Part Two: The Andrew Tate Story

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Oh no, no, no. So we ended the last episode
where I was like, wow, you're such a great writer.
That was so good. And then you come in and
then you do that fucking ship what well, so you
you you may not understand this because of your your
your womanliness, but I was embodying the archetype of the

(00:24):
magician wild man. I don't know, you're fired. That's fair,
that's fair. Well I have started drinking, um m M.
I got a nice glass of port Rude talisker here, um.

(00:44):
And I want to start this episode by getting a
shout out to a friend of the pod, former mayor
of the City of Portland, Sam Adams. Now y'all may
not know Sam. I think he was briefly on the
show Portlandia, but he was fired from being the mayor
because he had a set true relationship with a teenage staffer. Um.
And then got rehired by current Mayor of Portland, Ted Wheeler,

(01:08):
who's a giant piece of ship, to be the mayor's
body man basically um. And then this week Sam announced
that he was retiring because he had an iron deficiency.
And then Ted Wheeler told everyone though he's retiring it
because he wouldn't stop threatening and bullying women in the office.
Both of you guys suck and it's very funny that's happened. Um. Also,

(01:30):
I gotta say shout out to Sam Adams honestly, going
from sexually harassing teenager too being a bully to adult women.
That's a step forward. Um. Okay, disagree, Sophie, You're fine.

(01:52):
I don't know. One of the two things isn't a
sex crime. So that's a real, real person growth for
a former mayor of Portland's Sam Adams. Um. Anyway, Ted Wheeler,
what the fun is? Great great hiring. Look, honestly, fox
Sam Adams, he's a piece of ship. But incredible hiring

(02:12):
decision from Ted Wheeler. Yeah, let's get the guy in
here who had sex with a seventeen year old stafford.
Let's let's get him back in city hall. We really
need his insights. Um, great, great work. It really shocked
about you know how how well liked he is in
the City of Portland. Yeah he I mean he's not.

(02:33):
But you can let him know how you feel about
his decision to hire and then fire Sam Adams at
at Ted Wheeler on Twitter when he got the tear
gas thrown on him. I do remember that. So I
started talking about Ted Wheeler and sad Sam Adams because
they're both toxic men. And today we are finally getting
into the direct personal story of one of the most

(02:55):
toxic men of all time, Emery Andrew Tate the third.
That's quite a name. That's quite a name. Um. Now,
Emrie Andrew tap the third was born in Washington, d C.
On December one, nineteen eight six. Now that fancy name
might lead you to think that he came from some
like British ash British British ass uh noble family or

(03:20):
some ship that sounds like a duke's name to me, um,
but very formal. It sounds like he is not um. Now,
most of the texture that we get on his childhood
comes from Andrew himself, which is not ideal because he
is a liar um. But there's just not a lot
of other Again, I haven't found no one's done like

(03:41):
a critical biography. There's not like a big, long New
Yorker piece that really delves into his back story. So
I kind of had to do that myself to the
best extent that I could do. Now I did find one,
and this is Honestly, the only texture you get on
his childhood that I have come across is from an
article he wrote for a web site for kickboxing that

(04:01):
sells kickboxing gear um and the title of it is
the Life of Andrew King Kobra Tate. So again, this
is not a credible source. But the way in which
he writes about his childhood and what he wants you
to believe about it does tell you a lot about
the man. So we're still going to be covering it.
But do not take this this literal truth that that
should be obvious. Here's how he talks about his birth.

(04:24):
I was born in Washington, d C. At Walter Reed
Army Hospital early one morning, December one. The doctor wanted
to award me a perfect ten on the birth scale,
but settled on nine point five already already. That's the
saddest thing anyone has ever bragged. That's so pathetic, absolutely heartbreaking.

(04:45):
Oh my god, that's on somebody's fucking like dating profile
for sure, two weeks overdue. But I was a nose.
I was nose breathing already as the doctor held me
upside down by my heels, and my right fist was
in side of my mouth as I suckled. The doctor
pinched my thigh to get a response, and I growled,

(05:06):
knitting my brow and trying to crane my head up
to see who had attacked me. The doctor paled, shocked
at my defensive powers. I did not cry. Oh my god,
I hate this. That's so funny though, bragging about how
tough you were is a baby as a baby, like unbelievable.

(05:33):
And I was re reading what you what you just said,
and it's I'm gonna tell you all right now, because again,
everything I found just kind of glosses over his his childhood,
because we don't have a lot of like like detailed,
like somebody hasn't gone through, like interviewed a shipload of
people that he knew was a little kid. And it right,
that hasn't happened yet. I'm sure it will um And

(05:54):
I was thinking, we're just gonna have to brush over
his childhood. And then I found this article he wrote
about himself on a kickboxing website and it it made
my week. It made my week. It's so funny about
your own birth, like you did fucking anything. So if
you're curious about Andrew's parentage, his mother Eileen h is

(06:16):
indeed English's ship um, and she's a white lady. She
worked as a catering assistant. His father is Emrie Tate Junr.
Um and Emory what was Emory Tate Junior? Emory Tate Jr.
Was a Black American man and a Chicago chess prodigy. Actually,
up until a year or two ago, Emory Tate was
much more famous than Andrew Tate. Um. We actually had

(06:37):
in in our work chat. Mia was shocked to learn
that Andrew Tate was Emrie Tate's son. Um. I had
not heard of this guy. But I don't care for chess,
um or for yeah chess. Yeah. The Washington Post describes
Emory Tate Jr. As a trailblazer for black chess players.
He was like one of the first. I don't know,

