Never bend the knee to the mob.
Controversial influencer Andrew Tate and his brother, Tristan, are firing back at Guy Fieri after the Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives host issued an apology earlier this week for shaking their hands at a UFC fight this past weekend.
Video on social media showed Fieri greeting the Tate brothers during UFC 327 in Miami:
Andrew Tate is certainly a polarizing figure. Tate has gained fame by pushing a so-called alpha male lifestyle, which is basically just being a scumbag and treating women like trash. He’s been involved in various legal controversies, including sexual assault and rape allegations, and he even describes himself as a misogynist. And while they’ve never been criminally charged, there are also allegations of human trafficking and organized crime… so generally that’s not the type of person that most celebrities want to be associated with.
So when fans of Guy Fieri saw the Mayor of Flavortown interacting with Tate, you can pretty much guess the response. And after the outrage online, Fieri issued an apology separating himself from Andrew Tate and his brother, while claiming that he didn’t know who they were:
“I’m seeing all of your comments about the photo from Saturday’s UFC event and all I can say is that I’m devastated. I was there to see the fights and when I was walking through the venue, the Tate brothers stood up and said hello and that’s when the exchanged happened.
I did not know them or about them before that moment. I’ll never pretend to be a perfect person but let me be crystal clear, I do not know the Tate brothers nor do I support them in any way.”
But the apology didn’t sit well with the Tate brothers, with Tristan taking to social media to call out Fieri as a “washed up celebrity chef.”
And their attorney Joe McBride also issued a statement to TMZ taking aim at Fieri, claiming that the chef knew exactly who the Tate brothers were:
“McBride says Fieri was “pressured into his pathetic capitulation” by the same people who “spent years manufacturing a case against two innocent men. They are not interested in justice. They are interested in control. And Guy Fieri just showed them it works.”
(He also said that Fieri looks like he sits when he pees).
Honestly, the whole thing is pretty ridiculous. Issuing an apology for saying hi and being friendly to somebody in passing, regardless of who it is, is pretty lame. And so is the mob getting mad and calling on Food Network to cancel Fieri for such a brief interaction. I don’t really care how you feel about the Tate brothers or Fieri, but trying to get somebody canceled for a 10-second video clip of people shaking hands is the kind of stuff that I thought we had moved past.
