Conservative pundit Ben Shapiro has called out his MAGA brethren over their support of accused sex trafficker Andrew Tate.
Discussing a controversy that he considers “indicative of a broader problem that the right currently has with the influencer class,” Shapiro recapped how, during an appearance on the right-wing podcast The Benny Show, Donald Trump’s attorney Alina Habba gushed to Tate about what a fan she was and glowingly compared him to her boss.
The fact that Tate has been arrested and charged in Romania—and faces separate allegations in the U.K.—on suspicion of rape, human trafficking, and forming and organizing a crime group to sexually exploit women didn’t temper her praise.
The 38-year-old British-American former kickboxer and reality TV star had been under house arrest in Romania since August, until a court ruled Tuesday that he could move freely around the country while the criminal investigation plays out, Reuters reported.
But whether or not Tate is ultimately convicted of his allege violent crimes, by his own admission he is a sexual predator, Shapiro argued Sunday on his eponymous show.
He played clips of Tate describing his strategy for meeting girls, getting them to like him, and then “making” them fall in love with him so they would work on webcams for him.
“Women need a man to do OnlyFans,” Tate says in one clip. “It’s the same reason a woman needs a man to do anything, ’cause they’re incompetent and they’re very, very lazy. And they’re stupid.” In another he says, “When you’re pimping like me, it’s a full-time job.”
Comments like these had previously gotten Tate banned from most social media platforms, until he was reinstated on X, formerly Twitter, after it was taken over by Trump mega donor and adviser Elon Musk.
Shapiro called Tate an “evil con artist.”
“Even if you just believe the stuff he has said about himself, what he says is evil,” Shapiro said. “He is a self-professed pimp and pornographer. He made his money grooming women for the sex industry.”
Conservative pundit Ben Shapiro speaks at CPAC Argentina in December. / Tomas Cuesta/Getty Images
The irony of course is that the American right has gone on a moral crusade against British “grooming gangs” in recent weeks. Musk in particular has accused the governing Labour Party of failing to carry out a local inquest into the gangs—even as it was focused on implementing new policies based on the findings of a national inquiry.
Despite the supposed outrage, last week Musk seemed to suggest that Tate running for prime minister be good for Britain (even though that’s not how the political system actually works).
“Now all the people on the right who are very upset, correctly, about grooming gangs in Britain are going to have to explain why they’re OK with his grooming gang,” Shapiro said. “I guess if you’re Andrew Tate, then if you confess to doing things like this on tape, morally it’s somehow OK because you’re anti-woke or something.”
Tate’s legal team has claimed he was just creating a character to make money.
He shuttered his webcam business in 2022 and now makes money off his massive online following, including through an online “education” platform called Hustler’s University that critics say is basically a pyramid scheme.
“Now he’s trying to play himself of as a politician,” Shapiro said. “He’s not. He’s an influencer, he’s an online troll.”