(06:58):
he may have been like the first, like soup, we're famous,
really well known, like black professional chess players. Um. Again,
I don't understand chess. I don't understand why you would
play a war game that doesn't include orcs. But a
lot of people who love chess say that he was
one of the most fun players to watch. I did
read a lot of like writing, like fans and like

(07:18):
read it and stuff talking about Emory Tate, and one
thing they also to agree on is he was just
super entertaining. Twitch you why does when you type in
Emery Tate into Google, why does the first suggested thing
come up as CIA? What I typed Emory Tate into
Google and the first thing that auto fills is c

(07:40):
I A m hmm, it was Andrew says that he
was in the c I that was happening. Yeah, he was.
So he was in the Air Force as a sergeant
and he served as a linguished linguist. Um. There's not
actually hard evidence that he was in the CIA that

(08:04):
I have seen, Like this is based on again, Andrew
is kind of when we're about to get into this,
he's really plumping his dad's reputation to make him into
like not just a chess guy, but a bad as
may or may not somebody. I have not seen any
independent confirmation that he worked in the CIA. Maybe he

(08:26):
did a lot of guys in that period who like
did some sort of like weird work where they would
have just been listed as a State department employee. So
it's not impossible, but I have not come across confirmation
that he was in the CIA um so the Washington
Post and most sources who write about Andrew's dad will
call him a grand master at chess. This is not

(08:48):
entirely true he was. I mean, this is not true.
He was an international master, which is a lesser rank.
He never quite made it to grand master. I found
again chess discussions online by nerds about chess who will
say that he didn't make it to grand master um
mainly because he wasn't able. He wasn't willing to do
like certain things that you have to do to do that.
But he was. He had a really good record. He
regularly beat grandmasters. Some people say he was as good

(09:10):
at Bobby Fisher. Again, I have no way to evaluate
any of this, taking a big anti chest chess approach
here again, there's no there's no battle tanks and chess.
There's no Titans with chainsaw hands. The ultimate game of
strategy is still Warhammer forty thousand. I think we can
all agree on that. Yes, of course it's been true

(09:32):
for generations. Um. But anyway, Emory Tate great at chess,
um at chess his story and wrote a book about him,
which gives us some idea as to where Andrew Tape
got his sense of style and personal branding. The title
was triple exclam with three exclamation points. The Life and
Games of Emory Tate Chess Warrior Um, which is kind

(09:53):
of fun um. I think he literally died at the
table in two thousand fifteen playing a game of chess
like this man, This motherfucker loved jess Um. He wears
a white fedora with a gold band on the cover,
which also gives you a little bit of insight into
where Andrew Tate gets some of his taste in style. Um.
And Andrew idolizes his father, and he does it particularly.

(10:14):
I'm not going to pretend to know the man's emotional state,
but in his public writing he particularly celebrates his dad.
And that kickboxing website article, Andrew Tate noted this about
the male side of his family background. My grandfather, Emrie A.
Tate Esquire, fought in World War Two before becoming a
lawyer in Chicago, doing racially charged times as a black man.

(10:36):
That shaped his worldview, and he was very strict, very hard. Indeed,
as a boy, he pushed a plow with mule through
the hard clay dirt of Georgia, forced to work on
the farm. At age twelve, he pushed a plow that
only grown men normally handled. Then he ran away, never
to return to the farm. He did some bare knuckled
fist bites as a young man, and distinguish himself hand
to hand during the war years. And again I'm sure
parts of that are true. Everything about his dad and

(10:58):
his grandpa always veeers into how good a word hand
to hand combat, and there is no evidence of this. Um.
Like the stuff about working on a farm, Yeah, that's
that seems plausible. The stuff about how we fought the
Nazis hand to hand. I don't know, maybe, but that
actually happened often. That just gives me, like, my dad
can beat up your dad vibes like it sounds like

(11:18):
something like a kid would say about his own birth.
I mean, it's like, you don't have to lie about
him fist fighting Nazis. It's okay if he just shot them.
A lot of dudes did and that was rat Like,
he doesn't have to be great at punching just because
you grew up to punch people for a living. That's
kind of a weird thing to focus on Andrew, Um,

(11:40):
But he loves talking about how good. His dad and
Grandpa were at fighting. Um quote. His son, my dad,
Emrie A. Tate Jr. Was a young athlete, learning wrestling
in school and developing the early forms of take shinkai
strikes as a youth, which I guess is his own
martial arts thing. His job in the Middle Terry for
eleven years took him on many adventures, and little is

(12:02):
known for sure except that my dad never loses. He
is my role modeling when he in many ways, even
as I write poetry like he does. So. I mean also,
I think his dad would have been in the military.
Let me let me double check here, Uh yeah, during Vietnam,

(12:23):
which would mean that he did, in fact lose. Um
So sorry Andrew, But um I I don't want to
be mean to Emery take because well this is a
little bit his fault. Um So. Yeah. The closest thing
that Andrew has written or said that comes close to

(12:44):
being emotionally impactful at all is when he writes about
his father. I will give him that he writes with
like some amount of actual um sincerity about his feelings
towards his dad, And I'm gonna give you an example
of that now. I never learned to cry for attention.
I only used grunts to indicate hunger or discomfort, but
mostly I was silent. I had a large new crib,

(13:04):
but most every night I spent a sleep on my
dad's chest. He would place me there and sleep still,
never moving in the night, and our heartbeats were and
are as one. I just could like, yeah, just too
angry to now. Bits like this do contrast with passages

