An alleged effort to promote “transparency” on Elon Musk’s social media platform X recently exposed one of the worst-kept secrets of the MAGA movement: the raft of pro-Trump accounts apparently controlled by foreigners.
NBC News reported on the platform’s new “location transparency” feature, which in short order appears to have exposed some prominent MAGA-branded accounts as being based overseas.
Per the report:
As soon as it appeared live for users, X was flooded with viral posts showing that numerous high-engagement, MAGA-branded accounts that present themselves as those of patriotic Americans appear to instead be based overseas, including in Eastern Europe, Thailand, Nigeria and Bangladesh.
For example:
An account that calls itself ‘ULTRAMAGA 🇺🇸 TRUMP🇺🇸2028,’ claiming to be based in Washington, D.C., is listed as being based in Africa. Another now-deleted account with a President Donald Trump-inspired username — ‘Trump Is My President’ — was listed as being based in Macedonia. And an account with the username @American, complete with a profile picture featuring a bald eagle over an American flag, is apparently based in South Asia.
The disclosures themselves may be deserving of a degree of skepticism. X posted a disclaimer saying that “The country or region that an account is based can be impacted by recent travel or temporary relocation. This data may not be accurate and can change periodically.”
A Rolling Stone report from early October highlighted two popular, pro-MAGA accounts on X – one known as “Defiant Ls” and another known as “Resist the Mainstream” – that have been promoted by Republican lawmakers but are run by a man, Rumen Naumovski, who admitted he’s never stepped foot in the U.S. He even made an illegal campaign donation to a far-right political candidate in Arizona that Rolling Stone reports has since been returned.
Far-right, Malaysia-based influencer Ian Miles Cheong, a well-known MAGA influencer, is also a prominent example of a MAGA megaphone based abroad.
But foreign-operated, Trump-aligned social media accounts have been a growing concern since Trump’s first presidential campaign, when Russian-operated accounts boosted his campaign messaging and promoted pro-Trump misinformation. Trump’s more recent presidential campaign also benefited from Russian-based social media accounts, according to a CNN report last year.
These facts provide helpful context for conservatives’ yearslong attempts to discredit disinformation experts and undercut efforts to stop foreign entities from using social media to influence U.S. politics. And they show why Americans would do well to question any suggestion that the president’s support on social media is an accurate measure of his support among the American public.
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog.