A Wild Jaunt Across Europe With Trump’s Tourism Czar, the Aussie Expat Formerly Known as “Nick Adams, Alpha Male”
He was a local politician in Australia, then a MAGA mover-and-shaker thanks to outrageous tweets that he now says were part of a WWE-style persona. But through it all, Nick Adams has been a loyal digital soldier for President Trump, who’s now rewarded him with perhaps the hardest job around: convincing tourists to visit Trump’s America.
Nick Adams was in the hot seat. Nestled between two of Britain’s least deferential journalists, President Donald Trump’s tourism envoy was less than 90 seconds into his bludgeoning by the Brits when both hosts started laughing in his face. In the control room, production staffers forThe News Agentsstifled laughs as Emily Maitlis and Jon Sopel battered Adams on his position: that tourism was booming in America. That Trump loves foreigners, and it’s just the dastardly media spreading false fear that’s keeping them away. That tourism only dropped last year because visitors were waiting to come this year. The News Agentsweren’t buying it. “Nice try,” Maitlis said before resuming the onslaught. I winced as the hosts blew gaping holes in his defenses, but Adams had a different verdict on the proceedings. As he swaggered out of the studio, he looked at me with a smirk and declared in his thick Australian twang: “Masterclass. ”The Sydney-born author and social media personality, best known for his trollish posts lionizing Trump—and Hooters, and 64-oz Tomahawk steaks—was on the first leg of a sprint through Europe. As America’s first “special presidential envoy for American tourism, exceptionalism, and values,” Adams is charged with convincing the world that America under Trump is still a warm and welcoming place for foreign visitors. Adams traveled Europe's great capitals pitching trips to the USA. For Adams, 41, it’s the ride of a lifetime. “I’m a happy warrior,” he tells me on the roof of a building in central London where he’s filming his first interview with the BBC. It’s 5 a. m. on a Monday morning, and I am not a happy warrior. But Adams is bounding around the rooftop beaming, teeth porcelain-white, face slathered in makeup, hair firmly coiffed. “But you’ve got to be intoxicated!” he responds when I mention the early hour. “By what we’re doing, by my charisma, and by the fact that we’re just about to traverse all of Europe!”He’s wearing a blue suit and a shiny silk tie—not unlike the kind Trumpsells—and ornate cowboy boots from his adopted home state of Texas. The whirlwind trip he’s calling “The Nick Adams Roadshow” will take his entourage (a small group that includesVanity Fair,an efficient and flattering PR man, and a towering but church-mouse-quiet videographer) from London to Paris, then on to Berlin and finally Dublin. The task before him is daunting. As the United States co-hosts the FIFA World Cup and holds its 250th anniversary celebrations, the 2028 Olympics, and a slew of major events besides, this ought to be an explosive period for international visitors. Yet the hostility toward foreigners that has been a centerpiece of Trump’s political movement is widely seen as driving a steep decline. Four million fewer visitorscame to the United States in 2025, and tourism spending decreased by roughly 5%, representing a loss of more than $8 billion. Talk to most any European, and they’ll tell you why. Many are horrified by Trump’s immigration crackdown, and they’ve seen the reports of foreign visitors being detained or deported with seemingly little due process. Jet fuel prices have spiked (and brought airfares with them) thanks to Trump’s war in Iran, which remains deeply unpopular at home and abroad. In December, the Department of Homeland Security and the Customs and Border Protection proposed a new policy that would allow agents to search five years’ worth of visitors’ social media posts, a prospect that has become a pervasive point of discussion (and alarm) across the pond. And some Europeans simply want to register their protest of a government that has treated them like an enemy. As Sopel put it in his interview with Adams: “Why would you go to a country where you feel unwelcome?”But Adams is out to charm these frosty Europeans into submission. He repeatedly instructs me to note his ability to enchant the various people we encountered, from young women we shared an elevator with (“See you ladies! Britain’s finest!”) to a young editor atThe Spectatorwe met in the green room of GB News, a budget Fox News for Brits. (“Nice looking girl,” he says. “Easy on the eyes!”) “If the words ‘charm’ and ‘charisma’ are not in your story, you have not done your job,” he tells me. He even gets Monocle Radio host Emma Nelson to laugh as he extols, in his Aussie drawl, the wonders of America’s sprawling cultural tapestry, from “LOB-STEH SHECKS in MAINE” to “JEE-YAZ CLURBS in NEW AW-LANES. ”Adams has his talking points down for this international circuit, an assembly line