(13:26):
where Andrew will relate stories about his dad that sound
kind of abusive. Quote. I learned to defend myself soon
after I could walk, long before my first punch into
a pillow. I learned to balance, how to step backward
after being pushed gently in the chest. Dad made a
game of it, a game which ended with a savage
shove across the living room, sending me into a dramatic
back pedal. I stopped myself with my head one inch

(13:47):
from cracking into the far wall. That was the final test.
Kind of sounds like your dad was just shoving you
because he was pissed, Andrew. That kind of sounds not great.
Do you need to talk about this, man? Yeah? No talking,
just yeah, just I mean, look, if I was going

(14:09):
to raise a child, I will I'd be lying if
I said that the shoving method didn't hold some appeal,
because I do a lot of other things by shoving.
It's how I moved my furniture, it's how I record podcasts.
I'm shoving a walking desk around the room right now.
We actually Daniel spends like thirteen hours a week editing
that out before we can even get the audio off
off to Chris, um, that's most of his job. It's

(14:32):
it's really um, it's a good part of our work.
And remind me to tell you about the time when
Robert got a foot massager and he refused to not
use it while recording, and it would go directly into
the mic and like, there's no there's no hazard. Pay

(14:52):
that's enough, truly, don't take it. I'm sorry. And that
was my fault for bringing it up. That was your
fault for bringing it up. But more importantly not my fault,
because nothing is speaking of toxic masculinity. Let's get back
to Andrew Tates cool So. Andrew was raised initially in

(15:15):
the DC area and then Indiana, uh and he seemed
to want to follow in his father's footsteps. He started
playing chess at age three. He started competing at five,
and he eventually competed in adult tournaments while still a child.
And this is where we get the very first news
article on Andrew Tate, who at that point was referred
to as e Marie A. Tate. It is a local

(15:36):
news piece, and this is the first like objective ish
piece of journalism that like, it's not just like him
writing about his background. Um. And it's really the only
insight we get into his childhood that doesn't come directly
from a Tate. UM. It's again a local news piece.
The news in his town, which is like South Bend,
was talking about the release there was a movie coming

(15:57):
out about Bobby Fisher, who I guess was good at chess, UM,
and so they were writing about that, and they wanted
a human interest piece, so they talked about young Andrew Tate,
who was six when they wrote this article. UM. He
had started a chess club in South Bend with some
other kids, and he had taught them chess because he
wanted people to play against. It includes the article a
couple of quotes that are interesting. Every kid wanted wants

(16:20):
to be like his dad, the elder Tate said, but
father had recently limited sons playing time encouraging other activities.
I don't think that a kid his age should spend
so much time playing chess. As a parent, I'd like
to see him become a top level player, but I
realized there's so much more to life than just chess.
He learned how to swim this summer, and he plays
with his friends and stuff like that. Andrew, however, says

(16:41):
he plays because he's bored all the time. Most of
the time, I am bored, and that's the only thing
I want to do most So Yeah, interesting, there's some
insight into the actual kid there. Um, that is a
response I understand from a kid like I am bored
all the time. This is the only thing that I like.
It Also, you know, gives you a little bit of

(17:04):
a look into like there's For whatever reason, one of
the things I take with him this article is that
Emory Tit didn't want his son to follow him as
a chess guy. It might have been some insecurity about
not wanting his kid to be better than him, or
it may have just been understandably, like, you know, I
never made a lot of money playing chess. I want
you to do something else with your life. I don't

(17:26):
want you to like be locked into this thing. I
don't know. There's some interesting questions that answers or asks.
The author of this article notes that Andrew had just
competed in his first adult chess tournament where he had
and again Andrews later on, when he starts putting out
propaganda trying to make him do a badass will point
out that, like at age six, he was playing in
adult chess tournaments, he did lose three out of five games, um,

(17:49):
and his dad eventually had to pull him out of
the tournament because, quote, he got very upset because he
thought he was failing. So Emory withdrew his son from
the game to quote save him from crying in front
of all those people. And uh, we're not keyed into
what precisely happened there. Whoa, whoa. I thought he didn't cry.
Why are we worried about that? It sure seems like

(18:10):
his dad said he did. Yeah. Fact and again, I'm
gonna guess one of two things happened there. Either Andrew
was just throwing a fit because he was losing, and
his dad was like, well, you can't be at a
chess tournament if you're gonna throw a fit when you lose.
Or Andrew was doing okay and wanted to keep playing,
and his dad was angry that he was losing and
didn't want him to keep like risk losing again. Um.

(18:34):
Even though three to two is not a bad record
for a six year old playing six either way, we
don't know which of those is the case. Either possibility
is interesting to me, UM. Andrew's parents had another boy, Tristan,
two years after Andrew was born, and the two brothers
have been inseparable their whole lives. They played chess together,
but Tristan never competed. Uh. They would later kickbox together,

(18:57):
but Tristan never competed. He's like always is there, But
he also doesn't seem to get to live a full
life because he exists purely in his brother's shadow, as
like an agent of his greatness. It's kind of a
weird relationship for Tristan, UM, but I don't think he's
self aware enough to understand that it's weird. One photo
in the news are in that news article shows six

(19:19):
year old Andrew focused in the picture frame, face taking
up a third of the frame, playing chess. Well, just
Tristan's hand is visible in the right third, and as
the brothers grew up, Andrew would consistently stay in focus
will Tristan would always just sort of be off to
the side. Is that and that's true to this day,
right to this day, I have I don't have it

