DOD deputy press secretary has history of tweets with racist and antisemitic conspiracy theories
One of the Trump administration's deputy press secretaries at the Defense Department has an extensive record of racist, isolationist and ultra-nationalist posts on social media, including pushing discredited conspiracy theories about a Jewish victim of lynching and about Haitian migrants, as well as rejecting U.S. support for Israel and Ukraine.
Kingsley Wilson's social media attracted attention earlier this week when people started resurfacing posts she shared on X in 2023 and 2024, in which she used a talking point widely repeated by antisemitic advocates: that Leo Frank, a Jewish man convicted of raping and murdering a teenage girl and then lynched by a Georgia mob in 1915, but posthumously pardoned decades later, was in fact guilty. Frank is widely believed to have been falsely accused and unjustly convicted. His case led to the formation of the Anti-Defamation League.
'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 of Leo Frank,' the ADL wrote in a statement Wednesday.
'We're deeply disturbed that any public official would parrot these hateful and false conspiracy theories, and we hope Kingsley Wilson will immediately retract her remarks.'
Wilson also has expressed opposition to U.S. military intervention abroad, posting days after the war in Gaza started, 'My future children will not die in foreign ethnic conflicts a world away.' In July, she called NATO 'nothing more than an international HR department.'
She specifically opposed American military support for Israel. At the end of 2024, Wilson wrote, "Why is the U.S. military defending Israel & Ukraine's border but not our own?", and in 2023, replied to an X post by former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett: 'Fight your own wars. America First.'
Wilson and the Department of Defense did not immediately reply to NBC News' requests for comment on Wilson's past posts, or whether they represent the views of the Pentagon.
Wilson has also railed against U.S. funding for Ukraine, describing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as an 'entitled midget,' and asking, 'Why should American taxpayers help defend Ukraine?' She has also praised Russian President Vladimir Putin, calling his 'encyclopedic knowledge of his people's history beyond impressive.'
On her X account, Wilson has shown support for Germany's far-right Alternative for Germany party, mentioning it multiple times along with a German phrase that translates to 'foreigners out.'
She has previously declared 'Make Kosovo Serbia again,' despite Kosovo being officially recognized as an independent state by the U.S. in the years after the two Balkan countries fought a war in the 1990s. Russia does not recognize Kosovo's independence.
Democratic Rep. Ritchie Torres from New York responded to Wilson's post last week, writing on X that she's 'shamefully attempting to delegitimize Kosovo.'
A significant number of Wilson's past posts on X peddle discredited conspiracy theories, including that Haitians living in the U.S. are 'eating cats' and 'dirt,' as well as the "great replacement theory," the racist belief that ethnic white groups and their culture are being 'replaced' by nonwhite immigrant groups in Western countries.
On Thanksgiving in 2022, she wrote, 'REMINDER: the Native Americans were anything but peaceful before the arrival of white Europeans.'
Wilson has also repeatedly tweeted variations of the sentiment that 'White, Christian males are the most demonized group in modern America,' and argued that women should not be allowed to work as police officers or Secret Service agents. She has also called transgender people 'corrupted souls,' and responded 'not all heroes wear capes' to a man being arrested for vandalizing a LGBTQ pride mural.
The 26-year-old Wilson is the daughter of right-wing commentator and former Trump adviser Steve Cortes. Since graduating high school, she has mixed with conservative politicians and media personalities, snapping photos with Sen. Ted Cruz and appearing on episodes of right-wing commentator Tim Pool's podcast. She worked for the conservative think tank Center for Renewing America and Gettr, the social media platform founded by former Trump aide Jason Miller.
Wilson backed former Rep. Matt Gaetz's nomination for attorney general and traveled with him and his wife Ginger to El Salvador in November. Ginger Gaetz called her 'one of the most articulate voices in politics.'
Some of her past posts have slammed Republicans, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. In February of last year, Wilson posted on X: 'Republicans are a joke. Only the Executive can save us. Trump 2024.'
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
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