Earlier this afternoon, the BBC posted a video on YouTube of an interview they conducted last night with controversial social media influencer Andrew Tate. However, the 12-minute video is actually edited from a 40-minute sit-down that featured the BBC unable to prove the things they claim Tate said. However, despite his denials, I quickly found a video that proves the BBC right.
Some context: Tate was placed on house arrest in March after being held in a detention center in Romania while under investigation for human trafficking.
Anyone who has read my numerous articles on Andrew Tate knows that I strongly contest numerous things about him, but I’m also fair when discussing his legal situation.
For instance, Tate was originally arrested in April of 2022 and while no official charges have been made, he is still under house arrest. Romanian law allows authorities to place those under investigation in a detention center or under house arrest. Yet, after more than a year of being investigated, Romanian authorities have still found nothing on him.
Tate, because of his sexcam business, is not exactly a morally-rich man — though he will be quick to tell you that he is literally rich — and Romanian authorities likely felt that they can get him on something. Regardless of anyone’s opinion, it’s fairly obvious that thus far they have failed.
Enter the BBC.
They landed the first interview with Tate since his Romanian detention. Correspondent Lucy Williamson was sent to his home to conduct an interview that devolved into a combative back-and-forth with little substance. BBC’s mistake was that that their approach was almost entirely to push Tate on things he has said that they claim have negatively influenced youth.
They even introduced the segment by saying, “The BBC challenged him on whether his views about women — broadcast to his millions of online followers — harmed young people, as many teachers and police officers claim.”
Of course, this doesn’t mean that they weren’t gong to ask him about the serious allegations of rape against him, it just means he denies it, so they focus instead on challenging him on things he says.
It started off as a refreshingly straightforward interview. Here’s the first exchange:
Williamson: “We are doing an interview with you because you’re facing some very serious allegations – rape, human trafficking – and also because there is a great deal of concern of the things you say and the impact they have on young people and women.”
Tate: “I don’t think the concern is for things I say. I think the concern ifs for the level of influence I have and for the reach I have.”
Williamson: “Let’s start with the allegations. Have you raped anybody?”
Tate: “Absolutely not.”
Williamson: “Have you trafficked anybody?”
Tate: “Absolutely not.”
Williamson: “(Have you) exploited any women for money?”
Tate: “Absolutely not.”
Williamson “But you have admitted using emotional manipulation to get women to work in the webcam industry for you.”
Tate: “No.”
At one point, Tate actually says, “It’s very difficult for me to answer your in-depth questions because we’re sitting here inside the territory of Romania and I’m beholden to the Romanian legal system and I’m not gonna incriminate myself.”
Surprisingly, the interviewer did not push for clarification on his statement. Considering that to many people’s ears, hearing Tate say he finds it difficult to answer the question because he doesn’t want to incriminate himself strongly implies guilt. However, the interviewer simply asks the next question. Every journalist watching likely gasped at this oversight. It was, without a doubt, a wasted opportunity for Williamson who seemed, in that moment, to be focused on what her next question was going to be.
The interview then becomes very combative, with Tate even telling Williamson at one point, “I’m the boss here.”
After the smoke somewhat cleared, Williamson pointed out that women have accused him of emotional and psychological manipulation, adding that he has said that he gets girls to fall in love with him so that he can make them do what they say. She claims that he taught other men, through a video he had on his website, how to manipulate women, and accused Tate of coercion and emotional abuse.
Tate again denied this, and asked Williamson to provide the video, but Williamson erred by claiming that the website hosting the video was taken down, which Andrew Tate (accurately) says isn’t true. I think what she likely meant to say is that the video itself, which appeared in the exclusive paid course portion of his site, was taken down, but Tate didn’t need to bring this up, since Williamson did not correct her claim. Unfortunately, the BBC apparently also never tried to find any other version of that video — nor of any other video at all with Tate saying something similar — neither during the interview, not afterwards when they aired it.
Here at We Got This Covered, it took us but five minutes to find a video on YouTube where he does indeed say the very things that he told the BBC he never said. Things such as practicing emotional control over women and, as several former workers of his pointed out, how to use that control to then have them be one of his webcam girls and, furthermore, take an extreme amount of royalties from them.
The video can be found here, uploaded by Full Rev Media, a YouTube channel with just 43 subscribers. In the video, Tate explains that when he first set up his webcam business, he had 75 different women working for him at a total of four different locations. He then condensed this to 15 women. “Me and my brother made a lot of money doing that,” he added. Keep in mind these are women who are agreeing to sexually exploit themselves for private online users, who then pay the women for private NSFW webcam sessions.
Andrew then says that the course he gave on his website was teaching people how to do this. He explains, “It was me teaching people how I managed females in those scenarios. How I controlled their emotions. How I convinced them to work and give me most of their money. How I convinced them to share me with other women. Why they obeyed me.”
Tate’s mention of emotional control, and his offer to teach men how to convince women to do such work and to hand over a large portion of the money they make, show the type of man he is — something the BBC failed to illustrate during their interview. In short, they failed to bring evidence to back up their claims, evidence that took us five minutes to find.
If you’re wondering why Tate added that he teaches men how to manipulate women like he does, it’s imperative to running such a business. It all but proves that he is making serious emotional connections with these women, then convincing them to let him make such connections with other women. This is the key to his business, because he knows that his words alone won’t convince anyone to be a webcam girl. He needs to get them to trust him. It’s indefensible, and are a part of the accusations he faces.
However, the BBC’s inability to predict what Tate’s answers would be, coupled with believing that reading statements would be evidence, proves that they utterly failed in their preparation for the interview. Their failures, just like the failures of Romanian authorities, all play a significant role in helping Andrew Tate grow in popularity because, to the less-knowledgeable eye — Tate then comes across as being right.
To his millions of followers, whose less-knowledgeable eyes may be better described as “willingly blind,” Tate may as well be right, and that’s plain wrong.