(19:39):
in the script we could play, there's a very funny
video of his brother like telling him to go out
to like film their cars for this video they're doing
about how nice their life is. And then when his
brother goes out, Andrew cuts the feed just to be like,
ha ha, fuck you, this is my show. I don't
have to like let you do anything if I don't
want to. And it's like weirdly abusive because they're both
men who were in their thirties, Like Tristan, you don't

(20:02):
have to take that. Like. Um, things got harder for
them after South Bend Um because they their mom and dad.
It's not a good marriage and they divorce. Um. I
have found very little to tail about why that divorce happened.
We can infer though, that it was an extremely painful
time for Andrew, and this is all he's willing to
write about it. Dad was working minimum wage jobs over

(20:25):
time since his military career had been ended. Both mom
and Dad worked so that we could survive. Things became
so hard that we decided to go to England and
try a life there only minus dad. And uh, he's
not willing to write like, you know, the marriage didn't
work out or and again we don't know why. I'm
gonna avoid like theorizing what might have happened there, but

(20:48):
this is clearly he idolizes his dad and he's taken
away from him forever basically, um, and obviously mom might
have had a perfectly good reason for doing that. I'm
not trying to be critical. We just actually don't really know. Um,
but this is definitely like the fact that he's not
willing to even acknowledge the basics of what happened kind
of suggests this leaves a pretty profound impact on young Andrew.

(21:12):
So by age eleven, he was, in his words, man
of the house, looking after his younger brother and now sister.
The town in England they live in was called Luton,
and it is still. I think it's usually pronounced by
English people Luton, but you know, you know how they are.
I didn't think we would get an accent this episode,
but I'm glad we did. Worm from Luton. That's how

(21:35):
they sound. Um, you know how when I do my
when I do my accent, should I do my Boston
accent to get him back on board? Your Boston accents
really joy even from Boston and Oi, Lloyd Caffey and Shielda. Yeah,
an Australian person underwater being strangled. Just just Western Australia, Sophie. Anyways, Robert,

(22:04):
it's time for an ad break. It is time for
an ad break. So good Denkin Donuts and have you
a caffie bost It's so bad, it's pretty good. It's
so bad, it's impressive, Like thank you. I feel like
that takes a lot of skill and control to be
that bad again. I'll take any kind of praise. I

(22:26):
don't care. Um, bad attention, good attention, it's all the
same to me. Welcome to our podcast about toxic masculinity. Uh,
and we're back. So Luton is um it's not an

(22:51):
easy place to grow up. It is in fact close to,
if not the very hardest place to grow up in England. Um.
It is one of the poorest places in the country.
It has been repeatedly voted the worst place to live
in England. UM. I actually found a poll from like
seven days before I watched the script from the from
Bedfordshire Live that voted the worst place to live in England.

(23:11):
It is a tough town, um. Andrew and his family
have basically no money. They live in public housing and
they are just barely getting by. We know this for certain,
Like this is a confirmed fact about his upbringing. Now
Andrew again definitely acknowledges that they were poor. This is
actually an important part of his own self mythology. Um.

(23:33):
But he also makes some claims that we do not
know for sure or true. He claims he got a
job as soon as I was old enough, although he
does not say when that was. Um quote, as soon
as I was old enough, I got a job moving
eighty pound boxes of frozen fish into the market at
five am. Then a full day of school. We cans
found me at the market stall, where it perfected my
knife skills, flawlessly fileting fish at blinding speeds. After some time,

(23:57):
I never cut my hands at all, not even a nick.
I learned to play drums and yeah, that's that's interesting. Um.
I'm sure some again, I'm sure pieces of all of
this are true. I don't know about his knife skills
or the blinding speed. But I'm sure pieces of this
are true. UM. Now, Tristan or Andrew interestingly says that

(24:19):
the only one of them who got into a real
world fight when they were kids was his brother Tristan.
Some kid was bullying him and he beat him up. UM.
I don't know if that story is true or not,
but it is worth noting that Andrew claims in this article,
I have never struck a person in anger. Now we
know that's not true because he has beaten at least
what like Yeah, we know that's not true. UM. We

(24:42):
will talk about that later, but this is the claim
that he is making in this thing that he writes
in UM. When he was a young adult, he was
introduced to a kickboxing trainer and he started training, as
did his brothers soon after. By two thousand and eight,
he was the seventh highest ranked heavyweight kickboxer in Brita,
and a year later he won his first championship and

(25:03):
became the number one ranked kickboxer in Europe for his division.
Two weeks two years later, in two US and twelve,
he was the second best heavyweight kickboxer on the planet.
That sounds very impressive. Right, Yeah, yeah, I mean second
best kickboxer on the planet. That means you can kick
to death anybody but one guy. Um, yeah, that is

(25:23):
not what that actually means. So I'm gonna be honest.
All of the articles about it, we'll just say he
was the second best had light heavyweight. Sometimes I'll just
say the second bex kickboxer on the planet. Um. They'll
talk about his championships and like, list the numbers. I
was the first draft of this, actually, I just wrote
that and then moved on and was like, yeah, he's
really good at kickboxing. Um, lots of bad people are

(25:43):
really good at something. I assumed he was, as like,
I figured that that was true. I looked at his
Wikipedia page, which says he has like seventy nine wins
and nine losses and lists his championships, and he did
win a bunch of what are called world championships. However,
that's not how box thing works, because I also looked
up a bunch of discussions of boxing fans analyzing his

