Pentagon Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson conducts a news briefing for “Bring Your Child to Work Day” at the Pentagon on April 24, 2025. (Defense Department )
WASHINGTON – Kingsley Wilson, daughter of a right-wing commentator and herself known for combative social media posts, is the latest person to hold the seat of Pentagon press secretary.
Wilson had served as deputy press secretary since January. Last week, she got the top communication position, previously held by John Ullyot before he was asked to resign in April.
“Kingsley’s leadership has been integral to the DoD’s success & we look forward to her continued service to President [Donald] Trump,” Sean Parnell, a senior adviser to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, posted May 23 on X when announcing her promotion.
Wilson has yet to hold a news conference with reporters, though since January there have been almost no briefings. She did conduct one for children last month for “Bring Your Child to Work Day.”
The 26-year-old Wilson is the daughter of right-wing commentator and former Trump adviser Steve Cortes. She worked for the conservative think tank Center for Renewing America, which was founded by Project 2025 architect Russell Vought, who is now the director of the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, and Gettr, the social media platform founded by former Trump aide Jason Miller.
Wilson comes with her own controversy — a history of social media posts ranging from Jewish issues to questioning U.S. involvement in conflicts abroad.
Wilson’s social media attracted attention earlier this year when posts from her personal account resurfaced. Left-leaning news organizations such as Mother Jones and Jewish Insider reported on the history of her comments. The posts have not been deleted.
One post was about Leo Frank, a Jewish man convicted of raping and murdering a teenage girl and then lynched by a Georgia mob in 1915. Frank is widely believed to have been falsely accused and unjustly convicted. His case led to the formation of the Anti-Defamation League.
“Leo Frank raped and murdered a 13-year-old girl. He also tried to frame a Black man for his crime,” Wilson posted on X in 2023. “The ADL is despicable.”
She repeated this claim last August.
“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 said in a statement in March. “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.”
Her posts have also supported the “great replacement theory,” which contends that ethnic white groups and their culture are being intentionally “replaced” by nonwhite immigrant groups in Western countries.
The Anti-Defamation League describes it as a “racist conspiracy theory” amplified by white nationalist groups.
“The Great Replacement isn’t a right-wing conspiracy theory... it’s reality,” Wilson posted in August.
Wilson also has railed against U.S. funding for Ukraine, calling Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy an “entitled midget” and asking, “why should American taxpayers help defend Ukraine?”
In a 2023 interview on the right-wing channel One America News, Wilson said Zelenskyy “should be arrested on sight for what he has done to the American taxpayer.”
Last year, Wilson also praised Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “encyclopedic knowledge of his people’s history is beyond impressive,” and adding “especially when contrasted with the low-IQ lunatics working at the U.S. State Department.”
“The American intelligence apparatus is more evil than Vladimir Putin,” Wilson posted in 2022.
Wilson also criticized U.S. defense contractors for their role in providing military equipment for the Ukrainian war effort.
“The U.S. Military Industrial Complex genocided an entire generation of Ukrainian men because PUTIN BAD,” she wrote in 2024.
Wilson previously declared “Make Kosovo Serbia again,” despite Kosovo being officially recognized as an independent state by the U.S. and about 110 other countries after a U.S.-led NATO bombing campaign forced Serb forces to withdraw from the majority Albanian territory in 1999.
The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Some lawmakers have expressed their concerns about Wilson.
“Hiring anyone with a proven history of expressing antisemitic and bigoted conspiracy theories and parroting Russian propaganda would have been unthinkable under any previous administration, Republican or Democratic,” Rep. Adam Smith of Washington, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, said in a statement Friday. “The fact that the Trump administration and the defense secretary do not realize the national security concerns this presents or, worse yet, do not care is extremely troubling.”
Rep. Ritchie Torres, D-N.Y., posted last week on X that he called in March for Hegseth to fire Wilson for the “minefield of antisemitic rhetoric, white nationalist conspiracies, and pro-Kremlin propaganda” and “anything less [would] be reasonably understood by the public as an endorsement on behalf of yourself and the Pentagon of her repugnant views.”
Sen. Deb Fischer, R-Neb., told Politico in March that Wilson’s remarks were “horrible” and “just not appropriate.”
