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.

Rebecca jumped into the spotlight with the success of her show ‘Maggie'

Netizens criticize Rachel Lindsay's stance on the Taylor Swift Effect on the NFL

Eminem has had 10 studio albums in the top 10 of the Billboard 200, out of which 9 have been No. 1

Teresa Giudice shares photo from her daughters Gabriella and Milania's prom night

Azealia Banks has hit out at Troye Sivan in a homophobic rant on social media, all because Sivan complimented her song ‘212’. Sivan was speaking as part of an interview with Spotify when he was asked what his go-to “pre game banger” was, and he said he was a fan of Banks’s 2012 hit. It seemed like Sivan was paying a harmless compliment to the track, but Banks didn’t respond as you might have expected. Instead, she hit out at Sivan and said he didn’t have a “clue” about her experiences in the music industry. “This is these white kids’ weird way of apologizing for bandwagoning. Having no clue of the kind of shit happening to me behind the scenes in the industry,” she wrote. Banks wasn’t finished there either, writing: “I’m not impressed by any of these people (who I’ve never met in person nor had a conversation with me) not having the audacity to be as public and loud with their apology as they were with using their platform to cast judgment as if a singular me was an important social justice issue. “I would REALLY appreciate all of these f*ckin civilian ass bitches to stop mentioning me, stop dancing to my s**t in the club if you’re not going to treat me like a human and take back all the unfounded bullshit you all used ur platforms to perpetuate.” It’s far from the first time Banks has faced criticism after going on a rant on social media, but the slamming of Sivan seemingly came out of knowhere. Things really took a turn when she called him a “peadophile”, too. “And your a late condescending expired Twink anyway b**ch. We’ve been past 212,” Banks said in another post. “Trying ur hardest to old on to the f*cking weak ass pedophilia x incest aesthetic - perpetuating that underlying double standard that somehow pedophilia practicedamongst men is somehow okay… that fueled ur trash ass music in the first place.” She went on to say: “Give it up, puberty hit that ass and made u a doofy looking young man.” Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter How to join the indy100's free WhatsApp channel 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

The Max catalogue is deep. Seriously deep. Deep enough to drown in, if humans could

'This is me looking at these photos for 184882822 min,' a fan said about the woman seen behind Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce's photo

The Writers Guild of America and Hollywood studios have agreed to meet on Friday to resume negotiations after the union has been on strike for more than 100 days, a landmark labor action that has crippled the entertainment industry.

Jonathan Cohen posted a photo with Mayim Bialik cozied up next to him under a tent surrounded by artificial flowers and books

Cher performed her a rendition of her new single 'DJ Play A Christmas Song' at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade

Jenna Bush Hager passionately gave viewers bold dating advice while asking them to stop going back to their exes