(26:04):
actual performance, and one thing they'll point out is that, well,
there's not just one guy who's the best in kickboxing.
Kickboxing is actually an incredibly fragmented sport. And there are
a bunch of different and I don't know if they
call him leagues or whatever. There's a bunch of different
like types of kickboxing championships, and some are more impressive
than others. Right, Some are people who are really good

(26:24):
at kickboxing, some are people who are more amateur, and
Andrew kind of stayed doing the more amateur stuff, and
he was really good at beating amateur kickboxers. One of
the critiques people will note who are into kickboxing is
that the league that he became world heavy or light
heavyweight champion in only covers Europe. So you guys might

(26:47):
notice there's a couple of places that are the world
that aren't Europe that I assume, I assume there's some
kickboxers in those places, at least one of yeah, at
least a couple. Um. The other they'll point out is
that of all of these fights that he had and
he claims like seventy nine wins, they can only verify
like forty something fights. Because and this is that may

(27:10):
not mean that he's lying at it's all of the
ways that the ship gets reported are weird, right, and
there's so many different weird leagues and ship he might
be lying about the total number of wins and games
he was in, but of the things that we can
verify only this is something kickboxing fans will point out.
Only five of his fights are against guys with Wikipedia pages,
and that based sounds but but it means like guys

(27:32):
who are notable enough that they have called like are
good enough at kickboxing. So he lost fights were against
like nobodies or you know something. Of the notable five
fights he was in, he lost three of them. Um.
The allegation kickboxing fans will make is that he mostly
fought amateurs to pad his record. Now, everyone agrees he's

(27:53):
still that's still pretty good at kickboxing, but he is
not the second He was never the second best on
the planet Earth at kickbox in. Um, that's just simply
not the case. Um, And I think it's it's fair
to say, yeah, he's pretty good at kickboxing, he was
never as good as he claimed. And this is a
part of the self mythologizing that he engages in kind
of vastly exaggerating his competency at kicking people a bunch

(28:17):
with his feet. Um. So yeah, it's also worth noting
that like the level Tap actually was at did not
pay terribly well. The per fight amount is impressive. He
can make between fifty and a hundred thousand dollars per
fight that he was in, but he was having like
one or two fights per year, um, which is not

(28:39):
terrible income. But you you're paying for a coach, you're
paying for Jim access, you're paying for the medical care
that comes from this, and he's going to have several
serious injuries. So he's not living well off of this salary.
And in fact, he and his brother are living in
a cheap apartment um I think in Bedfordshire and eating
as cheaply as they possibly can in order to afford

(29:00):
to keep being in kickboxing, because it's like, that's kind
of what it is when you're competing at this kind
of awkward level that he's at um And Tate relates
aspects of this himself in a video from and I'm
gonna play this so everyone can get a look and
listen to the guy before we can go any further.
This is from his video on Rumble. This is his
like you like Rumble, his right wing YouTube, and his

(29:23):
his channel is called Tate Speech as in hate speech.
But you guys get it right. I don't need here.
It is first the first first clip world level athletes
with no money. We invented a dish that was so bland.
We called it Flavor because it was the only way

(29:44):
you could add flavor to the dish. So I had
the name flavor, but it was extremely bland, and it
was white rice frozen piece. MR Cheap kidney beans. Kidney
beans have more protein per d grahams than minced did
you know that? I found out when I was broke,
walking the aisles of the grocery store trying to find

(30:05):
the cheapest protein money can buy. I couldn't bring myself
to be a vegetarian, so I'd add a little bit
mate minced beef, and if I was really rich, I'd
have hoole sauce. And I actually suspect he's probably not
lying too much there. That seems like a reasonable story.
And I know some people who are professional athletes at

(30:26):
that similar awkward level where you're like a pro but
you're not rich, who are like, yeah, you do whatever
it takes to like stay fueled, or that means cooking
giant pots of like not delicious things just to stay anyway,
that that that seems broadly speaking like, he's probably not
lying entirely about that. Now he is lying about he
and his brother being world class athletes. You might say

(30:49):
he was. That's going to be up to what you
define that as. But Tristan is not competing in kickboxing.
He is working as like a coach kind of um.
Although people will criticize in ways that are too weirdly
nuanced and involved knowledge of kickboxing. So we're just gonna
move on now. The height of his career as a
guy who kicks people for money comes in like two

(31:10):
thousand twelve, two thirteen. Um, he two thirteen and thinks
his last big championship, and not long after that he
decides to leave professional sports as a full time thing. Um.
Injuries play a major role in this take. Does not
like talking about vulnerability, but he was worse at taking
hits than he likes to pretend. Um. He suffered detached

(31:32):
retina's in several fights and had to have surgery for
his eyes, so he would like, he's I mean again
and again. That's the I'm pointing this out because he
will never admit it. Like, if you're a professional kickboxer,
at some point, you're going to get hurt. Enough that
you can't keep doing kickboxing, like we all saw like
Mohammed Ali go from you know, Mohammed al Lee to

(31:53):
you know a guy who has severe injuries as a
result of being a boxer. All this stuff is bad
for you, like you either quit at a certain point
or it destroys your body and mind the same way
that like football or whatever does. I mean, we all
just got a reminder of that a couple of weeks
ago with um oh, the guy who had a heart
attack on the Yeah, this is all pretty like normal