of short interviews where the hosts don’t have time for follow-ups. He carries around a sheet of paper with some reminders on it: “Some people may have been put off by talk of social media being checked for the last five years, but that plan has not been implemented,” reads one. Another prompts Adams to freestyle on his love for the USA: “My favorite places in America are: Texas, xxx, xxx. ”“All the data that’s coming across my desk,” Adams repeated with slight variations across the BBC World Service, Radio 4, GB News,The TimesRadio,The Daily Mail,The Daily MailFemail,TRT World,Travel Weekly,Wanderlust, Monocle Radio, LBC News, CNBC Europe,The Daily Telegraph,Sky News, CNN International,Le Figaro,Le Monde,Die Welt,Euronews,The Irish Independent,RTÉ Radio, and the dpa German Press Agency, “suggests that we are experiencing a rebound!”This is Nick Adams, the professional. It’s a more buttoned-up iteration of the character he’s spent the last few years playing on social media: Nick Adams, Alpha Male. For years, that was his Twitter nickname, but over the course of our few days together, I get the sense Adams would like to leave some of that behind. On his official State Departmentpage, his biography contains no mention of the thing that made him the most famous: social media posts about having “the physique of a Greek god,” about eating massive steaks, about boycotting “woke” companies like Mars after it introduced an all-female pack of M&Ms. “Charlie Kirk told me in 2016 to get big on social media,” he recalls. Adams had a career in Republican politics and motivational speaking beforehand, but it was the absurdist posting that got him over 600,000 followers on X and a popular Cameo account that he says pulled in more than $100,000 a year. Adams has long denied that he was playing a character. He once insisted toThe Washington Postthat his outlandish tales of alpha heroism are entirely “nonfiction”—even those tinged with homoerotic flourishes clearly designed to drum up engagement. (“If you’re not having at least one foursome with the boys this weekend, I question your masculinity,” reads one, ostensibly about golf. ) Now Adams freely admits that he adopted a persona devised for engagement. He shoots me an amused look when I ask whether the posts were serious, as he has long insisted. “What? Did you really think this guy actually believes that he’s got the physique of a Greek god?” He compared his performance to Hulk Hogan. “It was like a wrestler’s identity,” he says. “It’s like I was a WWE figure: Nick Adams, Alpha Male. ”Adams was in the hot seat onThe News Agents. To be clear, Adams remains religiously devoted to anti-wokeness and to Trump. The social posts were hyperbolic expressions of real beliefs. “It’s a character with a kernel of truth,” he explains, but he makes sure to take a dig at those who took him seriously. “It’s an IQ test,” he says of the character that loves Trump, red meat, and “a long and strenuous foursome with the boys. ” But the trolling still duped furious social media users. Whenever he would call for a boycott of a company deemed too liberal, “We would post immediately after, ‘Cancel culture is unacceptable,’” he says. “So every reply was a screenshot saying, ‘Oh, we just proved you wrong!’”This all helps to explain why, in person, Adams bears little resemblance to the macho misogynist from his books and social media, which are filled with apocryphal tales of belittling women and instructing them to serve his needs. “I’m sorry, fellas,” he writes in his 2024 bookAlpha Kings,for which Trump wrote the foreword, “but I don’t care how hot you think your wife is. If she’s high maintenance, you’re a loser. ” In another chapter of the 90-page self-help guide, he tells the story of berating “a sheila” who objected to carrying his bags while on vacation. His views are more moderate in reality: “I believe that there are some relationships where the woman should be the boss because it makes more sense,” he says. “They’re more intelligent, it works, whatever the case might be. ”He’s also a bit of a—gasp—globalist, curious about other cultures and fluent in Greek and German thanks to childhood summers spent with grandparents in Athens and Hamburg. He has travel recommendations for Hydra and grand ambitions to bring the new Orient Express—an ultra-luxury revival of the iconic railway—to the United States. Adams shows me a video he shot at the train operator’s opulent terminal in Rome, promoting the concept of an all-American luxury train line. “Right now I’m standing in the most glamorous waiting room in the world,” he says. “The La Dolce Vita Orient Express Lounge in Rome. There’s a live jazz band! There’s an aperitivo in my hand! And the train hasn’t even left the station…”After the 2024 election, Adams more or less retired the Alpha Male character. He says he felt the bit “had run its course. ” Much like Trump, Adams parlayed performing a character on a screen into a real position of