Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration is has been full of ominous developments. For one, we have learned that foreign interference in American politics has not gone away.
Many of the most influential personalities in the “Make America great again” (Maga) movement on X are based outside of the US, including Russia, Nigeria and India, a new transparency feature on the social media site has revealed.
The new tool, called “about this account”, became available on Friday to users of the Elon Musk-owned platform. It allows anyone to see where an account is located, when it joined the platform, how often its username has been changed, and how the X app was downloaded.
As soon as the update was rolled out, users found numerous Maga and rightwing influencers who presented themselves as patriotic Americans were operating from other countries.
“This is easily one of the greatest days on this platform,” wrote the liberal influencer Harry Sisson. “Seeing all of these MAGA accounts get exposed as foreign actors trying to destroy the United States is a complete vindication of Democrats, like myself and many on here, who have been warning about this.”
The account MAGANationX, with nearly 400,000 followers and a bio reading “Patriot Voice for We The People”, is actually operated from eastern Europe, according to the Daily Beast. Another popular profile, IvankaNews, an Ivanka Trump fan account with about 1 million followers that frequently posts about illegal immigration, Islam and support for Trump, was revealed to be based in Nigeria.
Another user also uncovered several additional cases. Dark Maga, a smaller account with roughly 15,000 followers, is run from Thailand. MAGA Scope, which has more than 51,000 followers, operates out of Nigeria, while MAGA Beacon is based in south Asia.
A user with the handle @AmericanGuyX, for example, who represents themselves as a “Florida guy,” regularly posted in support of Trump and Musk while denouncing figures including George Soros and fear-mongering about the U.S. national debt. Their location, according to X, is India. On Saturday, Trump shared an X post from @TRUMP_ARMY_ about a Supreme Court ruling on Truth Social; that person, who has more than half a million followers, also lives in India. And a now-suspended account with the handle @American and a profile image of a bald eagle superimposed on an American flag traced back to Pakistan.
Other accounts featuring MAGA slogans, American flag emojis, references to the American Revolution, and Trump-favored words such as “patriot” were found to be run by users in places including Nigeria, Turkey, Ukraine, Thailand, and the United Kingdom. Quite a few have substantial followings and at some point alluded to voting for Trump in 2024 despite evidently lacking U.S. citizenship. There was evidence, too, that more of these inauthentic profiles are springing up every day and often rebranding to gain a wider audience. The MAGA account “Charlie’s Voice Rising,” or @CharlieK_news, which uses an avatar of slain right-wing activist Charlie Kirk and has nearly 200,000 followers, was created less than a year ago by someone in Eastern Europe, and the handle has been changed multiple times.
