JTA — Kingsley Wilson, appointed in January to be deputy press secretary at the Pentagon, last year tweeted a neo-Nazi talking point about Jewish lynching victim Leo Frank.
The post came amid a flood of far-right social media content by the Trump administration appointee, who previously worked at an organization founded by the architect of Project 2025, the Christian conservative blueprint for a Trump White House. Many of Wilson’s posts, which remain online, reflect antisemitic conspiracy theories.
The one about Frank has resurged in recent years. Frank was a factory manager in Georgia who was convicted on thin evidence of killing a 13-year-old girl, Mary Phagan, and was sentenced to death. When his sentence was commuted to life in prison, a mob lynched him. The 1915 lynching spurred the creation of the Anti-Defamation League and is widely seen as antisemitic.
Neo-Nazis have long claimed that Frank was guilty and that the consensus that he was framed is evidence of Jewish control of the media. Those claims received publicity in 2023 when the National Socialist Movement, a neo-Nazi group, protested outside previews of “Parade,” a Broadway musical about Frank’s lynching. The protesters criticized the ADL, and their banner read, “Leo frankly was a pedo.”
In August 2024, Wilson posted the same sentiments on X, above a post by the ADL commemorating Frank’s lynching.
“Leo Frank raped & murdered a 13-year-old girl,” she wrote. “He also tried to frame a Black man for his crime. The ADL turned off the comments because they want to gaslight you.”
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
Five months later, the day after Donald Trump’s inauguration as US president, Wilson was appointed deputy Pentagon press secretary. Previously, she worked in communications for the Center for Renewing America, a pro-Trump group founded by Russel Vought, one of the architects of Project 2025. Vought now serves as director of the United States Office of Management and Budget, which is executing an effort to slash the federal budget.
The Department of Defense did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In a statement, the ADL denounced Wilson’s post and called for its retraction.
“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,” a spokesperson for the group said. “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 Wednesday, Seth Mandel, senior editor of the Jewish conservative magazine Commentary, called the Frank lynching “a foundational blood libel that is inseverable from the violence it provokes. This is the way a pogromist talks, and she’s now deputy press secretary in Trump’s DoD.”
The Frank post is one of several times Wilson’s tweets have used the same language as antisemitic conspiracy theories. She has tweeted several times in support of the “Great Replacement” theory, whose original iteration contends that Jews are orchestrating the mass migration of people of color into Western nations. Also, in August 2024, she tweeted, “The Great Replacement isn’t a right-wing conspiracy theory … it’s reality.”
Last April, at the height of the pro-Palestinian encampment movement that many Jewish college students said created a hostile atmosphere on campus, Wilson posted a video criticizing House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican, for going to Columbia University to oppose the encampment.
“The protests on college campuses are Sharia Supremacists vs. University Marxists,” she posted above that video, in which she also claimed that university administrators “indoctrinated” the protesters. “Never interrupt your enemy when they’re fighting amongst themselves.”
The protests on college campuses are Sharia Supremacists vs. University Marxists.
Never interrupt your enemy when they’re fighting amongst themselves. pic.twitter.com/dKKPbmc3o7
— Kingsley Wilson (@KingsleyCortes) April 30, 2024
Also last year, she tweeted in support of the far-right Alternative for Germany party, known as AfD, whose leaders have a history of downplaying the Holocaust and have unsettled many of the country’s Jews. The party came in second in the recent German parliamentary election and has received an endorsement from Elon Musk as well as implicit support from US Vice President JD Vance, who urged European leaders to cooperate with far-right parties.
“AfD is the most popular party with Germans age 14-29 because Germany’s Ruling Class has let a conquering horde of Third World migrants wreak havoc on its people,” she wrote.
In a different post about AfD’s strength with young voters, she wrote, in all caps, “Ausländer Raus” — a German term meaning “Foreigners out” that is associated with a Nazi slogan and is banned in Germany.
Ausländer raus.
Deutschland den Deutschen.
Ausländer raus. https://t.co/EeQMd4kLDf
— Kingsley Wilson (@KingsleyCortes) June 9, 2024
On October 10, 2022, shortly after the rapper Kanye West, known as Ye, kicked off a stream of antisemitic invective by threatening to “go death con 3” on Jews, Wilson tweeted, “Team Ye.” (That statement was above a tweet referencing Ye’s comments about the singer Lizzo’s weight.)
Team Ye https://t.co/rKdVKy9PVd
— Kingsley Wilson (@KingsleyCortes) October 10, 2022
Wilson has recently taken flak from Democratic Rep. Ritchie Torres, a pro-Israel stalwart — but on a different topic. Last week, he took issue with a tweet of hers reading “Make Kosovo Serbia Again.”
“Kingsley Wilson, the Deputy Press Secretary for the Department of Defense, is shamefully attempting to delegitimize Kosovo, which has been the single greatest American ally in the Western Balkans,” he posted. “No amount of historical revisionism can change the fundamental fact that Kosovo is and will always be an independent democracy.”
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