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What happens when you put two of the world’s most outspoken commentators together? Two-and-a-half hours of self-congratulation, tedious repetition and outright lies, it transpires. Tucker Carlson jetted off to Romania to join Andrew Tate for a sit-down chat at his home on the outskirts of Bucharest, where the influencer remains under house arrest. Last month, the 36-year-old king of toxic masculinity was charged with rape, human trafficking and forming a criminal gang to exploit women. However, he offered Carlson and his loyal ‘Tucker on Twitter’ viewers a very different version of the allegations against him. Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter The former Fox News poster boy asked the self-styled “top G” to explain the accusations made against him. Tate responded by saying he’d been charged with “convincing” women to get TikTok. “I'm charged with being the head of an organised criminal group, which is in charge of recruiting girls to make TikTok videos, to steal the money from the TikTok views,” he told his sympathetic interviewer. He then elaborated: “The overall charge is that there's an organised criminal group [...], I'm the head of it. My brother is below me, and we use the loverboy method to convince women to do TikTok videos to make money so that we can steal the TikTok money.” What he means by the so-called “loverboy method” is when a man seduces young, vulnerable girls and boys over a period of time in order to sexually exploit them later on. "So, just to be clear, you are not accused of pandering, of pimping, of forcing women to have sex with anybody?" Carlson then asked. "No,” Tate replied. “Not forcing them to have sex, not for restraining their movement, not stopping them from living a full life, but the fact that we are somehow convincing them to have TikTok." We’d like to take this opportunity to “be clear” ourselves. Tate and his brother Tristan, 34, are charged with some of the most serious crimes imaginable. Last month, Tate was served with legal papers by lawyers representing four of his alleged victims who have accused him of rape and sexual assault. The four women, in their late 20s and early 30s, are pursuing civil proceedings against the former kickboxer over alleged offences occurring between 2013 and 2016 while he was still living in the UK, The Guardian reports. The legal letter sets out the four women’s accusations against him, including violent rapes, serious physical assaults, and controlling and coercive behaviour. One of the women claimed that after meeting Tate in 2014, he brutally assaulted her. She said: “While having sex, he began to choke me and choked me so hard that I lost consciousness. I thought I was going to die. When I woke up, he was continuing to rape me. It is difficult to say that because it is so upsetting, but that is what it was.” Meanwhile in Romania, prosecutors also confirmed last month that seven women had come forward with allegations against the Tate brothers, including some who say they were “misled” by “false claims of marriage and love”. The pair are accused of forming an organised crime group in early 2021 to commit human trafficking in Romania, the UK, the US and other countries. The alleged victims were later taken to buildings in Romania’s Ilfov county where they were intimidated, placed under constant surveillance and control and forced into debt, a statement from the prosecutors said. The two men then allegedly forced the women to engage in pornography which was later shared on social media. One of the alleged victims says she was raped twice in March 2022, according to the statement. Both Tate and Tristan vehemently deny the accusations against them and, in his interview with Carlson, the former went so far as to say they’d been fabricated by the media. He told the right-wing host: “The girls have come forward and said, ‘This is insane, you've just picked us because we're near Andrew and we're his friends’.” He continued: “But they (meaning the powers that be) are like, ‘Nope, you’re a victim, no matter what you say. We’re deciding you’re a victim.” He went on to accuse the “media machine” of offering thousands of pounds in bribes to anyone willing to badmouth the Tates. “The media machine, which works hands in hands with the justice machine [...] offered bribes effectively,” he told Carlson. “They'd call up and say, if you have anything bad to say about Andrew, we can pay you $50,000 for the story.” Suffice it to say, lawyers for four of the victims would categorically rubbish his outlandish claims. After serving the 36-year-old with the legal papers, one of the representatives for the women said: “Despite Tate’s outrageous claims that these women aren’t even real, on reading the papers, he should now recall how real they are. “Talk of the ‘Matrix’ and ‘false flags’ hold no weight in court. The survivors look forward to seeing him there.” Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

