Will the Senate Actually Confirm Trump’s Hooters-Obsessed Nominee?
The restaurant chain known for their, er, breasts won’t comment on Nick Adams, their now-famous customer recently picked to become ambassador to Malaysia. But some lawmakers did.
President Donald Trump has elevated plenty of unqualified characters to important posts in his administration. Fox News has led the pack as something of a farm team for the administration, which has welcomed many of the network’s on-air personalities and pundits into its ranks. But top cabinet positions and plum roles at various federal agencies have also gone to daytime TV personalities at other TV networks. Meanwhile, garden-variety conspiracy theorists and eyebrow-raising youngsters who developed their own audiences by other means are scoring gigs, too. The latest capital-W Weirdo to get the call-up is Nick Adams, an ultra-conservative online personality whose opinions are so quaintly outrageous that many have speculated that his persona is actually a bit of overcommitted performance art or stunt comedy. Apparently, it’s not a bit. Or, if it is, it’s being taken way too far. Last week, Trump tapped Adams, a naturalized U.S. citizen who hails from Australia, to serve as U.S. ambassador to Malaysia.
Adams does not have much in the way of foreign policy experience. But he constantly volunteers to clear trenches in the culture war, which aligns him with the central concern of the second Trump presidency. For political (and definitely not psychological) reasons, he despises M&M’s candy, hates feminism, and loves writing suggestive posts about how much he enjoys “having a foursome with the boys.” (He means golf.) His posting leitmotif is the idea of being an “alpha male.”
Adams also loves the restaurant chain Hooters. He has posted on X about the franchise more than 500 times over the past several years.
That last Adams post brings to mind something Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius wrote: “The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts.”1
Unfortunately for Adams, there isn’t that much golf in Malaysia (about 240 courses total), and there aren’t any Hooters (we checked). He’ll have to book a flight to nearby Singapore or Indonesia.
A spokesperson for Hooters did not return a request for comment on the nomination of their most loyal and vocally supportive customer to an ambassadorship. But surely, I thought, the senators themselves would have some thoughts on the man.
Even though the Adams nomination had been sitting on their desks for nearly a week, many of the Republicans on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee I spoke with claimed to be unfamiliar with him. Sen. Jim Risch (R-Idaho), the committee’s chairman, took a page out of the Hooters playbook and declined to comment on the nominee.
At least two senators on the committee have met Adams before his nomination. The first is Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who took a photo at a 2014 meet-and-greet with Adams. (The latter can be seen holding up his book The American Boomerang as if to imply that Cruz endorses it.) Cruz cannot be faulted if he doesn’t remember the meeting or taking the picture; these posed photos with political junkies are so common that Cruz has likely taken thousands in his career.
The other is Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), whom Adams introduced at a Wilson Center event in March.
“I haven’t had the opportunity to sit down with him, but I think President Trump has picked some great people,” Scott told me Tuesday when I asked about Adams. He declined to comment further.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio may not have met Adams before, but he supports his nomination. While in Malaysia, Rubio said, “Yeah, the president makes those nominations. I support the nomination. He went through our process of the Presidential Personnel Office, and we look forward to the Senate confirming him so he can get here and be a part of our team.”
Naturally, Democrats weren’t hesitant to declare Adams unfit for the role.
“I think we’re used to ambassadorships being given on the basis of politics, but this is over the line—this guy’s not ready for prime time,” Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) told me Monday. “This is serious business. The Asia–Pacific region is incredible for our national security and our economy, and I’m not sure that this guy could walk you through the basics of Asia or specifically Malaysia.”
For the record, Adams had tweeted one time about Malaysia prior to his nomination. It was a post calling out fellow Trumpy online personality Ian Miles Cheong.
“All I know is what I saw in some brief articles, which suggested this is a nominee who lacks deep experience in diplomacy,” said longtime committee member Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), who we assume is not a Hooters regular.
Regarding the confirmation process for Adams, Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), another committee member, said, “That hearing is probably pretty far out.”
Defeating Adams’ nomination would be a layup in any other Senate. But as we’ve seen with Trump’s other nominees for positions across his administration, if the president holds firm and applies even a semblance of pressure, his party’s senators will fall in line. A decade from now, we might describe this episode as the culmination of government as farce: that time a Hooters enthusiast with zero expertise ended up being made a key diplomatic operator in the Asia–Pacific just when China started preparing in earnest to invade Taiwan.
Department of misfit boys
Former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) may be continuing his drift into deep obscurity as an on-air talent for the struggling right-wing upstart media company One America News Network. But some of his former congressional staffers are seeing their careers advance as they find a new home at the Department of Defense.
In the past week, two Gaetz staffers have come aboard the Pete Hegseth–helmed Defense Department. Joel Valdez, Gaetz’s erstwhile communications director, joined DoD as acting deputy press secretary on Friday after spending a few months heading up comms for Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.).
Jacob Bliss, another Gaetz vet, announced on Monday that he, too, had joined the Defense Department. Bliss had taken over the comms role on Gaetz’s staff from Valdez shortly before Gaetz abruptly resigned from Congress; Bliss then ran the vacant 1st congressional district of Florida’s communications shop from last fall until April.
What sort of connection might there be between the notorious Florida Man and the DoD such that these former staffers are finding an open door at the Pentagon? I have a hunch. Kingsley Cortes Wilson, the deputy press secretary at the department who is known for her well-documented history of antisemitism, is married to John Wilson, Gaetz’s longtime legislative counsel.2
Put your money where your member of Congress is
Seasoned Press Pass readers should be familiar with the Pelosi Tracker. But for those who are new here, it’s a program by AutoPilot that tethers your brokerage account to the publicly disclosed stock transactions made by former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). It’s a high-risk portfolio, but in recent years, it has offered better returns than the world’s elite hedge funds.
It turns out that at least one Democratic candidate for Senate is a fellow user3: J.D. Scholten. Business Insider’s Bryan Metzger reports:
JD Scholten, a Democratic state legislator in Iowa, invested $1,000 in a fund that follows the
Pelosi family’s stock trades in early 2024.
Since then, he says he's made about $600.
“It’s not really a serious thing. I’m not banking on this,” Scholten, who’s now running for US Senate against Republican Sen. Joni Ernst, told BI in an interview. In a financial disclosure filed on Monday, Scholten said that his investment in the “Pelosi Tracker” was made “partly as a joke.”
Read the whole thing, and if you’re looking to grow some discretionary cash, get in on the (surprisingly lucrative) joke.
Another line from Marcus Aurelius sometimes comes to mind when reflecting more broadly on the current state of things: “The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.”
The two met at a Halloween party in 2021, which Kingsley attended dressed as a Border Patrol agent.
Disclosure: I have a modest sum invested in the Pelosi tracker and have seen returns similar to Scholten’s.
How long until they're holding press conferences at Hooters? It's hard to top Four Seasons Total Landscaping when it comes to stately presidential venues, but Hooters could do it!
I don't think our esteemed Senator, Susan Collins will even find herself concerned. She'll just vote yes and move on to the next item.