The Anti-Defamation League accused the Trump administration official of repeating a ‘neo-Nazi talking point’ in relation to the lynching of Leo Frank in 1915
March 6, 2025 12:38
Kingsley Wilson, the Pentagon’s new Deputy Press Secretary, has come under fire today after her history of inflammatory social media posts, including one promoting an “antisemitic conspiracy theory”, was revealed.
Wilson, the daughter of Trump advisor and conservative commentator Steve Cortes, has also advocated the Great Replacement conspiracy, supported the far-right AfD party in Germany and suggested that transgender people shouldn’t be allowed to buy guns on mental health grounds.
In one tweet, Wilson commented on a post from the Anti-Defamation League commemorating the death of Leo Frank, a Jewish American whose 1915 lynching was a key factor in the organisation’s founding.
Frank was abducted from prison and murdered by a mob following his conviction for the murder of Mary Phagan – a teenage girl working at a factory where he was a director. The consensus among modern legal scholars is that Frank was wrongly convicted based on circumstantial evidence and that his lynching was an example of antisemitic violence, but figures on the far-right and far-left have maintained his guilt.
Leo Frank raped & murdered a 13-year-old girl.
— Kingsley Wilson (@KingsleyCortes) August 17, 2024
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
In her response to the ADL, Wilson repeated the accusation that Frank “raped and murdered a 13-year-old girl” and that he “tried to frame a black man for his crime” (a reference to the factory janitor, Jim Conley – a key prosecution witness whom Frank’s defence team claimed was, in fact, the murderer).
Critics on social media accused Wilson of promoting an “antisemitic conspiracy theory”, while the ADL claimed that was “parroting” a “neo-Nazi talking point”.
Elsewhere in her post history, Wilson has advocated the Great Replacement, a theory that white people in Europe and America are being deliberately replaced through engineered demographic change and mass migration, orchestrated by political elites.
The theory is often connected with other far-right conspiracies, including white genocide theory and the portrayal of groups likes the World Economic Forum as part of a secret, Illuminati-style global government.
But Wilson has publicly argued that the Great Reset is “not a conspiracy theory”, instead claiming that it is a “reality”.
The remark was posted as a caption to a Bloomberg report about the growing Hispanic population in the US – a demographic of which her father is a member.
Wilson has also voiced support for the far-right AfD party in Germany, members of which have been designated as far-right extremists by the country’s intelligence services.
This included using the phrase “Ausländer Raus”, part of the longer slogan “Deutschland den Deutschen, Ausländer Raus”. Translating to “Germany for the Germans, foreigners out”, the chant has been adopted by the AfD’s young supporters, but has its roots in the German neo-Nazi movement and was used by European skinheads in the 1990s, according to the US Justice Department.
The revelations concerning Wilson follow a spate of alleged flirtations with the far-right from the Trump administration. Trump advisor, and de facto leader of the new Department of Government Efficiency, Elon Musk previously told an AfD rally that Germany needs to “move beyond” its “past guilt”, adding: “Children should not be guilty of the sins of their parents, let alone their great grandparents.”
Musk was also accused of making a Nazi salute during Trump’s inauguration, something which he denied, while the same allegation was levelled against the President’s former chief advisor Steve Bannon after he made a similar gesture during a speech at a conservative conference.
Trump himself has previously promoted ideas that critics have described as racist or far-right conspiracy theories, including the Obama birther movement, the “deep state” conspiracy and QAnon.