(32:14):
sports stuff, right like you you are when you're watching
guys do these kind of combat sports. You are watching
people like mortgage their bodies in the hope of getting rich,
and take kind of had to accept at a certain point,
my body is going to give out before I get
rich doing this. Um. So you know that's the thing
that he recognizes, and he decides I need to let

(32:36):
most professional athletes do. I need to find something else
I can do that's easier on my body that I
can support myself with. You know, some people open car dealerships.
Some people decide to you know, sell ads for different
things and and be be pitchman. Um. Some people go
into professional baseball. Um, Tristan decided to become a webcam

(32:56):
sex pimp. UM. So that's that's an interesting call. I
do think history would have been different and fascinating ways
that that's the choice Michael Jordan had made. Um, Sophie,
don't give you that look. I m hm anyway, what

(33:17):
I'm just saying that look? You deserved it. I I
usually do so. For three years, they run a rapidly
expanding business finding women to act as cam operators. Now,
this is not an inherently dishonest business. I guess if
you are, you know, building a studio and building like

(33:37):
a platform by which you can, you know, bring these
these cam workers attention and they understand their contracts and
like it's a reasonably fair split. I don't have an
ethical issue with building a company that allows sex workers
to do cam work, right, that's that's fine, um. But
the business that take interest in operated was not fine.

(34:00):
It was fundamentally pretty toxic. The Grunt Brothers didn't have
a environment alright cool. Yeah, I'm gonna quote now from
an article in The Mirror, which is not an ideal source,
but it's who entered them about this. And I don't
know why they would lie about something this shady and gross,
because it makes them seem like sex criminals. Quote. Some

(34:22):
of their customers fall for the belief that they can
have a real relationship with the women they see on screen.
But Tristan brazenly told the Sunday Mirror it's all a
big scam, and bragg that he doesn't feel any guilt
because no one cares and it's their problem, not mine.
The more punter's handover, the more models earn. Some women
will claim to have crippling university debt, a family member

(34:43):
in need of private healthcare, or a dream of moving
to the UK, sometimes even telling men they want to
meet them. Whatever the excuses, it is a lie, Tristan said,
so he tells it. He tells a story in this
article about this guy who wanted to give a cam
operator twenty dollars his life savings, and Tristan's like, and
I tried. I talked him out of it. I told him,

(35:05):
you know, he shouldn't do that. She was actually making
good money. And then he came back a couple of
months later and fell in love with another And this
time I was like, yeah, man, we'll take your money,
which definitely a lie. Tristan and Andrew Tate have never
turned down twenty grand that a desperate man offered them
for lies. But there's no way they're trying to absolutely

(35:27):
bread and butter. Yeah. Um, I am going to continue
that quote from the Mirror. But first, you know what
I am going to continue first is capitalism. I am.
I am keeping this nightmare engine alive on my own
by advertising for products on this podcast. So on your own.

(35:49):
That's it. That's I am. I am the lynchpin holding
the global economy together. Look after Facebook fell apart, it's
just me, baby, Oh my god, name another company, Sophie,
It's just this podcast. Just run the ads. He's out

(36:10):
of control. Uh, we are back. So um, I'm going
to continue that quote from the from the Sunday Mirror
of Tristan Tate being interviewed. He believes he is beyond

(36:32):
the reach of the authorities because of two lines in
the terms and conditions. He said, One is broadcasting is
for entertainment purposes only. That means if a model says
she has a sick dog or a sick grandma, it
doesn't have to be true. The next is that all
cash given the models is a voluntary sign of gratitude
for their time broadcasting. Now I'm not a lawyer. That

(36:55):
kind of sounds like the tick and their money. It
does sound like you're taking their money. That said, he
may be in the right there that the mirror did
a journalistic thing and they reached out to a lawyer
to be like, is this true? And the lawyer said maybe.
But also generally UK laws say that you can't defraud
people and take their money on fraudulent terms. But also

(37:16):
the laws haven't kept pace with technology. There's a good
chance he was in a legal gray area. They did
not get charged, so probably is fair to say they
were in enough of a legal gray area that they
were reasonably safe. And to be like, perfectly honest, I
suspect they could have done this indefinitely if Andrew Tate
hadn't been a sex criminal. Um, which is which is

(37:38):
what we're getting to here. Um. So, Andrew Tate later
wrote this on his personal website slash Shady Business, teaching
men to run their own webcam porn studios. This is
a thing he does later. Um, but this is how
he talks about his webcam business and how he makes
it work. How did I become rich webcam? I've been
running a webcam studio for nearly a game. I've had

(38:00):
over seventy five girls work for me, and my business
model is different than nine percent of webcam studio owners.
Over fifty of my employees were actually my girlfriend at
the time, and if all my girlfriends, none were in
the adult industry entertainment industry before they met me. My
job was getting women to fall in love with me. Literally,
that was my job. My job was to meet a girl,

(38:21):
go on a few dates, sleep with her, test if
she's quality, get her to fall in love with me
to where she'd do anything I'd say, and then get
her on webcam so we could become rich together. Whether
you agree or disagree with what I did with their loyalties,
submission and love for me doesn't matter. You cannot reject
the results, and the results are simple. My girlfriends would
do more for me than nine percent of men's wives
would do for them. So what does that's really gross?

