Turns Out America First Lives in... Bangladesh?!

Summary

Bulwark Takes – “Turns Out America First Lives in... Bangladesh?!” (Nov 28, 2025)

Episode Theme:

A humorous yet incisive dive into X’s (formerly Twitter) new geolocation disclosure feature, revealing a surprising number of popular “America First” and MAGA-aligned accounts posting from foreign countries. Host Sam Stein and guest Will Sommer (author of False Flag newsletter) dissect the implications for American political discourse, online engagement economics, and the ongoing infighting among right-wing internet factions.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. X’s New Geolocation Feature: What Happened?

• [00:50] Sam Stein introduces the topic: X (Twitter) now displays country of origin for accounts, leading to widespread revelations that many influential “American” accounts are run from outside the US.
• [01:40] Will Sommer explains the rationale:
  • Twitter pursued this to combat low-effort “engagement bait” accounts driven by engagement-based payouts.
  • These tactics are more lucrative for people in developing countries, incentivizing overseas activity.
  • “Accounts...posing as Americans to generate money and kind of dabbling in American politics...” were exposed.
  • Quote: “It went off like a bomb on the Right.” [02:45]

2. The Unveiling: Viral Mockery and Political Fallout

• [03:15] Overnight, users began surfacing evidence that beloved MAGA and America First accounts are foreign:
  • “America Patriot 24” revealed as Serbian.
  • Others (groypers, white nationalist accounts) from places like Bangladesh, Estonia, and Nigeria.
• Some features briefly disappeared before being permanently activated last weekend.
• Big Picture: The revelation prompted intense right-wing infighting and soul-searching about whether their own movements' strength online is real or “astroturfed.”

3. Notable Examples & The Surreal Marketplace of Influence

• [05:35] Sam Stein lists high-profile examples:
  • America_first0: Based in Bangladesh: “That’s just pretty misleading. If you’re going to be America First, you know, maybe be American.”
  • Ivanka Trump Fan Account: Based in Nigeria.
  • Doge Designer: A major engagement account, based in India.
• Engagement is high regardless of the real-world context. Sommer observes, “It also shows you how American politics and culture war has really infected the world.” [05:12]

4. Algorithm Feeds and Platform Atmosphere

• [06:46] Will Sommer: “The kind of deranged atmosphere on X” is partly explained by the prevalence of these foreign-run engagement accounts, making the platform feel especially chaotic.
• Sam and Will joke about the horrors and oddities that show up in algorithm feeds, with Will confessing a morbid fascination:
  • Sommer: “Oh, always. Of course. That’s how I get, like, just like, full face right into it.” [07:04]
  • Sam Stein: “I would love to live in your algorithm for like, half a day...” [07:08]

5. Right-Wing Reactions: Irony, Outrage, and Forgotten History

• The episode underscores the irony:
  • Accounts and commentators (like Matt Walsh, Joel Pollack, Dave Rubin) who once dismissed Democratic concerns about Russian bots in 2016 are now loudly alarmed about foreign actors meddling in conservative American discourse.
  • Quote: “Now…they’re having to sort of come around and be... hysterical themselves about foreign bot interference in conservative politics.” — Sam Stein [08:07]
• Some on the right now call for national security investigations into this new “threat.”
  • “We need a national security investigation...” — regarding foreign-run ‘America First’ accounts [09:09]

6. The Tenant Media Angle: Hypocrisy Exposed

• [09:55] Will Sommer tells the story of “Tenant Media,” a YouTube operation secretly funded by Russia Today, which employed now-outraged commentators who collected serious paydays for “propaganda” content.
  • Quote: “I think Tim Pool, in a year, made several million dollars. I think Dave Rubin was making at least 100 grand per like 10-minute video...” [10:19]
• The irony: yesterday’s foreign-financed commentators are today’s loudest foreign-bot alarmists.

7. Platform Moderation: Will X Clean House?

• Sam notes the oddity of Musk now embracing transparency after removing verification and letting anonymity reign.
• Will suggests possible next steps for X:
  • A flag icon for instant country-of-origin identification (“so you don’t have to click through”).
  • Deprioritizing or labeling accounts that are clearly foreign and running engagement scripts.
  • Quote: “Then you don’t have to kind of click through. And in general, I wouldn’t mind if there was some kind of deprioritizing of these...voices in your head when you’re on there enough...” [11:56]
• General agreement: this is a much-needed step to restore some authenticity and context to online discussions.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “It went off like a bomb on the Right.” — Will Sommer [02:45]
• “America Patriot 24 is actually from Serbia. And look at this. And this griper is from like, you know, Estonia.” — Sam Stein [03:15]
• “There was a nurse named Red Pill Nurse who’s always going on about how the 2020 election was stolen and she turned out to be Belgian.” — Will Sommer [05:12]
• “If you’re going to be America First, you know, maybe be American.” — Sam Stein [05:35]
• “In the irony that you noted...a lot of these people who complained about liberal hysteria over Russian election interference now are having to ... be hysterical themselves about foreign bot interference in conservative politics.” — Sam Stein [08:07]
• “We need a national security investigation...” — Quoting Joel Pollack at Breitbart [09:09]
• “Tenant Media was a YouTube channel...they were putting out this YouTube content that to my mind had no reason to exist… The FBI...found out that it was being funded by Russia Today...” — Will Sommer [09:55]
• “I would like to see a little flag icon right next to the name...” — Will Sommer [11:51]

