For all the norms Donald Trump flouted in his first term, his approach to filling out his administration was familiar. He rooted around the same sets of professions as his predecessors, hiring lawyers, CEOs, academics, and military leaders, among others. Liberals may not have liked his picks—Jeff Sessions for attorney general, say, or Michael Flynn for national security adviser—but regardless of ideology, most of his top advisers had recognizable credentials. In his second term, Trump has found a new talent pool to draw from: podcasters.

In the past week, Trump has tapped two podcasters, Dan Bongino and Graham Allen, for high-ranking jobs in his administration. Bongino, who hosts one of the most popular right-wing podcasts in the country, will become the deputy director of the FBI. Allen, of the Dear America Podcast, will serve as a top communications official at the Defense Department. Even accounting for their unconventional backgrounds, their appointments are surprising. Each has used his platform to trade in extreme conspiracist beliefs. On his show, Bongino has claimed that the pipe bombs found near the Capitol on January 6, 2021, were actually an “inside job,” that the results of the 2020 presidential election were false, and that checks and balances in the government matter less than “power.” (Though a former Secret Service agent, Bongino has no previous experience at the FBI—a departure from those who have held the role in past administrations.) Allen has reportedly claimed that climate change is part of a liberal plot to control people and has called Taylor Swift “a witch and a devil.”

Bongino and Allen, neither of whom responded to requests for comment, are part of a cohort of right-wing media figures who have been assigned top roles within the administration. That includes Darren Beattie, the founder of the conspiracist website Revolver News, who joined the State Department, and Pete Hegseth, the former Fox News host who is now secretary of defense. Many, if not most, of these figures earned Trump’s loyalty by using their platforms to be obsequious stewards of MAGA—in effect, creating a quasi–state media. But as these figures make the move to government, the Trump administration is also now becoming a media-run state.

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It’s hardly unprecedented for media journalists to make the jump into politics—especially in communication roles. In his first term, Trump picked Steve Bannon, the former head of Breitbart News, as his chief strategist, and then–CNBC host Larry Kudlow as the head of the National Economic Council. In 2008, Jay Carney left Time to join Barack Obama’s administration, eventually becoming the president’s press secretary. But something odder is going on now within the Trump administration: a breakdown of the barriers between media and government.

Trump’s recent appointments are only part of the melding. Consider the likes of Charlie Kirk, who doesn’t have an official government position but still seems to hold influence. In November, Politico reported that Kirk, the Turning Point USA founder and right-wing media figure, advised Trump on whom he should select for significant roles in his then-forthcoming administration. Jack Posobiec, a right-wing influencer who rose to prominence by pushing conspiracy theories such as Pizzagate, was invited by Pentagon officials to travel on Hegseth’s first trip overseas. He then claimed to have joined Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on a trip to Ukraine, meeting with the country’s leader, Volodymyr Zelensky.

The right-wing media’s formal and informal roles in the administration mark a new kind of singularity. The podcasters now do policy and dabble in politics. And some right-wing politicians, including Ted Cruz and Dan Crenshaw, have their own podcasts. So do some politicians on the left, such as California Governor Gavin Newsom, who announced a new show this week. But on the right, politicians and media figures more explicitly mingle and work toward the same goals.

That is especially the case now that the Trump administration has barred media outlets including the Associated Press from covering many White House events, while welcoming in right-wing media figures such as Lara Logan. Although Fox News and Newsmax have cut ties with Logan for her extremist views, she was recently included in a State Department listening session. Similarly, yesterday, the Department of Justice chose to first give documents regarding the investigation of Jeffrey Epstein to right-wing influencers—including Posobiec and Chaya Raichik, who runs Libs of TikTok, a high-profile right-wing account on X—instead of actual journalists. (The documents reportedly contain little new information.)

