Andrew Tate’s Carlson Interview Featured 15 Minutes of Anti-Trans Bile

What does a disgraced Fox News host talk about with an accused sex trafficker? Why, trans people, of course!

Evan Urquhart

metaphorically, this stock image of two men holding hands beside a cliff encapsulates the feelings of the interview

For 2.5 whole actual hours Tucker Carlson, who has been credibly accused of multiple acts of workplace sexual harassment, spoke with Andrew Tate, who is facing charges for rape and human trafficking. The video of Carlson’s interview showed the two speaking together in person in Romania, where Tate is under house arrest. It was the 9th in Tucker Carlson’s series of videos for Twitter, which has replaced his nightly white-supremcast on Fox News in the wake of his abrupt firing from the conservative news network.

In addition to his alleged criminal activities Tate is a former kickboxer and manfluencer who garnered additional attention for his social media presence by taking controversial positions holding women responsible for their own sexual assaults and, of course, taking occasional cheap shots at the trans community.

Carlson foreshadowed in his opening that his conversation with Tate would get around to transgender identity but it certainly took it’s time. His transphobic teaser was summarized by the Daily Caller, a website he co-founded before his stint as a Fox News personality:

screenshot from the Daily Caller

This did eventually pay off, but not until roughly the 2 hour mark.

During the first two hours of the unbelievably tedious interview, Tate presented a watered-down, self-serving version of the charges against him. He implied numerous times that they’d been trumped up to silence him. He made a running joke out of saying that he would never kill himself. with the subtext being that he might be found dead under suspicious circumstances for his criticism of the US government. Tate also outlined his vision of masculinity at great length, claiming to believe his vision is beneficial for young men who he contradictingly sympathized with and blamed for their own depression. While it’s a bit hard to follow, Tate seems to believe that men become depressed because they’re not allowed to be men, and the way to be a man is to simply decide to be one and stop paying attention to how depressed you are. That specifically includes being physically fit, working hard, pursuing excellence, making money, and being a strong leader.

Discussion of his time in prison, which he claims to have suffered manfully, Tate’s repeated claims that the charges are baseless and hints that they were orchestrated for political reasons, and extensive self-puffery about his masculinity took up most of the first two hours, though there were also digressions into areas such as COVID and climate change denial. Carlson fawned over every word, seeming completely enamored with the accused rapist and sex-trafficker sitting before him.

After a long misogynist riff on how women are “emotionally led,” don’t think for themselves, and are unhappy because they’re in need of leadership from a strong man, Tate blamed he idea that men and women are equal for the decline of marriage and the increase in “societal chaos.” At 1:59 of the 2:30 hour video he asked, seemingly rhetorically, “Where does it end?”

And Carlson answered, “Well it ends with the tranny thing.”

This led into about fifteen minutes (and thousands of words) of Tate discussing his views on trans people. Here’s a sample quote:

“I also think a large part of this transsexual movement, I think a large part of it, is a deliberate attack on us and our senses because they’re trying to convince us to ignore our eyes,” Tate said, “I do believe that is a bottom line, I think the bottom line of slavery are your own senses. Like, no matter what I’m told that it’s cold outside, I feel warm. That’s the bottom line. So once they can convince you that your senses are wrong, well then you’re completely open to the slave programming.”

This passage was a riff on a worldview Tate presented earlier in the interview, best described as conspiracy-adjacent. Repeatedly referencing the Matrix movie (but leaving out the fact that the directors are two trans women who have said the movie is a trans allegory), and encouraged Carlson to watch it, Tate said it provided a perfect allegory for a life where the real truth is concealed by shadowy authories who have brainwashed the public. While he spoke at length about how people’s minds are being manipulated and the news can’t be trusted, he declined to speak with any clarity about who the culprits or string pullers were, or what their aims might be. (All of this is, of course, a reference to “redpilling” which is a goofy notion used to radicalize overly-online weirdos into far-right ideologies.)

Tate offered a cure for all the shadowy mind-manipulation, which was to say “no,” something he claims is a sign of manhood. The specific thing he wants people to say no to is, apparently, trans women who are tall, muscular, or have angular facial features. In a later segment the accused sex-trafficker approvingly described the culture of Thai “ladyboys” a class of vulnerable transgender prostitutes who he praised for knowing their place and not displaying the arrogance of American transgender women.

“And I’ve always thought- no one’s ever mentioned that. Thailand has a bunch of ladyboys, right?” Tate said. “But if you say to a ladyboy Are you a man or a woman? she goes I’m a ladyboy … It’s kindof like an inbetween: It’s like it’s own thing.”

“Nobody over there is genuinely arguing that they’re actually female,” he continued. “Only in America are we doing that. And that’s what’s the craziest thing of all. Even if you truly truly believe you need to change gender, you truly believe it’s the right path for you, you’re not being psy-oped, you believe you’re going to be happy, you need to mutilate yourself, that’s all fine, but then to come along with the hubris and arrogance and tell me I have to pretend you’re something you’re not, biologically, that’s absolutely not only arrogant… You can’t tell me what I have to call you,”

Throughout this section of the interview Carlson encouraged Tate to stay on the topic of trans and LGBTQ+ people by showing the social media star video clips. One clip from an interview with Assistant HHS Secretary Admiral Rachel Levine, led to a Tate riff on how sorry he feels that trans people can never be happy. A later clip of a drag march in NYC during Pride this year showed young queer people were laughing, dancing, and chanting “we’re here, we’re queer, we’re coming for your children,” which Tate said was both entirely true because “the homosexual community cannot reproduce” and also that it was being done “for attention.”

Soon after this, Carlson seemed to suggest that violence against the LGBTQ+ community was be warranted. In response to Tate saying “What I don’t understand is why anyone- imagine if heterosexual men walked around naked saying we’re coming for the children?” Carlson answered, “Well someone gets shot. For good reason.” Tate responded positively to this, saying that sexual orientation was the only thing protecting gay people.

The 15 minutes on trans- and homophobia wrapped up with Tate declaring that if he was trans the US government would have insisted that Romania release him from jail and drop the charges of rape and sex trafficking.

“They would say, no, what you’re doing is abusive to the LGBT community, he must be removed from jail,” Tate said. “We’re the class that suffers the biggest- the biggest bigotry that exists in the Western world today.”