Shelagh Fogarty clashes with caller who says Andrew Tate has 'empowered masculinity’

30 December 2022, 15:29 | Updated: 30 December 2022, 21:26

Shelagh Fogarty challenges this LBC caller who says Andrew Tate has 'empowered masculinity'

This is the moment Shelagh Fogarty challenged a LBC caller who said that Andrew Tate has "empowered masculinity".

Andrew Tate, a former cage fighter, was detained at his home in Romania earlier this morning as part of a human trafficking investigation.

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In a heated exchange with Shelagh Fogarty, Jonathan from Croydon said Tate has had a positive impact on his young audience by promoting self-accountability and telling them to go to the gym, arguing: “What is more important in life?”

While Shelagh agreed that discipline and commitment are important values to teach men and women, she pointed out Andrew Tate’s most popular content encourages physical and mental abuse of women.

She quoted a well-known TikTok video in which Tate was asked how he’d respond if a girlfriend accused him of cheating: “I’ll bang out the machete, boom, in her face, grab her by the neck,” the influencer had announced.

Jonathan angrily replied that “what he says and what goes through people’s heads are two different things,” and that there has been no evidence of women reporting Tate for being violent towards them.

Shelagh mentioned the experience of a previous caller – a mother of a 13-year-old boy – who noticed her son absorbing the misogynistic messages of Tate’s content, but Jonathan repeated that Tate’s most inflammatory comments are meant in a jokey way.

Shelagh Fogarty challenges this LBC caller who says Andrew Tate has 'empowered masculinity'

Jonathan then told Shelagh about his personal journey following Andrew Tate, which led him to quit his job and start working for the influencer’s company, Hustlers University, where “verified millionaires will teach you how to become wealthy”.

When pressed by Shelagh, Jonathan gave a vague description of his job calling it "methods of creating wealth”. The caller said he’s been able to retire his mother from the money he’s made.

Then Jonathan began a passionate speech about how people like Andrew Tate are silenced and taken to court, to which Shelagh interrupted to tell him that the matter is in the hands of the Romanian police.

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