This blurring is indicative of a substantive shift in how the contemporary right operates. The conservative media ecosystem has long functioned as the id of the right wing. But in the media-state singularity, there is not even the pretense of space between the two worlds. President George H. W. Bush hosted Rush Limbaugh overnight in the White House, in a likely attempt to ingratiate himself with the radio host. Trump doesn’t need to do such a thing, because the modern equivalents of Limbaugh are inside his administration as high-ranking staff members. (After Limbaugh’s death, in 2021, Bongino took over his slot on many radio stations.)

The practical effect of this union is an ongoing rightward lurch. That the conservative media has infiltrated the White House explains some of the current administration’s policies—proposed mass deportations, vindictive tariffs, attempts to gut entire federal agencies. The new direction of the executive branch is a far-right podcaster’s fever dream. As Bongino posted in November: “We are the media now.” Since the election, the phrase has become popular among an online right distrustful of legacy news outlets. It’s only partially correct. Right-wing influencers such as Bongino are the media to swaths of America. They are also now the government itself.

Andrew Tate is not a subtle man. Although he denies all of the criminal allegations against him—which include human trafficking, rape, and money laundering—he constantly and loudly proclaims his misogyny and fascination with violence. Whatever else you might say about the kickboxer turned right-wing-manosphere influencer, he is not a hypocrite. In public, he has said that women “bear responsibility” for sexual assault. In private, he reportedly told one woman whom he’d been dating, “I love raping you.”

This is the guy who landed in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, this week, after his plight was taken up by influencers and fixers from the movement to “Make America great again.” Until this week, Andrew and his brother, Tristan, had been banned from leaving Romania, where both are under investigation. President Donald Trump claimed Thursday that he knew nothing about the brothers’ release, even though his special envoy, Richard Grenell, had previously discussed their case with Romanian officials. The Tates’ presence in Florida looks like a reward to the manosphere, which helped draw male voters to Trump. It’s also a signal that MAGA world looks after its own.

To most adults, Andrew, the alpha Tate brother, cuts a ludicrous figure, with his cigars, frequently bared chest, and penchant for sockless loafers. But he is a hero to millions of teenage boys and young men, who both consume and spread his content, despite his seeing them as stupid marks to be exploited. At his peak, Tate supported his flashy lifestyle by encouraging his young male fan base to join his “War Room” and sign up for worthless courses at his “Hustlers University.” (He once offered a “PhD”—a “pimping hoes degree.”)

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The Tate brothers, who are dual U.S.-British citizens, were awaiting trial in Romania over sex-abuse and trafficking allegations by more than 40 women, many of whom worked as performers for their webcam business. (Tristan, like his brother, denies all wrongdoing.) According to the Romanian authorities, they used the “loverboy” method to recruit these women, “misrepresenting their intention to enter into a marriage/cohabitation relationship and the existence of genuine feelings of love.” By Andrew’s own admission, the women were then confined to his compound outside Bucharest and set to work in a “scam” operation soliciting money from men online. The youngest of the alleged victims groomed into working for the webcam operation was 15. According to prosecution documents leaked to the BBC, an audio recording captures Tristan Tate saying he will “slave these bitches,” while one complainant says that Andrew told her, “Shut up you whore, you will do as I say.” The Tates are supposed to return to Romania as the case against them progresses, but without American help the authorities there cannot force the brothers to do so. An outstanding European arrest warrant against them, issued to British police after four women made a civil claim against the brothers in the U.K., is also now worthless without U.S. cooperation.

“Getting an alleged human trafficker and rapist to the U.S. is really batshit,” Matt Shea, a co-author of the book Clown World: Four Years Inside Andrew Tate’s Manosphere, told me. “What does the MAGA movement like about the Tates? They helped them get elected, radicalizing young men by preaching extreme misogyny, and a form of conservatism, and distrust of the courts, journalism, and mainstream institutions.”

Although Grenell denies officially lobbying the Romanian government on behalf of the brothers, and the Romanians have said there was no “pressure” applied to them, influential figures in MAGA world have long championed the Tate brothers. In 2022, Elon Musk reinstated Andrew’s Twitter account, five years after he was removed from the platform for misogyny. (He remains banned by YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram.) In 2023, Tucker Carlson conducted a sympathetic interview with Andrew, presenting him as an antidote to the “mass conversion therapy” of boys into passive, feminized sheep. “Tate’s view is that men want respect above all; it’s how they’re wired,” said Carlson. “In order to get respect, men must become worthy of it. They must become more impressive—wake up early, work as hard as you can, stay sober, find God.”