(38:51):
And like voluntarily listed on his own site, It's just yeah,
he bragged about this. Now this is potentially him describing
sex trafficking right especially, that's what if you're if the
women are not getting Again, there's not like a law
that says you can't have someone fall in love with

(39:12):
you and then contract with them to do sex work. Right,
that's not a thing that there's a law against. However,
if they are not getting paid for it, and if
they are not being allowed freedom of movement, well then
what happens is that you have like entrapped them and
you are sex trafficking them. Right. This is what's called
law enforcement calls this the lover boy method, right, where

(39:35):
you get someone to fall in love with you. And
also this is this goes on. This is a very
old tactic in like shall we say pimping. Um, We're like, yeah,
you make a woman feel like or a person be
in love and dependent on you, and then you kind
of emotionally abuse them into doing sex work. This is
a thing that happens that is like a recognized part

(39:57):
of a criminal enterprise. UM. Now, obviously, getting charges based
on those words on his website is going to be
hard to do. UM. But just kind of the stuff
that he had published for a while was enough that
people at the time should have known that he was
up to a what was a likely illegal business. Now,
if you came across articles about Tight twenty two and

(40:20):
they went to any to tail about his webcam career.
The most you were likely to learn was what the
Mirror wrote here. After three years they moved to Romania,
saying the UK had gone downhill. They have women on
a number of CD sites. Operators take at cut and
the rest goes to the studio. So that's that's what
they claimed for years had happened, like you know, we

(40:40):
did it in the UK and then the UK got
woke and so we switched to Romania. That is not
what actually happened. So they started running this can business
in two thousand twelve, three years after two thousand twelve
and they moved to Romania. It's two fifteen now. Just
a few days ago after his arrest, a story dropped
made it clear why they actually left the UK, and

(41:02):
it had nothing to do with wokeness to the country
going downhill. Andrew Tate was arrested on suspicion of sexual
assault and physical abuse in two thousand and fifteen. Vice
broke the story quote two women told Vice World News
they were violently abused, one raped, the other repeatedly strangled
by Andrew Tate and that UK police in the Crown
Prosecution Service mishandled their case, leaving him free to rise

(41:25):
to global fame on the back of his unchecked misogyny.
Police took four years to pass their investigation to the
Crown Prosecution Service, whose job involves assessing whether there is
a realistic prospect of conviction, at which point the CPS
declined to prosecute. So that's the reality of why they
had to leave the UK. Fucking vile, disgusting human beings,

(41:47):
and it it makes the the timeline makes a lot
more sense when you know that, when he's like, yeah,
we had to bounce because you know, things just got
to woke for us in Romania. And he would also
he later made the claim that, like, I had to
leave Romania because in the UK a man can get
accused of rape for anything, right, and uh, you know

(42:08):
Romania it's much harder to get accused of rape. And
so I moved to Romanian not because I'm a rapist,
but because I like freedom. No, man, you were you
were accused of rape by multiple women um and then investigated,
and you decided to leave because you didn't know if
the UK was going to come for your ass at
some point. Um. And the story is actually a bit

(42:29):
more fucked up than that, because back in two thousand fourteen,
a woman who Vice refers to as Amelia filed a
police report alleging sexual and physical abuse by Tate. She
claims that she and Tate met in two thousand nine.
They were friendly for years until two thousand thirteen, which
is when Tate was transitioning away from kickboxing to webcam pimping.
The two decided to go out on a series of

(42:51):
dates at the end of that year, and after several weeks,
they were in her room when Andrew forced himself on her.
Now she describes him stopping like she tells him to
stop when he starts like trying to go to have sex,
and um, she tells him that she doesn't want to
have sex, and he tells her she She says that
he like sits quietly for a moment, and then she

(43:11):
asked him what's going on, and he says, I'm debating
whether I should rape you or not. What the oh boy, howdy,
it's um, it's bad. Within an instant, he changed who
he was. He wasn't the same Andrew that I knew.
That was funny that would make me laugh. It was
like his eyes went and I didn't have a clue
who that person was. Terrifying, disgusting. Oh that's that's horrible.

(43:42):
I'm so sorry that happened her. Yeah, and it's so.
Here's one of the things about this is she goes
to the cops. He rapes her, and it takes they
have after that point, she consents to sex. She says
a couple of times over the next six months um,
which is not uncommon in situations like this. But eventually

(44:05):
she goes to the police to make a complaint UM,
and the police are like, do you want to do
you want to proceed with charges, right, because that's an
option that you have in this case, And she decides, obviously,
I don't I hopefully I don't think I have to
explain this to this audience, but like, there are a
lot of horrible personal consequences that can come to charging

(44:27):
your rapist right to to pursuing the criminal charges, she decides,
And there is, and this seems like a positive things.
There's an option in the UK where you can just
log a complaint and say this guy raped me without
proceeding with criminal charges, which she decides she doesn't want
to do at this point, and so that's what she does. UM.
And then that this is again two, is when those

(44:49):
two women who worked in his cam studio, UM push
press charges against him and the police and this is
a positive step. It's about to get less positive. But
the police find out, oh, there's a report locked against
this guy two years earlier, and they reach out to
Amelia and they're like, more women have come forward saying
that this guy assaulted them. Do you want your charges?

(45:12):
Do you want your allegations basically to be added to
theirs in this case that we're building, right, um? And
she says yes, and she hands over her phone to
the cops, which contained numerous audio notes because she had
told Andrew and like texts and stuff like hey, you
know like you rape me. That's why I don't want
to know you anymore. And he had responded to her,

(45:33):
and he had responded to her using voice notes where
he admitted to what he had done. UM. And yeah,
I'm gonna play a couple of notes of Andrew Tate
UM here for you, because before we hear him in
his like fifteen year old boy influencer voice, we should

(45:55):
hear how he talks to somebody like Amelia when he
doesn't think it's going to be on the news? Am
I a bad person? Because the more you didn't like it,
the more I enjoyed it. I fucking loved how much
you hated it turned me on. Why am I like that? Why?
I am one of the most dangerous men on this planet.

