I hope you’re sitting down for this shocking news, but a Trump administration appointee is… a horrible racist. Yes, I know, what an unexpected development. This latest ghoul is Kingsley Wilson, who was unveiled yesterday as the Pentagon’s new press secretary.
Wilson is at the center of a long-running controversy about her conspiracy-minded anti-semitic social media posts. These aren’t your run-of-the-mill Trump-era bigotry, but some real old-school expert-level hatred. Much of this centers on the notorious historic lynching of Jewish-American man Leo Frank, who in 1913 was accused of the murder of a 13-year-old girl, kidnapped from prison in 1915, and lynched by an angry mob.
A century on from his death and Frank’s fate remains a hot topic. Historians now generally agree that Frank was wrongly convicted, with his lynching spurring the creation of the Anti-Defamation League and being a key factor in the rise of the 20th-century Ku Klux Klan.
But the Pentagon’s new press secretary sounds like she’d have been an eager member of the mob that lynched Frank. Taking to X in 2023, she dismissed evidence he was innocent and described the ADL as “despicable”:
Leo Frank raped & murdered a 13-year-old girl.
— Kingsley Wilson (@KingsleyCortes) March 11, 2023
He also tried to frame a black man for his crime.
The ADL is despicable. https://t.co/BGfjjxxAUh
Wilson repeated this a year later, displaying an unusually deep interest in this matter:
Leo Frank raped & murdered a 13-year-old girl.
— Kingsley Wilson (@KingsleyCortes) August 17, 2024
He also tried to frame a Black man for his crime.
The ADL turned off the comments because they want to gaslight you. https://t.co/u9Gn3wsb3D
Amy Spitalnick, the CEO of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs is extremely worried, describing Wilson as an example of “extremists being given prominent roles in the federal government” and explaining that focusing on this case is a neo-Nazi dogwhistle:
“This is something that is a deep cut in terms of the sorts of antisemitic ideas that neo-Nazis and others latch on to. So for someone who is now in a senior role in the federal government to have directly and explicitly engaged in this sort of conspiracy theory tells me that she is frequently trafficking in these neo-Nazi and other antisemitic spaces.”
The ADL is also worried, saying:
“White supremacists and other antisemites have long used conspiracy theories about the Leo Frank case to cast doubt on the circumstances of the antisemitic lynching. We are deeply disturbed that any public official would parrot these hateful and false conspiracy theories, and we hope Kingsley Wilson will immediately retract her remarks.”
Ditto the American Jewish Committee:
Anyone who posts antisemitic conspiracy theories lifted right out of the neo-Nazi playbook should not be in public office.
— American Jewish Committee (@AJCGlobal) March 5, 2025
Kingsley Wilson, newly appointed @DepPressSecDOD, is clearly unfit for her role.https://t.co/OvsGHMDBa1
A brain full of bad wiring
But why believe in one racist conspiracy theory when you can believe in them all? Wilson appears to be a sponge for this kind of stuff, with her social media feed a textbook example of the freaky Christian nationalism that’s infecting the state apparatus like a bad mold:
The Great Replacement isn't a right-wing conspiracy theory… it's reality pic.twitter.com/QRF07tigsX
— Kingsley Wilson (@KingsleyCortes) August 7, 2024
As the terrifying rise of worm-brained sewage swimmer RFK Jr indicates, having a head full of truly insane ideas is now no barrier to a top government position. But, even so, in this climate, perhaps anti-semitism and open criticism of the United States’ military support of Israel might be the one thing that’ll actually get a MAGA devotee fired?
Published: May 24, 2025 06:14 am