Bulwark Takes - This Trump Pick Couldn't Stop Talking about Boobs and Hooters

Episode Date: March 25, 2026

Sam Stein, Joe Perticone, and Will Sommer give their takes on the bizarre rise and abrupt fall of Nick Adams, the self-styled “alpha male” known for his tweets about boobs, Hooters, and American exceptionalism. Adams saw his ambassador nomination pulled before landing in a made up new State Department role.Sign up for your one-dollar-per-month Shopify trial today at https://shopify.com/bulwarktakes.

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please contact Connix Ontario at 1866-531-2,600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. Hey, everyone, it's me, Sam Stein, managing after the bulk. I'm joined by Joe Perticoat and Will Summer to deal with what is life-changing news, a groundbreaking political development here in Washington, D.C., something that's really Shatter Joe on a deeply emotional level. Nick Adams, known probably to many as the Hooters Loving Alpha Mail online, who's a big Trump supporter, is no longer officially the administration's ambassador nominee to Malaysia. We'll talk about the gall to nominate Nick Adams to that post

in a bit. He's now the special presidential envoy for American tourism, exceptionalism, and values. This is a made-up position, but it actually is now a position at the State Department It's real. I went and looked for it because at first I thought it was just totally a joke. But there is actually a state.gov page for Nick Adams. And this title is what he is listed as as of March 17. So he's been in this position. There's so much to unpack here. And I'm going to get into it too, including this insane video that Nick Adams posted of himself.

But, Joe, you've been the one who's written about the guy the most. Can you just sort of explain who this weird character is to the people who are uninitiated? In the onset of like the Trump era, Nick Adams kind of emerged as like an online figure where he would just tweet about, you know, loving rare stakes, loving going to Hooters. And then all of the, it would always have like a sexual innuendo. He'd say like, nothing beats a foursome with the boys. Obviously, you're just to golf, but like, you know, playing golf with four men, but like, you know, winking at something else. And everyone's just like, oh, here's this character. And then he was nominated to be the United States ambassador to Malaysia, which is an important job.

And Malaysia has a bunch of Muslims. So they were upset because he frequently tweeted about radical Islam and his crusade of American exceptionalism. He's from Australia. He has a thick, very thick Australian accent. I am really upset because I had never looked forward to something more. Like the last time I looked forward to a hearing was when Diamond and Silk testified in front of Congress, which I did get to see in person. So I was looking forward to Nick Adams testifying in front of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. But as we saw, when a nomination carries over into the new year, it's technically sent back to the White House.

And it's up to the White House to resubmit it. And they didn't do that for like all of January. And I was like, that's weird. And then they formally. Well, so Nick Adams was asked about this actually by the Sydney Morning Herald in February, because, as Joe said, he was also asked about it by me many times via email. Okay. Did I respond to? Maybe he'll respond to that his job is to promote tourism and exceptionalism.

But he was asked about this by the Sydney Morning Herald's, and his quote was, I've been promoted from the role of ambassador, exclamation point, more details to come in the upcoming week. This was not a promotion. We're going to get into all the weird stuff in a little bit, but I've always sort of wondered, Will, like, he seemed like he's obviously a very, a MAGA figure and he's gone on all these shows and he knows or pals around with a bunch of people. But like, is he actually in the mix or do the MAGA folks regard him as kind of a buffoon? I mean, I think he's kind of an immaterial player. I mean, I think he's a guy who is sort of seen as perhaps like fun to be around, I guess, because he's always eating time. Amahawk steaks and talking about sports cars and golfing. But he's not really like an integrated right-wing media figure in the way that Laura Lumer or Tucker Carlson, these, Megan Kelly, these people are.

Now, on one hand, look, he says he has fans. He calls them NADS or Nick Adams disciples. So on one hand, I guess he has some amount of fans. But I think it's also a little hard to judge because, and now Joe is a better Nick Adams expert than I am. But I feel like he's kind of been laying low to try to get this ambassadorship through. Like he was trying to be a good boy to not, you know, talk about his chest hair or whatever. He's kind of like a, almost like a political, like a Johnny Bravo character, like this kind of real like, kind of macho guy. But he's not as, I would say, malevolent as a lot of right-ling figures, particularly in the manosphere.

You know, I think amid the rise of people like clavicular and Andrew Tate, you know, we'd be so lucky if Nick Adams was really the model for him. Well, let's give a flavor. Let's just look at some of the tweets that are not malevolent, but kind of our malevolent. but are kind of not malevolent. Here's one that just talks about as appreciation for boobs. Appreciate a nice pair of boobs. And I'm not going to apologize for it. Here's another one, two hours later, about boob reduction.

He says, getting a boob reduction is like slapping God in the face. Okay. Joe, you would know this, but he tweet, I don't know how many times he's tweeted by Hooters, but he tweets a lot about Hooters. Hundreds. Here's one where he says, I go to Hooters, I eat where are steaks. I lift extremely heavy weights. I read the Bible every night.

I am pursued by copious amounts of women. I am wildly successful. I have the physique of a Greek god. Not true. I have an IQ over 180. I am extremely charismatic. They hate this. There's more about him tweeting about boobs.

