She's Just the Tip of the Trump Administration's Racist Iceberg

Yahoo

10-03-2025

THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION has had more than its share of scandalous personnel picks, but Pentagon Deputy Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson takes 'scandalous' to a whole new level—as in, Protocols of the Elders of Zion­­–level. Last week, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported that in March 2023 and August 2024, Wilson made social-media posts attacking Leo Frank, the Jewish factory manager lynched in Georgia in 1915 after being convicted in the rape and murder of a 13-year-old girl in a trial widely regarded as an antisemitism-laden travesty. The posts also blasted the Anti-Defamation League, which fought for Frank's exoneration for decades and obtained a posthumous pardon in 1986. The Leo Frank libel is a popular cause among antisemites; shortly before Wilson's 2024 post, Candace Owens shared a video arguing that Frank was guilty of ritual murder. (She also asserted that the ADL was in cahoots with the Freemasons and the Ku Klux Klan to reverse the American Revolution.)
Antisemites are nothing new on the far right, and their creep from the murky fringes of American conservatism toward something like center stage has been years in the making. But the presence of a right-wing antisemite like Wilson in an influential position in the federal government still raises eyebrows.
Before Wilson became an official representative of the Department of Defense, she worked on Donald Trump's 2020 campaign and then took a job at the Center for Renewing America, the think tank founded by Project 2025 contributor and current Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought. Wilson had also defended Christian nationalism, promoted the antisemitism-inflected 'Replacement Theory,' and declared Confederate general Robert E. Lee to be 'one of the greatest Americans to ever live.' She's a big fan of the far-right Alternative for Deutschland party, shunned even by many other right-wing populist parties in Europe because of its flirtations with Nazi apologism. She even praised the party using the neo-Nazi-linked slogan Ausländer Raus! ('Foreigners out').
Departing from MAGA's general pro-Zionist stance, Wilson has also opposed U.S. aid to Israel (along with Taiwan and Ukraine). Last year, she mocked Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson for going to Columbia University to show solidarity with Jewish students who complained of a hostile environment created by pro-Palestinian protests. The campus protests, Wilson opined, were simply 'Sharia Supremacists vs. University Marxists' who should be left to fight each other. (Since actual university Marxists tended to side with the protesters, Wilson's use of 'Marxists' sure sounds like a code word for . . . another group.)
While several prominent conservative pundits expressed dismay and urged Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to boot the 'blood libel apologist,' few congressional Republicans were willing to speak out. Sen. Lindsey Graham opined that 'if what you say about these posts are true, then she's completely off-script with President Trump'—obviously, the worst possible condemnation from Graham, for whom agreement with Trump is the only virtue. Sen. Dan Sullivan of Alaska warned about the importance of 'appropriate vetting.' The strongest comment came from Mick Mulroy, deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East in the first Trump administration: 'If she stays, then in many ways, it says those comments are acceptable.'
Indeed.
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THE SECOND TRUMP ADMINISTRATION'S tacit acceptance of Wilson contrasts sharply with, for instance, the 2018 firing of Trump speechwriter Darren Beattie for ties to white supremacists. Of course, times have changed, and Beattie, too, is now back in a Trump administration post—this time as acting under secretary for public diplomacy and public affairs in the State Department.
Given this climate, it is perhaps unsurprising that other troubling entanglements between the Trump administration and antisemitic figures have been reported in recent days—such as the administration's apparent intervention on behalf of 'manosphere' influencer Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan, who currently face rape and human trafficking charges in Romania. The Tates' supporters, among them Donald Trump Jr., dismiss the case as politically motivated. (Never mind that Andrew Tate bragged about his crimes on video.) In late February, the brothers returned to the United States after the Romanian government suddenly lifted restrictions on their travel. The extent of the Trump administration's involvement in getting the ban lifted is unknown, but the Financial Times has reported that several officials had brought up the case in phone conversations with the Romanians and that Trump Special Envoy Richard Grenell had talked about it in person to Romanian Foreign Minister Emil Hurezeanu. (Grenell downplayed his role but acknowledged his support for the Tates; meanwhile, Trumpworld insider Roger Stone has written on X that Grenell 'secured the release of the Tates.') It's also worth noting that Andrew Tate's former attorney, Paul Ingrassia—author of a cringeworthy 2023 post hailing his client as a model of 'human excellent among men,' persecuted because of the 'threat' he posed to 'global elites'—is now the White House liaison to the Department of Homeland Security.
