Sunday night, Hamadeh used his personal X account to retweet a missive from Tristan Tate, who with his brother Andrew faces sex trafficking and rape investigations in at least two European countries. The British-American brothers and so-called “wealth influencers” are notorious for espousing misogynistic viewpoints, including that wives belong to their husbands and should remain in the home.
Hamadeh’s personal account follows both brothers on X, where they have a combined 14.1 million followers. (Other Republican Arizona politicians, such as state Sen. Janae Shamp and Arizona House Speaker Steve Montenegro, also follow Andrew Tate, the more famous of the two.) And when 36-year-old Tristan Tate acerbically tweeted about the weekend’s “No Kings” protests — including a GIF of Anthony Fauci, the only man Tate said he’s seen “wield king like power” — Hamadeh smashed that retweet button.
Spokespersons for Hamadeh did not return a request for comment, nor did they answer questions about Hamadeh’s relationship with the Tates and whether the congressman agrees with their extreme views about women. (Indeed, no one from Hamadeh’s office has ever responded to a request for comment from Phoenix New Times, despite repeated attempts to get answers from him.)
It does not appear that either brother financially supported Hamadeh’s failed run for Arizona Attorney General in 2022 or his successful run for Congress last year. Hamadeh may simply be a Tate brothers fan, although that carries plenty of baggage on its own.
Andrew Tate is a 38-year-old former mixed martial arts fighter who has made a digital influencer career out of selling misogyny to an audience of men who can’t accept the idea of a world in which women are equal to them. Younger by two years, Tristan doesn’t keep as high a profile, though he seems to be in lockstep with his notorious older brother.
Andrew’s views on men and women aren’t particularly subtle. He has said that women are the property of men, stated that women should stay in the house and questioned why women are allowed to drive. He has also claimed that rape victims “bear responsibility” for being raped, according to NBC News, which earned him a ban from Twitter in 2017 that Elon Musk rescinded after buying the site years later. Various outlets reported that in one video, Andrew spoke about the violent ways he would keep a woman in line, saying he’d “bang out the machete, boom her in the face and grip her by the neck.” In the same video, he wondered aloud to this theoretical female: “What the fuck you gonna do when your face is collapsed and your fucking cheekbone is broken? You ain’t gonna do shit but cry.”
Tristan has parroted many of the same views. In an interview with Piers Morgan last year, he said he believes society has gotten worse “because of men losing the agency to discipline the children in the household and be seen as the figurehead.”
Tristan (left) and Andrew Tate (right) face sex trafficking and rape charges in the United Kingdom and Romania.
Andrei Pungovschi/Getty Images
Criminal charges
The brothers are now accused of putting that rhetoric into criminal action. In the United Kingdom, Andrew faces 10 charges related to three alleged victims for rape, a classification of crime called “actual bodily harm,” human trafficking and prostitution for financial gain. Tristan faces 11 charges related to one victim, including rape, human trafficking and actual bodily harm.According to a BBC report, several women said Andrew brutally raped them with a chilling enjoyment. “He started kissing me... and he just looked up at the ceiling and said, ‘I’m just debating whether I should rape you or not,’” one woman said. “Out of the blue, he just grabbed me by the throat, smashed me to the back of the bed, strangling me extremely hard.”
The woman said that Tate raped her and sent her incriminating messages afterward, including saying, “I love raping you,” in a text and saying in a vote note, “Am I a bad person? Because the more you didn’t like it, the more I enjoyed it.”
Four women have also sued Andrew in the U.K., claiming he raped and abused them. Both brothers have denied all the charges and allegations against them.
The British charges are on hold, though, until another criminal investigation into the brothers wraps up in Romania. In 2023, Romanian prosecutors indicted the brothers and two others on charges of forming an organized criminal group and trafficking women between countries. The charges include a rape allegation against Andrew. Investigators identified seven women who say the Tate brothers tricked them into appearing in porn videos online and kept them in a compound. The brothers have denied those charges as well.
The Romanian investigation has yet to go to trial, and the brothers won’t face a trial in the U.K. until it is over. Both brothers were banned from leaving Romania until earlier this year, when they were allowed to return to the United States. However, when they arrived in Florida in late February, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis said they were not welcome and the state’s attorney general opened a criminal inquiry into their activities.
That’s whose voice Hamadeh decided to amplify Sunday night, and whose viewpoints he decided he’d like to fill his social media feed. The congressman might want to remember his own post from Feb. 20, when he praised the Scottsdale Police Department and other agencies for a 12-day operation to arrest “sex buyers, child predators and individuals involved with the sex trade and trafficking.”
“There are few crimes more depraved than this,” Hamadeh tweeted from his official account at the time, “and we are grateful to law enforcement for getting these monsters off our streets.”
Unless they’ve got a sick Fauci burn to tweet, it seems.
