted at his affect within the new administration when he responded to a fan on X on November 7, 2024, with a prediction: “My case being dismissed. Watch this area 😉.” On February 12, 2025, he posted once more: “The Tates will probably be free, Trump is the president. The nice previous days are again.” By the tip of February, after White Home particular envoy Richard Grennell met with a Romanian official on the Munich Safety summit, the Tates introduced that they might be leaving Romania. On February 17, the Financial Times reported two conversations between Trump administration officers relating to the Tate brothers, in addition to bullying claims from the White Home that USAID funds had been allegedly weaponized in opposition to right-wing Romanian politicians.
Trace taken! By February 27, the Tates arrived in Florida—a lot to the disgust of Governor Ron DeSantis, who by no means fairly will get the MAGA agenda. He introduced that “Florida will not be a spot the place you’re welcome with that sort of conduct,” and the state’s lawyer basic opened an investigation into whether or not Florida has any jurisdiction over the Tates’ present authorized points. DeSantis discovered himself instantly attacked on social media by loyal MAGA-ratchiks Laura Loomer and Candace Owens. “The Tate brothers are US residents,” Loomer posted on X. “Good factor Ron isn’t President.” Candace Owens concurred, reposting Loomer and including, “Completely deranged factor for a Governor of any state to say… Sure—Good factor Ron isn’t president.” However, the Tates quickly left Florida.
The MAGA motion and the manosphere have discovered widespread floor in championing predators as victims and erasing any obligation and even shame in sexual misconduct. Given Trump’s slim win in November, these manosphere influencers might certainly have performed a critical new position within the final election, akin to the affect of radio in 1932 and televised presidential debates in 1960. Russell Model and the Tates have giant followings that may translate into necessary shifts in political assist. A day after Andrew Tate posted his prediction, Tristan Tate posted on X to remind Trump what his brother had completed for him. In an extended screed in regards to the evils of the woke thoughts virus and the necessity for younger males to hit the fitness center and overturn left-wing tax insurance policies, he let or not it’s identified the Tates had been owed some favors. “Tens of millions of younger males in Europe and the USA have a wholesome proper wing method to politics that they might NOT have if Andrew Tate had by no means appeared on their cellphone screens. His position on this can’t be ignored. He actually RAISED a era of republicans.” It’s not all hype; social media business analyst Matt Navarra has argued that the affect of the poisonous manosphere on our politics may be very actual. “He’s received an enormous skill to mobilise giant on-line followings, and that’s a giant potential political asset,” Navarra has said of Andrew Tate. “Social media is the brand new battleground and influencers are the brand new generals and Tate is completely aligned to Trump’s mission.”
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If celebrities alone swayed elections, Taylor Swift would have delivered us a Harris administration. It’s the right-wing social media business as a complete that makes a distinction. Andrew Tate has 10.7 million followers on X alone. Russell Model’s YouTube channel has 6.8 million YouTube subscribers—and it now options clip after clip of himself cheering on RFK Jr and the MAHA motion. Now that Model faces prison costs, it will be no nice shock to see him leverage his following right into a authorized protection fund, with loads of MAGA figures cheering him on. It’s now MAGA’s fallback place to scoff at any form of credible harassment accusation or conviction. When The Every day Wire lately employed Mike Rogers as its new president for its leisure division, the press announcement laughed off his compelled resignation by Sony for sexual misconduct accusations and discriminatory firings in opposition to ladies. “Thanks to the purple hairs,” the Wire’s Gloria Taylor crowed, “Please ‘cancel’ extra artistic geniuses.”
Sure, it’s another strategy to personal the libs. However following Trump’s lead is all the time good for enterprise on the suitable, so the advantages in defending even the worst male predators little doubt performed into Candace Owens’s calculations in taking over Harvey Weinstein’s case as a trigger célèbre. After getting fired from The Every day Wire for her anti-Israel and antisemitic views, Owens discovered a manner again into the information cycle by championing Weinstein in two sympathetic interviews. Owens now believes Weinstein harmless of all costs in opposition to him. And it’s not laborious to see why Weinstein went on her present—she has 12 million YouTube subscribers. On condition that she wants a narrative and Weinstein desperately wants somebody to inform his story his manner, they each put apart her lengthy historical past of platforming lurid antisemitic conspiracy theories.
Owens’s most up-to-date Weinstein interview provides no contemporary vantage on his authorized methods to get out of jail, nor does it provide any rationalization of why precisely Owens thinks he’s harmless. As a substitute, she provides Weinstein time to refute previous statements from Gwyneth Paltrow and her account of Brad Pitt roughing Weinstein up for asking her for a therapeutic massage. Weinstein then dismissed the field workplace numbers on the Pitt-produced She Mentioned, a film in regards to the New York Instances reporters who broke the Weinstein story, as proof that folks don’t consider the case in opposition to him.
That’s one principle—one other is that the general public has merely moved on to a brand new movie star circus. As The Guardian noted last week, in comparison with the Combs trial, “Weinstein’s retrial in Choose Curtis Farber’s dingy courtroom exists in a digital vacuum of consideration, although the courtroom instances—one for a fallen film mogul, one for a rap entrepreneur—share similarities round problems with sexual consent that, prosecutors allege, crossed over into critical crimes.”
Weinstein’s case concerned horrific costs of predatory sexual habits, however, within the present MAGA-fied local weather of right-wing discourse, he could be depicted as a sufferer of a woke mob of feminist hysterics. Politics has made all of the distinction in his case historical past. As soon as, when he had clout in New York, Weinstein managed to maintain the Manhattan DA’s workplace at bay. Then, when the story broke and he grew to become a pariah, prosecutors rushed into his case because it lastly received scheduled, leading to a mistrial for Weinstein in 2024.
Beforehand, Weinstein prevented taking the stand to keep away from cross-examination, however the truth that he significantly thought of doing it now exhibits it’s a unique ballgame altogether beneath a second Trump administration. For many individuals, Trump has managed to normalize one other type of criminality into an “oh no matter, everyone does it” shrug—and it might be sufficient to spring Weinstein from jail.
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