As a Sydney councillor, he wanted to DNA-test dog poo. Now he’s a MAGA darling

As a lifelong beta male, my survival has always depended on being able to spot men who are another link up the food chain from me – and staying out of their way. But no one could have spotted Nick Adams coming. The former inner west Sydney councillor, Hooters enthusiast and self-described alpha male was recently nominated as the US ambassador to Malaysia, bursting like a sulphurous fumarole from the MAGA underworld to burn everyone, perhaps most of all the Malaysians. “It is nothing short of a lifetime’s honour to take the President’s goodwill,” Adams said on X following his appointment by Donald Trump, “and spread it to the great people of Malaysia.”

Adams’ elevation came as a shock to most Americans. “Dude isn’t even American, lol, wtf?” one person posted on X. “Wait how the f--- is this immigrant going to be a US ambassador?” wrote another.

The Sydney-born 40-year-old certainly doesn’t look very MAGA: chubby and oddly effete, Adams has a doughy face and nasal, upper-register Australian accent that sounds like it’s being piped through a tin-can telephone. Yet he’s been auditioning for the manosphere for years. “I go to Hooters,” he tweeted in 2023. “I eat rare steaks. I lift extremely heavy weights. I read the Bible every night. I am pursued by copious amounts of women.” He insists he has “the physique of a Greek God” and “an IQ over 180″. In his latest book, Alpha Kings, he says that the only concession he’d make to a woman in his home would be to provide her with “a small area for her to do her scrap-booking or host her sewing machine”.

So how did Adams win high public office and in the US, no less? Born Nicholas Adamopoulos in Sydney, he battled cancer as a child before attending the private, all-boys school Trinity Grammar.

He completed a bachelor of media and communications from the University of Sydney, where he joined the Young Liberals. In 2004, he ran for Ashfield Council; a year later, at the age of 21, he was appointed Australia’s youngest deputy mayor. He excelled at sound-bite politics and Trumpian cunning: he wanted to DNA-test dog poo to catch owners who didn’t pick up after their pets, and proposed culling the resident pigeons. In a recent profile in The Washington Post, Adams admits that he strewed birdseed around the local supermarket to make the problem seem worse than it was.

In 2012, he left for the US, where he joined the conservative talk circuit and authored several books, including Retaking America: Crushing Political Correctness and Green Card Warrior: My Quest for Legal Immigration in an Illegals’ System. In a tight field of Trump sycophants he became a stand-out groveller, describing the US president as a “superhero” and “the last great lion on earth”. He also disparaged “efforts to teach Islam” in US schools and claimed pro-Palestinian demonstrators were supporting terrorism.

So how will this play in Malaysia, a Muslim-majority nation and staunch supporter of Palestine? Local politicians have already described Adams’ appointment as an “insult”.

At time of writing, Malaysia is yet to approve it, but Adams is celebrating anyway. “Mr President, thank you,” he gushed on X. “In your America, all dreams come true.”

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