I mean, he had a persona. You say it was hundreds of tweets about Hooters? Is that accurate? So he's tweeted about Hooters more than 500 times. And he stopped, though, when he received his nomination. And the thing about like him kind of toning down his stick after he was nominated, you could tell he started to get antsy or maybe started to read that he was not going to get his day in front of the Senate when he started like ticking back up again and started like leaning back into the macho stuff. Him losing his nomination too is like that doesn't happen. That is not normal.

Like they confirmed Herschel Walker before they. Well, you know what else is not normal though? nominating someone like Nick Adams. Well, no, but I mean, clearly someone in the Senate, on the Republican side, probably said, this isn't going to happen. The Syrian will be a mess. There will be too much opposition just based on the gross things he's posted. And when that happens, probably behind the scenes, it's communicated that this isn't happening.

So he received his promotion, which no longer gives you a lifelong title of ambassador and doesn't affect any policy. So I guess that's a promotion. When we started Bullwork Takes, it seemed like we had to figure out all our own scripts, the setup, even the filming schedule. When you're starting off with something new, it seems like your to-do list keeps growing every day with new tasks. And that list can easily begin to overrun your life. Finding the right tool that not only helps you out, but simplifies everything, can be such a game changer. And for millions of businesses, that tool is Shopify. Shopify is the commerce platform. behind millions of businesses around the world and 10% of all e-commerce in the United States,

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and start hearing. Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at shopify.com slash bulwark takes. Go to Shopify.com slash bulwark takes. That's Shopify.com slash bulwark takes. Let's go through the bio that's listed on the website because he, this is the actual State Department website. And I was reading this this morning and I was just chuckling along. It says, Nick Adams is a political and policy author, thought leader and educator. I don't know what the education part is. President Trump appoint him to the board of trustees for the Woodrow Wilson Center in the Smithsonian Institution for a six-year tomb. I did not know that. Will, did you know that? I did know that. Yes.

You know, this is a guy who, despite everything, has really been kind of becoming a DC foreign policy wonk. Okay. Okay. He says he is the director of the Texas and Florida-based Foundation of Liberty and American Greatness. That's true. A. Nonprofit. They said he also runs 1A. Warriors, an organization dedicated to codifying the civil rights of Americans who honorably exercise their peaceful First Amendment rights. All right.

Here we go. Mr. Adams is an accomplished author, freelance, political analyst, an independent political commentator working in the United States. He authors a thrice weekly policy analysis newsletter. This is true. I didn't know this. Are either of you on a substack recipient lists? I'm a subscriber. You are?

A free subscriber. Yeah. Do you read these? On occasion, it's just kind of like typical MAGA stuff. Like Trump's great state of the union. No one's ever delivered such a great student. It's like, it's pretty lame stuff. The real actions like on his Twitter page.

I went through some of the substacks. One was bring the Viva back to Vegas. The other one was this Thanksgiving. I'm thankful for that President Trump is making movies great again. That was about the rush hour, like, you know, sequel that they're going to do. And then he said, how my book became part of American and world history. And he labels himself the president's favorite author. He says, being the president's favorite author has been the honor of a lifetime.

That was an interesting one to me. That came up because he wrote this. this book about Churchill. And when Bob Woodward was visiting the White House to interview Trump for a book, Trump essentially says, well, I really like this book. Maybe you should consider getting a little inspiration from Nick Adams here, Bob Woodward. And so maybe, you know, I don't know if Woodward did. I don't know if we saw that play out in his book, but interesting, nonetheless. He's got that new book coming out. There might be some scenes from Hooters in the new Woodward. That was Woodward's big secret using Hooters as a lot of

place to meet sources. All right, I'll keep going for a little bit here. He's been a television radio commentator. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Mr. Adams' work promoting American exceptionalism has seen him recognized by governors across the country, and he has been awarded honorary status, honorary status in Texas, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Arkansas, South Carolina, Tennessee, Indiana, and presented commendations in Nevada, Nevada, Missouri, and Arizona. This is on a State Department website, Okay. We looked into this a little bit, okay? The honorary status that he gets are just like online applications you can fill out to

ask for nominations to get honorary titles. Like he received an honorary Kentucky colonel title in 2017. He did get in 2013, Rick Perry did honor him in a resolution for his book American Boomerang. That was interesting. He did receive the Order of the Civil Crescent, which is South Carolina's top award for volunteer and community service in the state. And he received the Sagamore of the Wabush. I don't even know what the hell that is,

award by Governor Mike Braun in Indiana in 2025. Needless to say, I think he's inflating his resume a little bit on the State Department website, but maybe you guys have honorary titles. Well, I'm intrigued. If you can just pick up a colonel one, I might as well, I guess. I mean, it sounds appealing. We should all become colonels. It is truly crazy.