(46:17):
Sometimes you forget exactly how lucky you were to get
sucked by me. Would you rather me pin you down
and make you do things you didn't like? Or would
you rather fun you didn't like that? I was thinking,
I can do whatever I want to. That's what it is.
I'm the smartest person on this fucking planet. Are you
seriously so offended? I strangled you a little bit. You
didn't fucking pass out. Chill the funk out, Jesus Christ.

(46:42):
I thought you were cool. What's wrong with you? Oh
my god? So that's not great. That's not great. That's
so upsetting, that's so upsetting. Yeah, that's pretty bad. He's
he's a pretty bad dude. And what's vile? Disgusting, despicable? This,

(47:08):
Like again, normally self diagnosis is the thing we avoid
on this but like, that's just very obvious textbook narcissism.
I am the smartest man in the world, you know,
like he is, It's not hard to see what's going
on with this guy, um, And I don't know his
dad or like how that all went down, But there's

(47:29):
there's there's this if you look at the way he
talks about his dad and his grandpa, there's this need
to like associate himself with greatness. Um. And I don't know,
like every everything that's going on here makes sense, but
it's also so bleak, um And I I don't know

(47:50):
that there's probably a better better writer and thinker than me.
My people to draw a more trenchant connection between the
kind of stuff I was talking about about out how
lack of connection to other men and two older men,
and how not knowing what your places in society leads
young men to feel disconnected and that that can be

(48:13):
the root of of of some bad behavior, and the
fact that Tate idolizes his dad and is separated from
him and becomes so needful to kind of convince others
of his greatness while using violence and threats against them.
I don't know that there's a connection there, um, but
it's it's I think kind of worth thinking about. I

(48:37):
guess in in in the same continuum. I don't know,
this is still stuff like that. I'm kind of muddling
through to UM. But it's it's not it's not surprising
to me that this guy has this, um, this kind
of obsession with his because that's what it's about, right.

(49:00):
It's it's never about like that he wanted, you know,
sex or whatever. It's about that. It's about power. It's
about power. He had this and it's about the fact
that she didn't want to have sex with him. Is
like an attempt from her to exercise agency, and no
one else in the world gets to exercise agency, just
Andrew Tate, right, Like that's the way this guy thinks

(49:23):
about things. UM, I don't know. There's a lot going
on there worth worth pondering. UM, And I guess we
will ponder it for a while while we wait for
part three of this series, where we will talk about
the fallout from these cases and the social media presence
that tape builds. When again, nobody knows this at that

(49:46):
I mean this, this this young woman knows it, and
a couple of police officers know it. But um, as
a spoiler, the police don't proceed with the charges. Um,
and in fact they it's really fucked up. Um. The
police say that they believe her, or Amelia says, what
she said to to Vice when they talked to her,
is that the police told her that they believed her claims,

(50:09):
but they couldn't go forward with the case because there
was a shred of doubt about Tate's guilt. Um. Now
there's a shred of doubt. And see it does seem
like he admitted it, he being a sexual predator. What
are we? What are we really cops? There's some fucked
up cop gas lighting here because they tell her like, look,

(50:30):
going through the process of of pressing charges against a
rapist is so traumatic to the woman that we don't
do it unless there's no shred of doubt. We're trying
to protect you from the ugly court, which is like
cop gas lighting is on another level. Um. But that's

(50:52):
I'm so sorry, Amelia, That's yeah, it's fucking Bleakum. This
whole story is bleak. And after this point, Andrew and
Tristan moved to Romania. They move their sex trafficking webcam
business to Romania, and we will pick up that story
in part three, where it gets a lot bleaker in
some ways, but also we get to make fun of

(51:13):
Andrew tape videos, so you know something to look forward to.
Take your wins where you can get them, kiddos, Um,
what do we? Who are we? Who are we here?
We're the bad boys and podcasting obviously. Uh well right, Robert,

(51:36):
you're I think I think both shows are actually sold out.
But you will be at s F Sketch Beest this
coming weekend and you'll be doing Behind the Bastard Show,
and you will also be doing Francesca Fiorentini. Yeahi's the
Bituation Room Show. Yeah, great? In episode out something why why? Yes, Robert,

(52:06):
it is a week from when we are recording that.
All right, well, we will finish recording the Andrew Tate
episodes and then I will figure out what the funk
I'm doing for this live show that apparently a bunch
of you assholes have decided to show up at. God
damn you, thank you all for buying tickets. Before we
close out, I want to thank again April Clark and

(52:27):
Grace Freud of Girl God The Girl Got Podcast. Um,
both great comedians. They have an upcoming show at JFO
Vancouver on February. People can get tickets for that at
Girl Gods Show dot com. They were on the early
version of part of this, but I had an emergency
and we had to bounce, And now we are recording
this late at night because it is the only way

(52:48):
that we can make this show work in a way
that is we are contractually obligated to. So thank you
April and Grace, Thank you Ian and Sophy for being
guests on my show last minute. And yeah, you're fucking welcome, Robert,
thank you, Thank you. Everyone else can go to hell though.

(53:11):
Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool
zone media dot com, or check us out on the
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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Part Two: The Andrew Tate Story