State Dept. ‘Influencer’ Thought NATO Promo Gig Was About ‘Sharknado’

ANALYSIS – But of course he did. You know things are really bad when Biden's State Department recruits a young, wholesome and cheerful, but slightly ignorant “influencer” to promote the 75th NATO Summit going on this week in the swamp.

But things went south a bit when the young man admits he thought the NATO gig he was being hired for was actually about “Sharknado” the movie about flying sharks in tornados.

He thought his potential employers were using an abbreviation for the made-for-TV movies – “Nado” rather than NATO.

The preposterous plot of the first 2013 film delighted audiences and the film earned a cult following – enough to spawn five additional sequels.

And apparently, Anthony Polcari, also known by his username @TonyPinDC on Instagram, at first thought maybe he was getting involved in the next sequel.

But that's what you get when your president's administration focuses more on Gen Z social media youth engagement than on national security.

According to Mediate, “Polcari has made a name for himself in the online DC scene for his wholesome ‘positive masculinity' [AKA soft and fuzzy] videos that are so earnest they've led more than one observer to wonder if he's created “a satirical account, a guy doing an extremely accurate and realistic bit” or if this really is his personality.”

Tony P has racked up over 200,000 followers on Instagram and 16,000 on TikTok.

And now the peppy lad who is apparently likes “zoning out to ‘Law & Order' reruns, working on improving his cooking skills, and just in general being the polar opposite to” [so called] “misogynistic toxicity,” is now the youngest NATO mascot welcoming the western military alliance's leaders to DC on a vacuous short video.

Mediate added:

In a one-minute video posted by the official NATO account on The Platform Formerly Known as Twitter, Polcari serves as a digital tour guide, offering some friendly facts (including NATO being founded in D.C. in 1949) and describing the organization as “the world's most successful political and military alliance” in the same chipper tone he usually devotes to sharing his breakfasts or outfits of the day.

Yes, but how did this golden retriever in a navy suit and white button-down shirt land the gig? Washingtonian reporter Helen Huiskes reached out to Polcari for the story, and he told her NATO reached out to his agent, along with an unusual admission:

“Tony P says his agent—yes, Tony P has an agent—approached him about a week before filming with an offer from the State Department's mission to NATO. (‘When my agent first said NATO, I thought it was Sharknado,' he says.) People there wanted him to star in the welcome video, his agent said. Tony P is trying to get into TV hosting—his phone wallpaper is a photo of his idol Regis Philbin—so he jumped at the chance.”

Tony P then enthusiastically took on the role of being the latest poster boy for the world's most powerful military alliance.

“NATO is such an important part of our world,” said Polcari. “I was 100 percent in to help promote that.”

The New York Post noted that: “A script for the promo video along with an outline for shots of monuments was written by NATO's German-based social media team…But some critics were brutal as a shark attack — calling Polcari too perky to be the face of NATO.”

“Congratulations! This is the worst thing I've ever seen!” one user slammed on X.

Another user teased: “This video radicalized me against NATO,” and a third quipped hopefully in jest, “This ad has made me decide that I now support Russia.”

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.

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