power. You have to admire the bit: The man Trump has tasked with selling America to foreigners is himself a foreigner who spent years playing a cartoon American. After catching the Eurostar from London to Paris, I settle down with Adams and his entourage at a table at Le Procope, a bistro in Saint-Germain that claims to be the oldest café in town. Established in 1686, the banquettes hosted Rousseau and Voltaire during the Enlightenment. Now, over plates of steak frites and lobster pasta, Nick Adams holds forth on the state of American tourism. “Last year obviously was a bad year,” he says. “There was a dip. ” It’s 11 p. m. after another long day on “The Road Show,” and Adams is nursing a Negroni. “Don’t tourists have good reason to steer clear of America right now?” I ask him. After boiling away the bravado, we’re left with the following defense: The world has been sold on fear of an America that does not exist. A few fringe cases have been given inordinate airtime in an effort to sabotage Trump, and the result is a decline in visitors to America. “They’ve all been fed stuff that’s not true, stuff that’s been overblown, stuff that’s been taken out of context,” Adams says. “I completely reject—and honestly, I’m surprised that a fellow American really and truly believes that this could be genuine stuff. ”Adams was bounding around Europe, relishing the ride of a lifetime. But it is genuine. A French scientist was detained and turned away last year after agents searched his phone and found messages criticizing Trump. A Canadian actor wasdetainedfor nearly two weeks at an immigration facility as she was applying for a Nafta visa. A Tufts PhD student in the US on a student visa wasabducted off the street by masked menand detained in an ICE facility for nearly two months because she signed an op-ed that criticized Israel. These were not isolated cases, but Adams dismisses them. “Well, I think the fears are unfounded,” he says. “That’s why I am on the roadshow. That’s why I’m making the case all day, every day. In America, in Europe, in Asia, wherever I go, I’m going to be saying the same thing, Aidan. Because I believe in the American people, I believe in American hospitality. ”Adams has fostered support inside the administration and out. Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, first met Adams in a Fox News green room in 2015, when Adams was a vocal Trump supporter and Hegseth was still a harsh critic. He’s “always been inspired” by watching Adams speak, Hegseth says, calling him “a tremendous voice for American greatness and explaining our uniqueness as a nation and people. ” Andrew Giuliani, who works closely with Adams as the executive director of the White House Task Force on the FIFA World Cup, agrees: “He’s the perfect guy for the role. He’s really, really amazing. His optimism—you just feel it through osmosis being around him. He’s a charming guy, great smile. ” The chairman of the World Travel and Tourism Council, an Italian-Monagasque billionaire named Manfredi Lefebvre D’Ovidio, met Adams earlier this year and introduced him to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi on a trip to the Suez Canal. “He is very well suited for this,” D’Ovidio says. “He doesn’t come across with an arrogant or violent attitude. ”This ought to be a massive few years for US tourism. Can Adams overcome the challenges thrown up by Trump's policies and rhetoric?Catherine Ivill - AMA/Getty ImagesMost importantly, Adams believes in himself. “You spent a lot of time with me, Aidan,” he tells me in Paris. “If you were asked to choose between two things, and there was no other option: Am I insane or am I a genius?”“You can tell the world in yourVanity Fairpiece whether Nick Adams is this absolutely absurdist insane nut job who’s got the brain the size of a caterpillar,” he goes on, “or if he is this beam of genius with a Jupiter-sized brain, or perhaps Saturn with the rings around it, that has just been able to have everybody on a string. ”“Those are my only two options?” I ask. “How can there be a third?” he says. Adams was one of the president’s first backers in 2016, appearing on Fox News to make the case for the outrageous reality TV star mounting a long-shot bid for the White House. Adams had spent a few years in the United States by then and saw something of himself in Trump: the brash, bombastic entertainer who used hyperbole to attract attention. He’d done the same when he was elected the youngest deputy mayor in Australian history at the age of 21. Still in college and outnumbered by the town’s overwhelmingly liberal leadership, he tried to think up creative ways to break through. That’s when he hatched the idea to kill all the town’s pigeons. The avian influenza, known as bird flu, was generating headlines around the world, and Adams seized the opportunity to propose a culling. Of course, killing pigeons in one municipality wouldn’t solve much, as pigeons can, famously, fly. But by taking the stand, he