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Nigel Farage’s appearance on I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here this year has been hotly anticipated, with the divisive Brexiter reported to be earning a whopping £1.5m to go on the show. However Farage, 59, is only the most controversial contestant to enter the jungle since, well, last year’s edition of the show. Producers of the hit ITV series, which entered its 23rd edition last night, have made quite the habit of getting contentious names to do Bushtucker trials. Here are the six most controversial. Matt Hancock Matt Hancock resigned as health secretary in disgrace in 2021, after it emerged he had broken his own Covid-19 lockdown guidance by kissing his aide, Gina Coladangelo, at work. Eighteen months later, the man who regularly appeared on our lockdown TV screens telling us to “stay at home” was back on the telly, doing I’m A Celebrity. His appearance in the jungle caused quite a stir, with campmates grilling him over his response to the pandemic. He also sparked hundreds of Ofcom complaints during his 30 days in the jungle. Whether it was a success or a failure is debatable. Hancock came third, earning a reported £320,000 for his stint on the reality show. However, he also lost his place in the Tory party, and drew criticism from the Prime Minister and MPs across the political spectrum. Gemma Collins It's not just politicians on this list! Gemma Collins, star of The Only Way Is Essex, just couldn’t hack it, and only made it three days in the jungle. At the time the 41-year-old said “jungle life is not for me” and quipped that “people who murder get treated better than this”. Viewers in 2014 were left disappointed after Collins gave them several memorable moments. That included stating the obvious while talking to another campmate about her reasons for leaving. “I’ve found it really difficult,” she told another campmate. “I love myself too much to put myself through this.” Stanley Johnson Remember the days when Boris Johnson was just a bumbling former mayor of London who fronted the Vote Leave campaign? That was when his father, Stanley, went on I’m A Celebrity in 2017, aged 77. Stanley is a former Conservative MEP himself, and was the oldest person ever to go on the show. He sparked a friendship with Georgia “Toff” Toffolo, of Made In Chelsea fame, and made it 18 days into the show. Speaking about his experience last year, Stanley said: “Get your hand up quick – Ant or Dec, I was never able to distinguish between them – they come in and… you’ve got to get your hand up because if you don’t, you miss the chance to eat a bull’s testicle for example.” Gillian McKeith Gillian McKeith was an iconic contestant on I’m A Celebrity, partly because she just kept getting voted in to do Bushtucker trials. The TV personality rarely succeeded in winning any stars and even fainted during one of the trials – but the public were undeterred. Perhaps it was something to do with her pseudoscientific ideas around nutrition, which include the detox diet, colonic irrigation (you don’t want to know), and examining people’s poo to work out their illnesses. It’s also worth pointing out that she has no qualifications in nutrition or medicine, and until 2007 used the title “Doctor” on her TV shows. Since going on the show, she has also been slammed for promoting Covid-19 conspiracy theories and anti-vaccine views. Yikes. Nadine Dorries Nadine Dorries was the first sitting MP to make it onto I’m A Celebrity in 2012, meaning she has a lot to answer for. She starred alongside boxer David Haye and Pussycat Dolls singer Ashley Roberts, but only made it 11 days into the show before getting voted off. However, Nads’ controversy didn’t stop there. She was suspended from the Tory party when she got back to the UK for failing to tell the Conservative chief whip of her plans to appear, and failing to declare the fees she received. She said of Farage’s entry into the jungle: “I think Nigel will do very, very well. “He’s got the chutzpah, he’s got the personality, I think he’ll do very well.” Lembit Opik Liberal Democrat MP-turned-serial reality TV star Lembit Opik was voted off I’m A Celebrity early in its 2010 series. That was not before both he and Shaun Ryder were bitten by a snake during a Bushtucker trial, however. While he wasn’t too popular on the show, he also made it onto celebrity editions of The Apprentice and Come Dine With Me. Some people just love the grift, it seems. How to join the indy100's free WhatsApp channel Sign up to our free indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.