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Timestamps of Important Segments

• 00:50 – The X Geolocation Feature Drops
• 01:40 – The Reasoning and Economic Incentives
• 03:15 – The Weekend Mockery & Key Account Exposures
• 05:35 – Standout Foreign “MAGA” Accounts
• 06:46 – How the Foreign Accounts Distort Platform Culture
• 08:07 – Irony of Conservative Reaction vs. 2016
• 09:55 – Tenant Media, Russian Funding, and Hypocrisy
• 11:43 – Platform Policy, Future Steps, and User Experience

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Tone and Conclusion

The episode takes on a sardonic, almost incredulous tone as Sam and Will swap examples and reflect on how American internet discourse is not only being shaped by, but commodified for, a global audience. There’s the sense that what masquerades as “grassroots” patriotism online is, in many literal senses, coming from continents away—and that those previously dismissive of foreign meddling now find themselves on the receiving end of their own arguments.

Closing exchange:

• Sam Stein: “I’m a little bit worried about your addictions.” (re: Will’s immersion in the X algorithm feed) [13:27]
• Encouragement to subscribe to Will’s False Flag newsletter—and a laugh at the ever-growing absurdity of the modern internet political ecosystem.

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This episode is essential listening for anyone interested in:

• Social media manipulation
• Political astroturfing
• The globalization of American political culture
• The ironies and feedback loops in today’s online conservative movements

Transcript

[A]

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[B]

Everybody, it's me, Sam Stein, here with my man Will Summer, author of the False Flag newsletter, which you should be getting in your inbox twice a week when you get it. That's up to Will. Sometimes he files in time and sometimes he doesn't. We'll see. Oh, don't laugh. Well, you know it's true.

[C]

Well, I like to keep everyone guessing, mostly me.

[B]

We're here to talk about his latest edition, which honestly was so great because I was living it over the weekend. It is the new geolocation feature on X, formerly known as Twitter. And it set off an incredible amount of comedic relief, I would say. And a little bit, you know, I don't know, laughing and pointing at a bunch of accounts that are exposed to be foreign accounts pretending to be American accounts. Before we get into it, subscribe to the feedback where you get great stuff like this. All right, well, before we start at like all the people who are mocking everyone and pointing it out and all the infighting that's ensued, can you do know why Twitter made this change where you can now look up the country of origin from the poster?

[C]

Yeah, I mean, so there's this Twitter executive or ex executive Nikita Beer, who had kind of been talking about how they were going to do this for a few weeks. I think there is this idea that Twitter has been overrun by example AI, often slop, just kind of general, kind of like stuff that is meant to get engagement but really has no value to it. And obviously that's because Elon Musk put in this thing where you get payouts based on the engagement you get. And I think economically at least, the theory is that I think for someone in a more developed country, it doesn't really. You don't make that much money. It doesn't make that much sense to just be sitting around doing this. But people in other countries.

[B]

Yeah, spoken like a man who doesn't get a lot of engagement.

[C]

True, true. I don't know what your payouts are looking like, but, but so I, for.

[B]

The record, I have not taken advantage of the payout system. I Maybe I should. My tweets are not so bad. I get a lot. I get a lot of people dunking. I mean, that counts as engagement, right?

[C]

Well, you might as well get paid for it at that point.

[B]

Yeah. And just immolating myself online for free.

[C]

So you have these accounts that I think were long suspected to be kind of posing as Americans to generate money and kind of dabbling in American politics. And so then Twitter added this feature where you can see the country a user is posting from. And it went off like a bomb on the Right. And it caused a lot of.

[B]

Yeah. Was there any, like, was there any, you know, warning that this was going to be applied or just randomly show up one morning, like Saturday and we're like, oh, my God, this dude's from Bangladesh. Yeah.

[C]

There had been talk that they were going to add the feature in sort of the coming days, and then they added it permanently last weekend.

[B]

Okay. So, like, I wake up, a lot of people are doing like the whole screen grabbing, like, you know, American Patriot 24 is actually from Serbia. And look at this. And this griper is from like, you know, Estonia. And it's just like non stop. And then it went like dark for a little bit. Like the feature went off but then went back online. But can you just sort of summarize like the, the sort of big picture takeaway of what happened on Saturday and Sunday?

