Elon Musk’s favorite news influencer is capitalizing on his clout

Elon Musk spends much of his time reposting and replying to social media posts on X, often with single word comments like “wow,” “truth” or “interesting.”

Musk’s clout as the owner of X and its most influential user means that the posts he interacts with tend to gain widespread attention, often reaching at least a million views.

Although it’s a small fraction of all of Musk’s activities on X, the two interact on a near-daily basis, far outstripping other popular accounts Musk reposts and replies to.

Powerful people, including foreign leaders, seem to be taking note. Since Jan. 20, when Musk become an advisor to President Trump, Nawfal has posted long interviews on YouTube with five prime ministers and presidents, as well as the Russian foreign minister.

“A range of political actors clearly see Nawfal not only as a useful amplifier, but also as a direct bridge to Elon Musk and the White House,” said Emerson Brooking, a researcher at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab. “If Nawfal is sharing a story, there’s a good chance that U.S. policymakers are reading it — and acting on it.”

Sometimes, Nawfal’s posts jump via Musk into President Trump’s feed. In February, Nawfal repeated a false claim in a week-old post accusing the news outlet Reuters of engaging in “large scale social deception”. The post refers to a Defense Department contract involving a different company that shares a parent with Reuters — not the news agency. Musk reposted it within minutes and then President Trump repeated the false claim the next day.

“Nawfal is the prime example of news brokering,” said Mert Can Bayar, a postdoctoral researcher at University of Washington. Bayar has studied the rise of a new generation of news-focused influencers on X since Musk bought the platform in 2022, who are taking both content and limelight from newsrooms during major breaking news events.

X and Musk did not respond to requests for comment for this story.

Rising in times of crisis

Before becoming a news influencer on X, Nawfal launched a crypto incubator, which he still runs, and hosted shows focused on the ups and downs of the crypto world.

Nawfal and Musk appear to have first crossed paths publicly in November 2022, when Musk joined an X live audio talk — called an X Space — Nawfal was hosting about the collapse of cryptocurrency exchange FTX. With Musk’s appearance and Nawfal’s heavy promotion, Nawfal’s follower count swelled by tens of thousands.

Nawfal said he first noticed the power of talking about news on X when he hosted an audio talk about a missile explosion in Poland near the Ukrainian border at the end of 2022. “Suddenly a lot of non-crypto people came in and started listening. And that’s when I realized that, hey, this has a lot more potential beyond just crypto,” he said.

Nawfal said he now has a team that writes over 100 posts on X a day and works around the clock.

In the aftermath of Hamas’s attack on Israel in Oct. 7, 2023, the six news organizations who gained the most traffic on X still had fewer combined views than Nawfal alone, and Nawfal wasn’t even the top influencer at the time, said Bayar, the UW researcher.

“It’s a paradise for [the news brokers] because they don’t do any screening,” Bayar said. “So they can tweet a lot of things in 10 minutes.”

Israel has mostly barred reporters from Gaza since its war there.

‘Taking a stance’ on U.S. politics

As the U.S. presidential election heated up in 2024, Nawfal interviewed prominent conservatives, including people who have gone on to join the current Trump administration, such as Federal Communications Commission chair Brendan Carr in August, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr in September. Many of them, like Musk, allege that conservative voices have been unfairly censored by social media companies and other institutions.

“I used to be balanced on everything, and now I’ve taken a few stances,” Nawfal said. “Free speech is one. I’ve become more critical of the last administration and more supportive of the Trump administration.”

After Musk took on a prominent role as a White House advisor to President Trump, he kept interacting with Nawfal on X.

Nawfal’s X account often cites news organizations as sources, including Vox, Politico, Fortune, Fox News, The Guardian, the BBC and public radio stations. The account doesn’t link to the underlying news stories, but does tag X accounts that aren’t news organizations listed as sources.

X’s algorithm downranks posts with links, meaning users are less likely to see them in their feeds, Bayar said. “Which is a problem for information literacy, digital media literacy, fact checking and information credibility.”

International leaders

Nawfal credits his access to world leaders to his influence on X, but also to the way he approaches his interviews.

“Media outlets just don’t represent them the same way. Like, any media outlet would not represent President Xi Jinping the same way they would represent the leader of NATO, or the leader of France.”

Nawfal said that he’s been “very, very objective” when it comes to geopolitics.

In his long interviews with world leaders, including the presidents of Kosovo, Serbia, Rwanda, Belarus and prime minister of Slovakia, Nawfal tends to not interrupt or push back against his guests’ claims. Many repeated common Kremlin talking points in their appearances.

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko repeated claims that justified Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, while Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov questioned whether a massacre in Ukraine committed by Russian forces had actually occurred.

Nawfal does not only talk to pro-Russia figures. President Vjosa Osmani of Kosovo brought up Russia’s history of breaking peace agreements and expounded on how NATO and USAID has helped her country.

He also recognizes that when he doesn’t point out inaccuracies, his audience might take the content as fact. “One thing that journalists do in the world that’s really important is they push back when it’s necessary. It’s an art that I’m for sure still trying to perfect,” he said.

Nawfal promotes the long interviews by making short clips and posting them with quotes onto X and YouTube. One follow-up clip to an interview with Serbian president Aleksandar Vučić was titled “Vucic Reveals Truth About Anti-Protestor Sonic Weapons”. A clip about the interview with Belarus’s leader was titled “Lukashenko Reveals Truth About Ukraine Mineral Deal”.

Guests other than heads of states have also received the “truth” designation — Aleskandr Dugin, an extreme Russian nationalist who advocates for Russia’s expansion; and influencer brothers Andrew and Tristan Tate, who are facing charges in Romania over accusations of human trafficking and forming a criminal gang to sexually exploit women.

He said he noticed it, too, when someone in his team wrote the title. “When I had the discussion with him, he was like, people click on it when it says ‘the truth’.”

‘Loyalty’ to X and Musk

While Nawfal’s X account boasts 2.2 million followers and his bio claims he has the “Largest Show on X,” Nawfal’s interviews with world leaders only get thousands of views on YouTube. He said that although he has a team running his YouTube account, he wants to be very “X exclusive”.

“I kind of have that loyalty because of the support that has given me and also my dedication to free speech,” Nawfal said.

Nawfal’s content often seems to respond to Musk’s interests.

“I think he reposts the content he agrees with and I just try to bring as much value to the platform as possible,” Nawfal said about Musk. “There’s this public communication, there’s nothing more to it.”

Nawfal later followed up to say he had no comments about his communications with Musk.

Nawfal said that he’s not asking Musk to fund “69 Minutes,” despite Musk’s offer to do so. Nor does he take sponsorship for his “political shows, he said.” “When you’re financially well off, you’re in a better place not to be influenced.”

But Nawfal said he’s not diverting resources from his incubator to make X content for free, either. “I understand when I interview presidents, prime ministers, it brings a lot of eyes to my channel,” he said. “That’s top of the funnel — and then later you could and that audience could later listen to your financial show, your AI show.”

Those shows have helped bring deals to his business, Nawfal said, although he “cannot discuss numbers as it’s a bit difficult, since the shows and media arm is part of broader incubation services we offer.”

Potential clients interested in collaborating with Nawfal’s media platforms can choose from a range of options, including guest appearance, sponsorship and content collaboration. Nawfal said that they “only accept sponsorships for the crypto and AI shows.”

The website for Nawfal’s International Blockchain Consulting Group lists media as one of its offerings.

“Harness the influence of the largest platform on X(Twitter) and other strategic assets we’ve acquired to position ourselves as the foremost entity with the widest reach in Web3,” the site promises.