Pete Hegseth’s Pentagon mouthpiece has received less than glowing reviews for her debut on the agency’s press podium.
Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson, 27, took the spot for the first time on Tuesday as Hegseth, the so-called Secretary of War, faced mounting questions over a deadly “double-tap” airstrike in the Caribbean that has placed Pentagon leadership under intense pressure.
Instead of fielding relevant questions, Wilson attacked the press in front of a pack of right-wing podcasters who have replaced mainstream media in the Pentagon press corps after they refused to agree to restrictive new rules that would effectively prohibit critical reporting.
Old hands lined up to attack Wilson’s performance, even giving sycophantic White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt credit in a bid to drive home the point.
Pointing out that despite her Trump-tinted glasses, Leavitt still fields questions from real journalists, one reporter told Status: “Kingsley is clearly too scared to do that. And frankly, she should be, because she would have been eaten alive in that room had they not kicked us out.”
Multiple members of the exiled Pentagon press corps who spoke to Status said they were “appalled” by the roughly 30-minute spectacle in which OAN host and former Florida Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz, Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe, self-described “Islamophobe” Laura Loomer, and far-right conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec asked questions.
They delivered the softballs expected of them. O’Keefe asked what the Pentagon is doing about “members of the ‘resistance.’” Loomer pressed for severing ties with Qatar due to Trump’s designation of parts of the Muslim Brotherhood as foreign terrorist organizations. Posobiec wanted to know whether the Pentagon would move to court-martial Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly.
None, however, asked about the scrutiny facing Hegseth and his department over allegations that a military strike on an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean may have been a war crime. “It’s telling that it took Kingsley more than 10 months to go on camera and only when she had a room full of hand-chosen propagandists who have never attended a press briefing or spent any serious time with the U.S. military,” one reporter said.
“It was only when she could control who could ask her questions that she was brave enough to go,” another Pentagon journalist added.
Born Kingsley R. Cortes in the late nineties, her father is Steve Cortes, a former adviser to Donald Trump and conservative commentator.
Wilson’s resume includes a stint on Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign, a job at Gettr, and a push to steer the Washington, D.C., Young Republicans toward a “Make America Great Again” identity—an effort that helped elevate her to national committeewoman. She later became director of strategic communications at the Center for Renewing America.
In January this year, she was named as the deputy Department of Defense press secretary, before getting a promotion in April.
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