[C]

Yeah, I mean, I, I think the revelations were really that a lot of these kind of these engagement bait accounts that are posting either sort of controversial takes to get people to engage with them, or that are just kind of like MAGA slop accounts that are posting, you know, like a picture, it's like retweet if you're a real Trumper, and a picture of Caroline, that those were, you know, based in Bangladesh or, or Pakistan. And then the kind of, the political valence really turned out to be that, as you mentioned, a lot of the groiper accounts, the white nationalists following Nick Fuentes, a lot of them were revealed to be foreign as well. And so there was this, you know, we talked a lot here about this kind of MAGA civil war that's going on, this fighting between Nick Fuentes, people like Candace Owens on one hand, Tucker Carlson, and people like Ben Shapiro, sort of more mainline Republicans on the other. And so for this kind of mainline crew, they said, wait a minute, is. Is Nick Fuentes is falling? Is that all Astroturf? Is that just guys in Pakistan? You know, maybe it was all fake.

[B]

Well, is it?

[C]

Well, I don't Think so. I mean, I, I think a lot of people there, I, I know I wanted the, the groipers to be fake as well, but I think, you know, a lot of the accounts people would make these graphics and they would say, oh, like kebab remover. Groiper is fake. He's Serbian. And on one hand it's like, well, yeah, I mean, he's. He had a Serbian flag. He talked about being Serbian. I think he had a Slobodan Milosevic griper. So. So yeah, I mean, we could have.

[B]

Predicted this, but who doesn't?

[C]

Well, I mean, well, that's a pretty. Such a common griper. But you know, it also, I guess on one hand is just sort of like. Also shows you how American politics and culture war has really infected the world. There was a nurse named Red Pill Nurse who's always going on about how the 2020 election was stolen and she turned out to be Belgian. And she says, well, look, yeah, I'm Belgian, but I'm also like a maga. The maga Anti vax nurse.

[B]

Yeah, there's something to that where it's like, okay, these grippers are. These gripper accounts are Serbian. They're still getting tons of engagement. Like, people are still attracted to it. But, you know, then again, there's. I want to just go through a couple of the ones that kind of caught our attention over the weekend. There was the America first count America underscore first O based in Bangladesh. I mean, that's just pretty misleading. Like if you're going to be America first, you know, maybe be American Manation X was based in Eastern Europe. Non EU Eastern Europe. You know, maybe not magation make America grading. I guess you can apply to Eastern Europe. I don't know. There was an Ivanka Trump fan account that was based in Nigeria. I guess you can be an Ivanka Trump fan in Nigeria. But you know, all that posting about how great AAN is, it kind of comes in a little differently when, you know, it's a Nigerian doing it. Doge designer. That one's a pretty popular one that was based in India. So it's like, you know, I guess to me there is some significance to it. It's like these people are trying to with us a little bit. And yeah, maybe they're into American politics, but they don't have the same skin in the game. Right.

[C]

Yeah, I, I think that's fair. And I mean, I think it also helps explain at least somewhat the kind of like deranged atmosphere on X. You know, in the past Since Elon Musk took over, where it just feels like every, every time you open it, and particularly if you do the algorithmic feed like I do, to get the really crazy stuff.

[B]

Oh, my God. Are you algorithmic?

[C]

Oh, always. Of course. That's how I get, like, just like, you know, full face right into it.

[B]

I don't even know. I can't even imagine. Well, you know what? I would love to live in your algorithm for like, half a day and.

[C]

Expect that's how I find the good stuff.

[B]

Yeah, yeah, no, that's true. So what is, like, what's, what's, like, what are your, what are your algorithm. What, like, what's your algorithm prioritizing for you right now? Like, is it just like, definitely anything.

[C]

About the kind of Ryan Lizzo, Olivia Nuzzy story? I mean, that's a big one. But, you know, also just like, like real bag of Civil war stuff, I would say, because, you know, I, I, I look so much into it. I mean, I think I would also add here that, that, you know, we're talking about the different factions that were maybe for an astroturf, the, the manosphere has been very hard hit here. Like, if there's a picture of a guy, like, smoking a cigar and saying, you know, like, don't let women hold you back from accumulating capital, like, that is probably a guy in India. I think we found out.

[B]

Yeah, probably. Yeah. Wow. I, yeah, no, I will say I. For. Over the weekend when this stuff was blown up, I did change to the for you recommendation. It was kind of ironic because it was just filled with people surfacing these screenshots of the, of the country of origin. It's like the for you algorithm is recommending a bunch of tweets showing how fake this platform actually is. It's like, sort of self destructive in a way. But the other part of this, in the irony that you noted in the newsletter, is that a lot of these people who complained about liberal hysteria over Russian election interference now are having to sort of come around and be like, hysterical themselves about foreign bot interference in conservative politics.