This is a gross mischaracterization of Tate’s rhetoric, of course—painting him as a faintly edgy role model with a strong work ethic, when he is in fact a bullying sexist. Still, at least the God bit is true: Tate announced that he had converted to Islam in 2022.

If the sex-trafficking allegations weren’t so bleak, there would be something irresistibly comic about people like Carlson trying to defend Andrew Tate and his brother as pious avatars of downtrodden modern manhood, only for the Tates to keep popping up and reiterating that they really do love pimping those hoes.

The Tates’ outlook is as eclectic as it is extreme. On the day of the October 7 attacks in Israel, Andrew announced that “Israel forced 5 vaccines in everyone’s arm. Forced. Rather live in Palestine and own my blood. Allah Akbar.” The Trump administration’s apparent decision to help someone like him sends a powerful signal across MAGA world: All that matters is loyalty. Blameless Haitian immigrants in Ohio are cat-eating monsters, but Andrew Tate, an alleged human trafficker, is one of us. Muslims in northern England are child-raping savages, but we should defend this Muslim because he mocks feminists on the internet. We’ll pose tastelessly with the case files on Jeffrey Epstein, as if they’re prizes on a game show, but this guy—you get the idea. “Are they guilty?” matters less than “Are they on our side?” This is the logic of a crime family, not a political movement.

The Tates have always framed any allegations against them as persecution. “They want me to serve time for tweets,” Andrew posted on February 17. “None of the charges against me were ever real.” Their true crime, in their telling, is not human trafficking or sexual abuse, but anti-wokeness. Just last month, Trump’s personal lawyer—and now White House adviser—Alina Habba appeared on a podcast with Andrew, where she likened his legal troubles to those of her boss. “I sympathize with you because I think you go through a lot of the same ‘Show me the person, I’ll find the crime’ that President Trump has gone through,” Habba told Tate.

“Tate is a very strong ally in the creation of this myth of persecution against anyone who isn’t ‘woke,’ which is very convenient for MAGA, who are trying to characterize any legal move against them as lawfare or judicial activism,” Shea told me. “That’s crazy because at the heart of this are dozens of alleged victims of the worst crimes imaginable. The Trump administration has said nothing about those women or the case itself.” The Tate brothers, ever alert for a viral trend, have recently taken to saying that the investigation against them is funded by USAID.

Not everyone on the right is buying their act. “The way conservatives and conservative organizations respond to Andrew Tate arriving on US soil will tell you everything you need to know about them,” The Daily Wire’s Jeremy Boreing wrote on X when the news broke of the brothers’ departure from Romania. “Any organization or host who embraces him is engaged in far worse than simple grift, though it is that.” Florida Governor Ron DeSantis—who has a frosty relationship with the Trump White House—said he had not been informed in advance that the two human-trafficking suspects would end up in his state. “Florida is not a place where you’re welcome with that type of conduct,” he added.

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Now, that isn’t quite true: The Sunshine State is currently home to Russell Brand, another British right-wing influencer who is also under investigation for alleged sex offenses in his home country. (He has denied the accusations.) Andrew Tate has already been invited to speak by the Tampa Bay Young Republicans. “We’re old enough to remember when a ‘Convicted Felon’ won the Presidency,” the group’s X post noted.

Indulging the Tate brothers to own the libs is an act of pure nihilism. The Tate brothers are a uniquely malevolent force on the viral internet. Denouncing them should be the easiest test of moral seriousness imaginable, and yet it’s a test that many online influencers are failing in real time. Then again, perhaps we shouldn’t be that shocked that much of the MAGA movement would embrace a boastful bully accused of multiple sexual offenses, who once ran a scammy university. After all, look at who they put in the White House.