Greta Thunberg mocked Andrew Tate Friday after he was detained by police in Romania, appearing to zoom in on a theory that a pizza box contributed to his arrest.
It came after Tate, an influencer known for misogynistic posts, picked a fight with Thunberg, a Swedish teen climate activist, bragging about his carbon emissions and prompting a put-down from the 19-year-old activist.
The feud escalated after Thunberg told Tate to direct his concerns to “sm*************@ge******.com,” which provoked a response video from Tate.
Tate was given pizza boxes during the video and told a person off-screen to make sure they didn’t get recycled, a dig at Thunberg’s activism.
Not long after on Thursday, Tate was arrested by Romanian authorities in Bucharest as part of a human-trafficking investigation.
Officials accuse Tate, his brother, and two others of forcing women to make porn to be sold online, according to Reuters.
Romanian investigators said in a press release that the inquiry concerned six women, at least one of whom was raped. Tate, Reuters reported, was set to be detained for 24 hours.
It isn’t clear whether the pizza boxes played a part in Tate’s arrest, but the theory has gained traction online and there is some evidence to support it.
The Romanian news site Gândul reported that authorities watched Tate’s social-media posts for proof he was in Romania, and his video contained that kind of evidence.
Tate’s video showed boxes from Jerry’s Pizza, a Romanian chain with branches in Bucharest, that had Romanian text on them. He also posted a video of scenery on December 25 captioned “Romania.”
The civil-rights attorney Alejandra Caraballo said on Twitter that the pizza post may have given authorities the certainty they needed to act. It contained evidence of both a location and a time, since it was in response to a new argument with Thunberg, Caraballo said.
The pizza-box-arrest theory has received a lot of attention online and made it into Thunberg’s mocking tweet on Friday, which didn’t mention him by name.
