After the fall of communism in 1989, the United States launched several initiatives to aid Eastern Europe’s transition to democracy and market economies.
One such initiative was the creation of the Bulgarian-American Investment Fund (BAIF) in 1991 under the Bush administration. The Fund, initially seeded with $20 million in taxpayer money, quickly became a financial juggernaut, turning that modest investment into an $800 million portfolio by investing in over 5,000 businesses and various real estate ventures in a post-communist economy.
The success of the fund led to the establishment of the “America for Bulgaria” (AFB) Foundation in 2008, backed by President George W. Bush and Congress, with the goal of strengthening U.S.-Bulgarian relations.
The foundation’s budget, drawn from the BAIF’s annual profits of approximately $20 million, was intended to support media, education, and charitable initiatives.
However, a closer look reveals that a significant portion of these funds has been funneled into an expansive media network promoting a singular ideological agenda — one that overwhelmingly aligns with the U.S. Democratic Party and its progressive, globalist vision.
A Media Machine Serving One Party
Since 2016, the media outlets funded by AFB have exclusively promoted leftist narratives, failing to produce a single positive article about Donald Trump or the Republican Party. At the same time, they have shielded Democrats — Obama, Biden, Kamala Harris — from any form of criticism.
Leading up to the 2024 election, these outlets confidently predicted a sweeping victory for Harris while vilifying Trump as a fascist and existential threat to democracy.
After Trump’s victory, their rhetoric only escalated, branding him a “Nazi rapist” and attacking his cabinet selections — including figures like Matt Gaetz, RFK Jr., and Pete Hegseth — as incompetent or corrupt. Even Elon Musk, once celebrated by these media platforms, has suddenly been recast as a villainous oligarch for supporting free speech.
This relentless propaganda, funded indirectly by American taxpayers, has severely damaged Bulgarian public perception of the United States. Recent Gallup polls reveal that disapproval of U.S. policies in Bulgaria has soared to 69%.
The Clash of Values
The core reason for this growing animosity lies in the ideological mismatch between Bulgaria’s conservative, tradition-bound society and the radical progressive agenda pushed by AFB-funded media.
Rather than promoting the U.S. as the world’s largest economy, the leader of technological innovation, or the beacon of freedom and opportunity, the narrative has been hijacked by an obsession with LGBTQ activism, gender ideology, child surgeries, DEI campaigns, and identity politics.
Bulgaria, the oldest surviving country in Europe, home to Plovdiv — Europe’s oldest continuously inhabited city — has a deeply ingrained cultural identity rooted in Orthodox Christianity, family values, and national pride.
The forced imposition of Western progressivism, detached from local realities, has predictably triggered a backlash. The average Bulgarian does not see “Pride Month” or pronoun debates as markers of progress but rather as foreign ideological colonization, funded by American dollars under the guise of “strengthening democracy.”
Political Engineering and Regime-change Tactics
The AFB Foundation’s media operation is branded under the term “Business Enabling Environment.”
In reality, it functions as a political apparatus, funding NGOs, judicial activism groups, and so-called “anti-corruption” initiatives — all of which conspicuously avoid scrutinizing left-wing actors while disproportionately targeting traditionalist and conservative politicians.
A prime example of this bias was former U.S. Ambassador to Bulgaria, Hero Mustafa, whose tenure was marked by direct political interference.
Since 2021, Mustafa played kingmaker in Bulgaria, actively intervening in elections, leveraging U.S. Senate reports, and weaponizing Magnitsky sanctions to weaken the country’s center-right party.
This resulted in a prolonged four-year political crisis, characterized by plummeting foreign investment, rampant inflation, budget deficits, and a collapse in public infrastructure projects. Yet, AFB-funded media outlets have lauded this chaos as a “victory for democracy,” echoing the predictable script from the Hillary Clinton–Victoria Nuland playbook.
This is not just a Bulgaria problem
The outlets sponsored by AFB — Capital, Dnevnik, Mediapool, Debati, Offnews and Gospodarite, among others—operate under a unified narrative, one that aligns seamlessly with the globalist elite’s priorities. Their coverage mirrors that of legacy media in the U.S.: Trump is always wrong, the left is always right, and any dissent is dismissed as authoritarianism.
Bulgaria is far from the only country subjected to this ideological reprogramming. The same strategies have been deployed across Eastern Europe, where U.S.-funded media and NGOs aim to erode national identities and instill leftist orthodoxy.
The goal is clear: replace organically grown democratic institutions with compliant, globalist-friendly governments willing to toe the Washington establishment’s line.
How do we fix this?
It is an outrage that American taxpayer money is being used to undermine conservatism abroad while propping up far-left narratives that do not even reflect the values of mainstream Americans. It would be great to take decisive action to dismantle these taxpayer-funded propaganda machines, audit organizations like AFB, and ensure that American diplomatic efforts focus on genuine alliance-building rather than ideological subversion.
Bulgarians, just like Americans, deserve the freedom to shape their own political landscape without foreign interference masquerading as “democracy promotion.” The American people deserve accountability for how their tax dollars are spent overseas.
And conservatives — both in the U.S. and abroad — must expose and challenge these orchestrated efforts to hijack public discourse in the name of progressive hegemony.
The time has come to stand against this ideological imperialism. The people of Bulgaria, like the people of the United States, must reclaim their national sovereignty, their political agency, and their right to a media landscape free from state-sponsored manipulation.
This begins with the suspension of AFP’s efforts in Bulgaria and a renewed focus by the Trump administration to be accountable to the American people for how their taxpayer dollars are spent overseas. So far President Trump is keeping his promises to the American people and we in Bulgaria are very happy to see his early successes.
Bryan E. Leib is the CEO of Henry Public Relations, a Senior Fellow with the Center for Fundamental Rights and the former Executive Director of the Iranian Americans for Liberty, and in 2024, he was a CPAC- Endorsed Republican Congressional Candidate (FL-25). He tweets at @BryanLeibFL. Read More Bryan E. Leib Reports — Here.
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