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Why are conservative media personalities like Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens embracing Andrew Tate, an online celebrity known for misogynistic commentary, alleged abuse of women and foreign charges of human trafficking?
Because Tate sometimes has agreeable things to say about the importance of masculinity in culture, they ignore the clearly inexcusable parts of his lifestyle. Both Carlson and Owens’s interviews were generally peppered with mild questions and meant to give Tate a positive platform.
With 7.4 million Twitter followers and billions of TikTok video views, Tate already has his own exponentially influential platform — one that targets legions of young men with a destructive message of narcissism, sexual prowess and obsession with physical appearance. Carlson’s segment with Tate was arguably one of the most-watched interviews of all time, and his appeal should concern anyone committed to a family-centered worldview. Tate may season his sauce with teaspoons of truth, but his recipe has a toxic base.
In his interview, Carlson noted that if “Jeffrey Epstein’s friends” find Tate immoral, it’s a laughable charge. But, there is plenty of evidence that Tate isn’t a moral exemplar, even if the charges of trafficking against him don’t prove true (he was released from house arrest today). He regularly speaks of women as the “ultimate status symbol” and often refers to them as “hoes” and “bitches.” He claims to have at least ten children by different women, but clearly isn’t parenting them all.
Tate maintains that it’s his message of “traditional masculinity” that makes the media hate him; however, he fails to see how fathering multiple children into broken homes breeds the opposite of his mantra. Boys who grow up with fathers married to their mothers in the home have the most hope of becoming virtuous, masculine men. Tate is modeling the opposite of this for his own children. So, why is he becoming the standard bearer for conservative men?
In a much-circulated clip from several years ago, Tate explains how he met and coerced women into working for his “webcam company,” where they performed and accepted money for services rendered. Is this the “masculinity” we want for our boys? By platforming someone with an ongoing history of relentless female objectification, conservatives erase their credibility to speak on the subject of traditional family values.
During his interview, Carlson, a long-time married father of four, nodded in agreement with Tate about the “primary job of fathers” to make hard decisions for their families. It’s true that we need strong men to lead, and boys to grow up understanding that their God-given masculinity is a good thing. In this, Tate identifies a profound problem with how society views men today. But his solution is a toxic obsession with sexual dominance and harmful, patriarchal views of women.
“I don’t think one woman is capable of completing a man’s life,” Tate said in a podcast interview. “I think you need a wife and you need hoes.”
Hypocritically, Tate admitted it’s best for men to be with a “virtuous woman,” but doesn’t expect men to live by the same standards. From my viewing of the interview, Carlson never asks Tate about the “morality” of his belief that it’s okay for men to have sexual affairs.
Traditional conservatives champion the message of marriage and monogamy as foundational for society, so how can those same people applaud a man whose life is the absolute antithesis of those values? And when meaningful conservatives do criticize Tate, his only defense is that he pays no attention to attacks and critics are merely “jealous.”
Meanwhile, Tate has support from noted philanderer Donald Trump Jr., antisemite Nick Fuentes and defamed conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. With friends like this, who needs the left to demonize conservatives claiming to stand for family values?
Tate’s kernels of truth are not cover for the false, self-gratifying and harmful ideology he presents to millions of young men who follow him. When truth is wrapped in a blanket of lies, it will be swallowed. Conservatives should see Tate for what he is and run hard in the opposite direction.
