The Trump orbit has always attracted a certain breed of online personalities, but a new report shows just how deep the family’s relationship with the world of hyper-masculine internet influencers really runs — and how Barron Trump allegedly played a key role in pulling his father further into that space during the 2024 campaign.
According to reporting from The New York Times, Barron Trump allegedly chatted with accused rapist Andrew Tate about the influencer’s criminal charges and even received dating advice from one of Tate’s own associates. The tone of those conversations wasn’t exactly cautious or detached. Trump and Tate both agreed that the criminal case against the influencer in Romania — where he was accused of human trafficking and rape — was, in their eyes, an effort to silence him.
Justin Waller, a longtime Tate friend, told the Times that he sat in on the phone call and that he was the one who offered Barron dating advice. Waller also described attending a flashy dinner at Mar-a-Lago hosted by Barron, designed to connect the Trump heir with a crop of right-wing influencers who could help juice Donald Trump’s 2024 bid.
And according to senior Trump advisor Jason Miller, Barron wasn’t just playing host — he was strategizing. He pushed his father to appear on massive podcasts like The Joe Rogan Experience, tapping into audiences the mainstream campaign apparatus could never reach.
“Barron has been very involved in selecting or recommending, I should say, a number of the podcasts that we should do,” Miller said during the campaign.
“I got to tell you, hats off to the young man. Every single recommendation he’s had has turned out to be absolute ratings gold that’s broken the internet. He’s done a great job.”
With the family back in power, Waller told the Times that Tate has become a “big brother” to Barron and even a “third brother” to Andrew and Tristan. But this relationship didn’t spring out of nowhere. The Trump–Tate connection goes back nearly a decade, to 2016 — right after Andrew Tate was kicked off the UK version of Big Brother when video surfaced of him beating a woman with a belt. Both he and the woman said it was consensual, but the damage was done.
During the uproar, Donald Trump Jr. liked a pro-Tate tweet and soon invited the then-rising online personality to Trump Tower in 2017. From there, the relationship reportedly deepened.
“We still inbox each other every couple of days,” Tate said on The Unc Hour the following year.
The allegations surrounding the Tate brothers have only grown more serious. They now face 21 charges in the UK — including rape, actual bodily harm, and human trafficking — as well as charges in Romania for rape, human trafficking in continued form, and forming an organized gang to sexually exploit women. They also face a criminal investigation in the United States. They deny all accusations.
Even so, the ties between the Trump political machine and the Tates continued. Trump official Richard Grenell met twice with Romanian officials about their case, though he later insisted there was no “substantive conversation” aimed at getting the brothers released, according to The Independent. Eventually, Romania lifted its travel ban, allowing Andrew and Tristan Tate to return to the U.S. and Dubai.
“I had word from The Trump admin that theyre on top of things,” Tate wrote in a text seen by the Times. “Ive been told ill be free soon but Trump needs to see me in Miami.”
At one point, Tate even told reporters that he had spoken with Barron shortly after the attempted assassination of Donald Trump in the summer of 2024.
“I’m very close with the Trump family,” he said, according to the Times. “I look forward to, once I am free, being with Donald Trump in person and reminding him that he’s a bulletproof badass.”
After publication, Tate dismissed the Times story as “fake news.”
The picture that emerges is a strange fusion of political influence, internet fame, and men facing some of the most serious allegations imaginable — all converging around a teenager who had, until recently, been largely shielded from public scrutiny.