forced his political opponents to go on television and defend rats with wings. “You think I don’t know pigeons don’t know borders?” he asks me. “That’s why I tell you it’s the ultimate IQ test, the stuff that I do. ” He’d also got himself on television. “To this day, I don’t think I’ve ever had more media in my life,” he says, his eyes widening. “It was nuts. I was doing radio in Canada! I was doing radio in Singapore! I was looking to create a name, to create a brand, to use it as a political platform, to get media. ”“His public life was just a series of publicity stunts and a milking of the public purse,” Mark Drury, his former co-councilman, once toldThe Daily Beast. “He achieved nothing but notoriety, and I suspect that’s exactly what he wanted. ” Adams eventually flamed out in Australia but found an eager audience in the United States, where he immersed himself in Republican politics. He hit the speaking circuit and befriended then Texas Governor Rick Perry, who appointed him an “honorary Texan” in 2013. (In the years since, he says, 12 different governors have given Adams their state’s highest award or honorary status. ) In 2021, he became a naturalized American citizen. He wrote books and launched the Foundation for Liberty and American Greatness, a nonprofit promoting American civics and patriotism. In 2024, FLAGpulled in $1. 1 millionin revenue and paid Adams a salary of $368,000. Trump grew fond of this colorful Aussie on Fox News and would often reach out after Adams praised him on television. During an interview with Bob Woodward in the final year of his first term, Trump asked the reporter if he’d heard about a new book comparing Trump to Winston Churchill. Referring to Adams, its author, as “a historian who’s very respected,” Trump boasted: “He gave me a rating as one of the greatest presidents ever. ”Adams has demonstrated an extreme proclivity for getting media attention. In 2023, when Adams appeared on C-SPAN to promote a new book about Joe Biden calledThe Most Dangerous President in History,Trump called and left a voicemail that Adams played for me on our travels. “It’s the least dangerous president ever, and it’s your favorite president by far,” Trump said by way of introduction, “as opposed to the most dangerous president, like you wrote in the book. I watched you on C-SPAN last night. You were fantastic. You get it. You do get it… You were great on that show, C-SPAN. I can’t believe I’m watching C-SPAN. I was just dialing in for a different reason, then I saw you, so I watched you over the Congress. So have a good time. Great job. Great job. You’re fantastic. I won’t forget. ”Trump didn’t forget. During the 2024 campaign, Adams says, Trump would often ask him what job he wanted in a future administration. After he won, the president-elect rewarded Adams’s loyalty with a nomination to serve as ambassador to Malaysia, a major posting at a precarious time given the strain between Washington and Kuala Lumpur over tariffs and China. The nomination sparked intense criticism in Malaysia and—like many in Trump’s second term—stalled for months and was eventually withdrawn. “More than 180 nominees had not had their nomination come to a conclusion” in 2025, Adams says by way of explanation. One suspects there may have been more to it than mere bureaucracy. But soon after, he got the call from Trump: He’d been tapped to serve as America’s tourism envoy, a position requiring no confirmation by Congress. And now here he was, galavanting across Europe’s great capitals and assuring the locals that this belligerent great power was still a great place to visit. “To me, this is a massive promotion,” he says. Perhaps a bit charmed, I feel like Adams believes this. After his Euro trip, Adams returned to the United States. He wanted to go tothe UFC fight at the White House, though he hadn’t figured out how to secure tickets,which Trump personally doled outto top members of the administration. White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles came through with a better offer, Adams told me: Team USA’s first World Cup game in Los Angeles, where the home team thrashed Paraguay. Afterwards, Adams raved to me about the match, but added: “One of the most memorable moments had nothing to do with what happened on the pitch. ”He went on to tell a story reminiscent of those he used to unspool on social media as the Alpha Male character, a tale of spectacular Nick Adams heroism. “I met a family of six from Paraguay who were absolutely loving their time in the country,” he said, “yet had only booked their hotel through Sunday. I couldn’t let that stand. After walking them through all my favorite Southern California spots, I watched the father pull out his phone on the spot and book another seven days at a hotel. That’s Nick Adams for you!”Trump’s Dangerously Absurd Quest to SeizeGreenlandWas the Start of a Worldwide RampageSearching for the Victims—andAnswers—After the July 4 Flood That Devastated Texas