Cardi B hits back at former UFC fighter who compared her to Andrew Tate

Controversial influencer was permanently banned from Facebook, Instagram and TikTok for violating guidelines

Cardi B has responded to a former UFC fighter who defended controversial influencer Andrew Tate by comparing him to her.

Tate – who was recently banned from Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok – has gained notoriety on social media for his controversial opinions, many of which have been described as “misogynistic”.

The 35-year-old former kickboxer previously expressed opinions that women “can’t drive”, that 18-year-old women are “more attractive than 25-year-olds because they’ve been through less d***”, and that women should “shut the f**k up, have kids, sit at home, be quiet and make coffee”. In 2017, Tate also claimed that rape survivors should “bear responsibility” for their attacks.

On 18 August, former UFC and MMA fighter Jake Shields took to Twitter to publicly defend Tate when he wrote: “People are freaking out about young boys looking up to Andrew Tate but totally fine with young girls looking up to Cardi B and the Kardashians”.

“Tate’s main message is stop being lazy and making excuses and go work hard and get in shape and make money,” he added. “Cardi’s is go do drugs, f**k random men and go through life as a brain dead moron”.

Cardi B responded to Shields’ on Saturday in a since-deleted tweet: “I’m married, I don’t smoke weed, I don’t pop pills, I don’t do coke, I’m a mom of two kids and I do a lot of charity work…but hey let me put cardi into it to defend a man who defend misogyny and rape”.

A spokesperson for Meta confirmed to The Independent on 19 August that Tate was removed from Facebook and Instagram for “violating its policies” and cited Meta’s guidelines on “Dangerous Individuals and Organisations”. Soon after, the former Big Brother contestant was also removed from TikTok for violating the social media platform’s policies.

TikTok confirmed it permanently banned an account belonging to Tate as part of an ongoing investigation to remove content that violates its policies. “Misogyny is a hateful ideology that is not tolerated on TikTok. We’ve been removing violative videos and accounts for weeks, and we welcome the news that other platforms are also taking action against this individual,” a spokesperson told The Independent.

Although Tate’s personal account has been banned, a majority of the viral videos of Tate are shared by fan pages. TikTok has said it is using technology to remove duplicated clips of Tate’s content from the platform altogether and is reviewing new content as it is shared.