Andrew Tate is notorious mainly as an unabashed and self-proclaimed misogynist who says that women shouldn't vote because they're too emotional and boasts on video about punching, slapping, and choking women to keep them in line. But it's a good rule of thumb that someone with such hateful views of women probably also hates Jews—and (surprise, surprise!) the rule holds for Andrew Tate. He is, among other things, a vocal Hamas supporter: After October 7th, he not only pointedly refused to condemn the terror group but actually praised its 'masculine spirit of resistance.' He has also waxed poetic about the 'heroic' death of Yahya Sinwar, the architect and leader of the October 7th pogrom. In January 2024, Tate also speculated that since 'they' lied about Gaza and Israel, about Ukraine and about every other war, it stood to reason that everything we're told about World War II is probably a lie, as well. The war, he wrote, is 'still used to this day to psyop the populace' with the message that 'Bad guy = Nazi.'
Upon his return to the United States, Tate quickly booked himself on the Full Send podcast, which boasts millions of followers, to complain that 'you can't criticize the Jews.'
CONTROVERSIES ABOUT ANTISEMITISM in Trumpworld date back at least to the 2016 campaign, when Jewish journalists critical of Trump were often bombarded with antisemitic abuse from the pro-Trump 'alt-right.' Trump notably declined an invitation from CNN's Wolf Blitzer to rebuke his supporters who were directing such harassment at journalist Julia Ioffe because of her 'nasty' profile of Melania Trump. While Trump sought Jewish support by stressing his devotion to Israel, his flirtations with his antisemitic far-right supporters culminated in the debacle of Charlottesville, where marchers in August 2017 chanted such slogans as 'Jews will not replace us.' Trump then ostensibly condemned Nazis and white supremacists while commending the 'very fine people' who marched alongside them.
At the same time, the administration presented itself as a stalwart protector of American Jews from the depredations of antisemitism on college campuses. Trump issues an executive order in 2019 directing colleges to consider an expanded definition of antisemitism, including some anti-Israel speech, when enforcing civil rights protections.
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Responding to the wave of pro-Palestinian protests that followed October 7th, the Trump administration has portrayed itself as leading the charge against left-wing antisemitism, taking new measures whose benefit so far are unclear and which, in some cases, arguably threaten protected speech. Most recently, the administration announced that it had canceled $400 million of federal grants to Columbia University because the school failed to protect Jewish students from harassment.
What must Kingsley Wilson be thinking?
WHILE THE ALT-RIGHT as a separate movement has largely faded from view, white nationalist and/or antisemitic views have infiltrated the right-wing mainstream—and with it, the government—to a degree unthinkable eight years ago. Tucker Carlson, who has coyly flirted with such views for a while, is now brazen about it, portraying pro-Israel conservative Jews like Ben Shapiro as rootless interlopers who care more about Israel than about America. Finally, last September, Carlson aired a long, fawning interview with 'popular historian' Darryl Cooper, a Hitler apologist who finds continued Nazi rule in France vastly preferable to drag queens at the Paris Olympics opening ceremony. Unscathed by the outrage among many conservatives, Carlson continued to play a prominent role in the Trump campaign.
The 'vibe shift' is not necessarily that more people on the right are antisemites compared to eight years ago; it's that much of the right now appears to reject the basic notion that there should be any stigma against even the vilest bigotry. This was evident in the controversy over DOGE employee Marko Elez, briefly fired after his racist social media activity came to light but then rehired after a plea from JD Vance, who benignly described Elez's racial invective (e.g., 'Normalize Indian hate') as merely posts he 'disagree[s] with.' The 'antiwoke' backlash, which views the stigmatization of bigotry as a form of leftist speech-policing, is compounded by an anti-establishment backlash that valorizes norm-smashing—at least, smashing of liberal norms.
And so we shouldn't be surprised when as prominent and influential a media figure as Joe Rogan, whose support was actively courted by Trump during the election, publishes an interview with antisemitic conspiracy theorist Ian Carroll, who claims that Jeffrey Epstein's child sex abuse ring was an Israeli intelligence operation to compromise Americans or that a group of 'dancing Israelis' had advance knowledge of the September 11th attacks. And that's not all: Among Rogan's upcoming guests is the same Darryl Cooper who discussed his World War II revisionism on Tucker Carlson's show last fall.
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