The MAGAsphere embraced Brand not despite but because of the allegations, viewing them as evidence of political persecution.
When Russell Brand was first accused of sexual assault in 2023, the actor-comedian’s fan base and newly acquired allies in the MAGAsphere rallied around him, decrying the allegations as political persecution against a man who dared to speak up against Covid restrictions, vaccine mandates, and censorship.
Many of those same allies doubled down in 2025 when law enforcement in the U.K. brought criminal charges against Brand over those same allegations.
On Monday, Brand’s right-wing celebrity status was put to the test when he was sentenced to ten-and-a-half years in prison for raping one woman and sexually assaulting three others. He was acquitted of three other charges. His trial involved allegations from six women from 1999 to 2009.
Judge Joel Bennathan told Brand that he showed a “casual and arrogant disregard” for any woman who said “no” to him.
“About 20 years ago, Russell Brand, you were becoming famous,” Bennathan said. “You were clever — and in many people’s eyes, funny and charismatic. You had also become a sexual predator.”
Even as Brand was sentenced to a decade in jail for his crimes, some on the American right were still defending him.
Megyn Kelly defended Brand after his conviction, insisting that he is a changed man and casting doubt on the sexual assault accusations.
“I genuinely believe, sitting here today, that Russell has changed his life,” she continued. “I believe he dearly loves his wife Laura, his children, and, as I said, I think he has found God and he’s asked for forgiveness from a lifestyle that he completely rejects now.”
She recalled interviewing him in the past and being “totally charmed by him.”
“I had a very difficult time believing that he was capable of rape, as I do right now,” she added.
On Monday, Elon Musk replied to a post on X about Brand’s potential sentence and said, “Unjust.”
Commentator and podcast host Tim Pool suggested the evidence was insufficient to justify imprisoning Brand. “Insane to convict somebody with no evidence,” he said on one of the sexual assault charges, though he acknowledged that some of the allegations were “believable.”
While the delayed timeline of the prosecution meant there was no forensic evidence or CCTV footage available to rely on, the Metropolitan Police undertook an extensive investigation that involved contacting more than 100 witnesses, taking more than 400 witness statements, and reviewing more than 1,400 documents.
That Brand had found such undying support among prominent right-wingers would have come as a shock less than 10 years ago; in 2017, Brand called President Trump “an idiot” and also once suggested that Fox News host Jeanine Pirro is “more dangerous than ISIS.”
In fact, for much of the 2010s, Brand was a radical left-wing socialist who spoke out against economic inequality and corporate power, and supported Britain’s Labour Party.
Even as recently as 2023, Media Matters reported that he had described his politics as substantially further left than any major governing party.
But the Covid pandemic shifted Brand’s place in the political sphere. He posted videos to YouTube about his skepticism of vaccine mandates and Covid regulations, amassing an audience of 6.5 million subscribers. Brand quickly gained acceptance into the MAGA movement, which is starved for celebrity supporters in a world where most of Hollywood sits firmly on the political left.
By the time the allegations against him first surfaced in a 2023 investigation by The Times and Channel 4, Brand had ingratiated himself with many of the right’s most prominent influencers.
As Brand denied the claims of sexual assault and misconduct included in the report, conservative figures rallied around him, including Tucker Carlson, Elon Musk, and Donald Trump Jr.
Carlson claimed that Brand’s views on controversial topics like “drug companies” were linked to the allegations. Infamous conspiracy theorist Alex Jones claimed Brand had a target on his back because he’s “come out against globalists” and “Big Pharma.”
Trump Jr. shared an Instagram meme after The Times investigation was published comparing Brand to Donald Trump, Julian Assange, and Andrew Tate. “Notice a pattern?” the meme asked.
“I don’t believe in this much coincidence and neither should you,” Trump Jr. wrote in a caption.
Ben Shapiro, who described Brand as a personal friend, questioned why the media had waited until Brand became politically inconvenient to investigate his conduct and suggested that the media would have overlooked the allegations had Brand remained aligned with the political left.
Musk said he had become a target because he dared to challenge the mainstream media. “I support Russell Brand,” he said at the time.
Influencer Andrew Tate responded to a video Brand made denying the allegations at the time and said, “Welcome to the club” and held an “emergency meeting” to discuss “what’s happening to Russell Brand.” (Tate and his brother Tristan Tate were indicted in Romania earlier this year in connection with a range of trafficking and sex offenses.)
After the allegations came to light, Brand announced he was converting to Christianity. He would go on to become even further integrated into MAGA-world; He attended the 2024 Republican National Convention and was invited to Trump’s 2025 inauguration.
It was perhaps of little surprise that even as official criminal charges were brought against Brand in the U.K. last year, his conservative supporters stood beside him.
Carlson called the case “transparently political and absurd” and said Brand was being targeted by a “totalitarian” British state.
Rather than alienating Brand from the MAGA movement, one could argue the charges actually ingratiated him with the movement’s tastemakers, given their insistence on viewing themselves and President Trump as victims of political persecution.
Headline Fail of the Week
First Lady Melania Trump was in Baton Rouge over the weekend to announce a partnership between Louisiana State University and her “Fostering the Future” program to provide scholarships for LSU students who came through the foster care system.
But that wasn’t the story promoted by The Independent: “Melania went to a college football game in the south — and was hit with a chorus of boos.”
“First Lady Melania Trump attended a college football game in Louisiana — a state that didn’t go blue in last week’s midterm elections — yet was still booed,” the story explains, before getting to the philanthropic reason the first lady was at the game.
Media Misses
• MS NOW host Symone Sanders called Byron Donalds’ gubernatorial election triumph in Florida “a historic win,” noting it was the first time Florida had elected a black governor. “I will say, though, you know, as they, as you say in my community, all kinfolk ain’t skinfolk,” she said during MS NOW’s live election night coverage. “And what I say and what I mean by that is Byron Donalds is making history, but he is going to continue the political direction that Ron DeSantis is going to continue in Florida.”
• CNN senior political commentator Van Jones called the midterm elections the “Jonestown for the Republican Party” during the network’s live election coverage last week.
“If you join a cult, at some point the cult leader takes you to Jonestown and tries to get you to drink the Kool-Aid. This is Jonestown for the Republican Party,” he said, referring to the mass murder-suicide of more than 900 people who drank cyanide-laced punch at the order of cult leader Jim Jones in 1978.
“They drank the Kool-Aid, and they have candidates that are dropping like flies across the country because they did not stand up to this guy when he was doing things that were wrong, when he was violating the law, when he was running over our system. They didn’t stand up to him and they’re paying the price. It’s Jonestown tonight. You join a cult, at some point, you go to Jonestown. That’s where you are tonight, Republicans.”