The US Defense Department has announced the promotion of its deputy press secretary, Kingsley Wilson, to chief press secretary, prompting ire from Jewish groups who raised concerns over her history of antisemitic comments.
Wilson was originally appointed as the Pentagon’s deputy spokeswoman on US President Donald Trump’s first day in office.
In response to her new role, Wilson said on Friday that she was “honored to serve President Trump and our war fighters.”
Honored to serve President Trump and our warfighters https://t.co/HdtamdaRhk
— Kingsley Wilson (@PressSecDOD) May 23, 2025
However, Jewish groups and some Democrats have cited her social media history as evidence of unsuitability for the role.
In 2023, Wilson tweeted, “Leo Frank raped and murdered a 13-year-old girl. He also tried to frame a black man for his crime. The ADL is despicable.”
Leo Frank raped & murdered a 13-year-old girl. 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
— Kingsley Wilson (@KingsleyCortes) August 17, 2024
Democrats call for Wilson to retract her comments
This was in reference to the case of Leo Frank, a Jewish man who was lynched in 1915 over what is now believed to have been a false accusation of his rape and murder of a teenage girl.
It is one of the most famous examples of antisemitism in US history. Frank’s trial spurred the creation of the Anti-Defamation League in 1913.
Neo-Nazis have historically argued that Frank was guilty. CyberWell has noted spikes in antisemitic content on social media surrounding Frank’s case whenever the anniversary of his lynching occurs.
It has also pointed out the use of the antisemitic trope of Jews being immoral, sexual deviants in connection with his case.
“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,” an ADL spokesperson said in a statement to The Guardian in March.
“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.”
On October 12, 2023, she posted, “The images of the babies murdered by Hamas are horrific. I wish images of aborted babies evoked a similar global outcry.”
Additionally, in 2024, Wilson tweeted, “The Great Replacement isn’t a right-wing conspiracy theory... It’s reality.”
The American Jewish Committee (AJC) defines the theory as the American belief that there is an intentional effort, led by Jews, to promote mass non-white immigration, inter-racial marriage, and other efforts that would lead to the “extinction of whites."
Wilson has also openly supported the German far-right party Alternative for Germany, tweeting in 2024, “Globalist elites hate AfD because they put Germans before foreign migrants and radical Islam. Ausländer raus! [Germany for Germans, foreigners out].”
Democrat Rep. Ritchie Torres of New York wrote a letter to US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth when Wilson was first named as the Pentagon’s deputy press secretary, saying that her appointment was “an insult to the Defense Department’s integrity.”
“Doing a basic search through her social media history, it is clear that her record is a minefield of antisemitic rhetoric, white nationalist conspiracies, and pro-Kremlin propaganda, making her unfit for any position of public trust, let alone one at the high levels of the Pentagon press shop,” he wrote.
Torres added that Wilson had previously trivialized Hamas’s October 7 massacre, “spreading inflammatory falsehoods that minimize the barbarity of the deadliest day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust.”
The AJC told JNS, “Anyone who posts antisemitic conspiracy theories lifted right out of the neo-Nazi playbook is unfit for public office.”
Wilson’s father is right-wing commentator and former Trump adviser Steve Cortes.