It is truly crazy. this guy was nominated to be ambassador to Malaysia, which is like a real country, you know, and like an important country for the U.S. relations. Joe, do you have a sense of what the opposition was? I guess we don't know, like, you know, beyond maybe these protests in Malaysia, but beyond what it would have been like in the Senate? Early on when he was nominated, there were a lot of people who were like, I don't know anything about him other than his tweets. The only senators who I know had met him in person were Ted Cruz took a photo with him like a decade ago that I had found. so can't blame him for not knowing or remembering.

Rick Scott, he had met and, you know, had kind of no comment on it as usual. But the opposition that it was just like his, the combination of his crazy tweets, his crazy persona, genuine lack of experience. Because like there's not, like if there's someone really controversial or like weird or super right wing or whatever, but they have at least like some real relevant experience. in like Asia-Pacific policy. Like there's a lot of those people who worked at the Heritage Foundation or whatever. He's not one of those guys.

And so all of that combined, the fact that his confirmation hearing, which is mandatory to receive nomination, would have been just a total mess. It would have been him like, oh, I stand by my hoodish tweets. Democrats would have had a blast. I would have had a blast watching it.

I know. They probably just decided it, wasn't worth it and they had debt. I feel like they should just do it for the hell of it. Like we'll establish that even if he gets the votes, he's not going to serve, but just have the theater. So for some reason, even though this is a week old,

that he's now in this made up position at the State Department, it broke today and he put out a video today. He made a major announcement today where he was grateful for his appointment. Then he put out a video on his Twitter account, Nick Adams in USA. And it's a video, a 16-minute video

called The Nick Adams story. So he made a video of his own story. What I love about this is that in the video, he basically concedes that this whole alpha male profile is a schick, which everyone sort of assumed, but it seemed possible enough that people were confused. This guy, three-year letterman, who makes fun of people online for a living in a very artful way,

retweeted the video saying, I wept tears of pageism watching this. Nick Adams retweeted three-year letterman. So I don't know if he's in on that. the joke or not. But I want to play a few clips from this video so you guys, I know you haven't seen it. I watched it. I just gives the viewers a sense of how ridiculous this human being is. Let's just play a full mashup of some of the best parts from the video. Getting good grades came easy to him. He had a way with words, a man born for the stage.

Nick was a unique breed, a top student who chose to sit in the back with his friends, rather than his intellectual equals. Nick would be targeted by the media. political enemies and even betrayed by those in his own party. He would end up being marginalized, black-balled, restricted, and virtually unemployable. What is creative and original to the pioneering spirit is crazy to the parochial mind. The television networks quickly worked out he was tailor-made for them. And the hits came thick and fast. Nick was smart, quick, and funny.

And the accent didn't hurt either. What do you guys make of that? The best part is unique breed, a top student who chose to sit in the back with his friends and not his intellectual equals. Unbelievable. Not too much of a snob to he befriended the dummies as well. Yeah. He has like a real sense of humor, though, in a way that like I don't think a lot of the like,

especially like the other talking heads they don't have. Like Scott Jennings doesn't have that level of sense of humor on TV the way Nick Adams does. So, you know, I don't know. He's in on the joke, obviously. That's why he's retweeting three-year lettermen about his stupid movie. But I just thought, what is creative and original to the pioneering spirit is crazy to the parochial mind. Like, he clearly was, you know, putting it on thick there. Any final thoughts for our dear friend, Nick? I think he's going to excel, honestly. Do we think he will ever hold a single event in this role? Or like, or you don't think they're just putting him on ice? They're saying, all right, thanks a lot,

buddy, you know, go hit the tomahawk steaks. Go win the wing eating contest. My question is this. And maybe Joe knows this. Does he have money from somewhere? Because like, this is a 16 minute video. Someone had to pay for it. It was narrated. It was like, you know, there's some editing involved in it, you know, a lot of video footage in there. Like, what's he doing? What is his actual income? He writes all these books, but they can't possibly sell. So my theory to answer your question, will, is like, he'll throw parties. They might, It might come from his own pocket, right? Where he's just like doing that.

But he's going to throw some parties. So the World Cup is coming up. He's of Greek heritage, even though he's Australian. Greece did not make the World Cup. Australia did make the World Cup. Obviously, America's made it because they're the host country. Lucky for them. So he'll get to like celebrate, I think, with some of those countries.

He'll probably host them in certain ways, maybe. Or he'll just, you know, go on TV. That's what he's best at. I'm definitely foreseeing a few Hooters' World Cup parties with dignitaries in the future. A little golf of the boys. Foresomes with the boys. All right, look, Nick Adams, if you're watching this, congratulations on your appointment to special envoy, special presidential envoy for American tourism, exceptionalism, and values. We look forward to your awesome parties.

If you do want to come on the bulwark and talk about it, we would love to have you on. It would be a pleasure, an honor, honestly, to be part of the Nick Adams story. Will and Joe, thanks for doing this, guys. I know this is heart wrenching for you, Joe, like heart wrenching. And I don't want to downplay how emotionally devastating this. Drown my sorrows at Hooters. All that content that you were planning on creating and it's just gone. But I appreciate the work you've put in.

For those who have watched, thanks for doing that as always. Subscribe to the Bullwark where you get ridiculous videos like this. Talk to you soon.