[C]

Yeah, I mean, you know, we look back at 2016 and these are the same people who were saying, you know, the right in general was saying, you know, this Russian bot thing is not real. Republican Democrats are just kind of trying to blame foreign influence for Trump. But then you have people like Matt Walsh who's saying, you know, foreigners are, you know, meddling in our elections, our, our conversations about politics. You have Joel Pollack at Breitbart who just went out and said, we need a national security investigation of the. And then it gets even further.

[B]

Come on. Investigation.

[C]

We got to catch, you know, based groiper. We got to get, get Jesse Gabbard on the case.

[B]

Okay, and then you're going on. Sorry.

[C]

Well, I was going to say, I mean, including people like, like Dave Rubin, who's a podcaster and was also saying, you know, this is foreign meddling. And of course, there's some irony here because a lot of the people, at least several of them now complaining about the bot problem were themselves in the pay of a Russian propaganda.

[B]

You love. You love the Tenant Media star.

[C]

You love it. It was so good. And it was such a brief look into that world when the indictment came down.

[B]

Why don't you remind the viewers what it was because they might not be as obsessed as you are.

[C]

I do, I do. I love it. Tenant Media was a YouTube channel. It was like a YouTube supergroup of people like Tim Pool, Benny Johnson, Dave Rubin, Lauren Southern. And they were, but they were, they were putting out this YouTube content that to my mind had no reason to exist. It. It was getting like a thousand views. Maybe it was. I was wondering why these people were spending their time with it.

[B]

It was like well produced stuff too. It was like production.

[C]

Yeah, it looked really good. And then the FBI helpfully looked into it for me and they found out that it was being funded by Russia Today to the tune of like comical amounts. I think Tim Pool, in a year made several million dollars. I think Dave Rubin was making at least 100 grand per like 10 minute video. And his videos, by the way, were like America's Funniest Home Videos. He would watch like people like falling down a flight of stairs and be like another. That's a dumbo. And then Russia was like, does Vadanya, you know, and so, and so now he's saying, you know, he claims he didn't know the money came from Russia, but now he's, he's saying, you know, this foreign propaganda, it's gotta stop.

[B]

Yeah, the tenant media thing is kind of funny. How do they not know that where the money was? Or they, or they just didn't even bother asking. Either one is a bad explanation. Let me ask you a question about Twitter. Like, I haven't seen if Elon's been defending the new system, but it does seem to cut against a lot of what he had been doing early on. Like he had gotten rid of all like the real verification stuff. There's so much anonymous accounts. The blue check mark became kind of pointless. Right. This is like a kind of a step in the opposite direction finally. And it's kind of refreshing. Right? At least we have some sort of identification of who these people are. But I don't know is he defended it. And, and I guess if you had your druthers, since you're on there all the time, like, are there additional steps you would like to see them take? I'm springing this question on you because we didn't prep for this one, but I am kind of curious what you would suggest.

[C]

As far as I know, I don't think I've seen Elon really defend it. I mean, I, I think that this, this executive, this Nikita Beer guy is supposed to be like, kind of like the usability user experience king. He's been brought in recently. And so he's supposed to be kind of like cleaning it up after Elon made such a mess of it. And so I don't know if this was kind of some kind of sop to him to. I do think like, as we discovered with this, people on the right, which is certainly an audience Elon listens to, were really mad about this idea. I think that maybe their, their own crazy making divisive voices were getting drowned out by once from abroad and the other, in terms of, in terms of changes. I mean, I would like to see. And a lot of people are calling for this. I'd like to see a little flag icon right next to the name because, you know, I think that would. Then you don't have to kind of click through. And in general, I wouldn't mind if there was some kind of deprioritizing of these, these accounts that like, I mean, they're almost like voices in your head when you, when you're on there enough where it's like, it's like if a man doesn't pay $1,000 for a date, you know, it's over. And then, you know, people go, what? You know, yeah, it just makes you nuts.

[B]

No, I agree with that. I do. I think this was like a much needed step. Honestly, these accounts are unreal. I mean, it's gotten to the point where it's like, I don't even the replies because it's just a bunch of like anonymous people who I assume are just bot farms, but whatever. But it's nice, Honestly, it's nice to be able to now click and say, oh no, you're from like Albania. Great, cool. I don't have to pay attention. All right, man. Well, listen, it was good reporting. I'm glad that you, you did it. I'm, I'm happy that you're, you know, surviving your for you feed. And we look forward to the next dispatch.

[C]

Okay, I'm diving back in. I, I, I'm sure there's plenty of domestically you can't get enough crazy stuff to get as well.

[B]

I'm a little bit worried about your addictions. Okay. Will Summer, ladies and gentlemen, to help him out, subscribe to Falls Flag newsletter and subscribe to our YouTube feed where you get great content like this. Hey, Will, talk to you later, bud.

[C]

See you later.