Pentagon promotes an antisemite
Last weekend I went for a walk with my daughter through Lincoln Park in Chicago. In the distance I saw a silhouette, and recognized it immediately.
It was Ulysses Grant mounted on Cincinnati.
We walked closer.
Ulysses Grant received his final promotion only recently.
He was posthumously elevated to the six-star rank of General of the Armies of the United States to commemorate his 200th birthday in 2022. Only George Washington and “Black Jack” Pershing share the distinction and the rank.
Yet, it is not enough for the Pentagon’s new press secretary, an antisemitic extremist.
Her name is Kingsley Wilson.
She is a Robert E. Lee-type of girl. In fact, she called Lee “one of the greatest Americans to ever live." Unlike Lee, who was known for his cruelty and racism, but not his antisemitism, Ms. Wilson disdains Jews.
As NPR’s Thomas Dreisbach reported:
Among Wilson's comments that drew the toughest criticism were those regarding Leo Frank, a Jewish man who was lynched by an antisemitic mob in Georgia in 1915.
Historians widely believe that Frank was falsely accused of raping and murdering a 13-year-old girl, and the state of Georgia granted Frank a posthumous pardon in 1986. But many antisemitic extremists continue to argue that Frank was guilty. In 2023, neo-Nazis protested the Broadway musical "Parade," which dramatizes Frank's trial and lynching.
"Leo Frank raped & murdered a 13-year-old girl. He also tried to frame a black man for his crime," Wilson wrote in 2023. She repeated the same sentiment in a post last year.
Her hatred is not in dispute.
In fact, it actually troubled some of MAGA’s most noxious and pliant extremists.
Even Lindsey Graham said that:
If what you say about these posts are true, then she’s completely off-script with President Trump.
Less than 72 hours after two young Israeli diplomats were assassinated by an American extremist the political extremist Pete Hegseth promoted the antisemite to Pentagon press secretary.
Hegseth, an incompetent, a drunk and accused rapist, festooned with Christian nationalist tattoos, is trailed everywhere by his third wife and former mistress who was a Fox News producer. She has been nicknamed Yoko Ono inside the Pentagon, and follows Hegseth around 24/7 like a therapy animal to make sure his zipper remains in the up position, while he sows chaos inside the US Armed Forces when not leading fundamentalist religious services.
Each day the US Military is desecrated by the low men and women whom the American people have permitted to lead the country. It is an abomination.
While Ms. Kingsley peddles new hate and repeats verbatim neo-Nazi conspiracies it seems like a good time to refresh this story about a young US Army sergeant from Knoxville, Tennessee, named Master Sergeant Roderick Edmonds.
You should know this story.
It’s about doing the right thing under pressure, even with a gun to your head.
Edmonds was an American soldier captured in the Battle of the Bulge.
He was captured by the Nazis five days after arriving in Belgium in December 1944 as part of a wave of replacement troops for the final push into Germany.
Incredibly, Master Sergeant Edmonds found himself at Stalag IX-B at the head of a formation of almost 1,300 American POWs, where he was the senior soldier. The 26-year-old Master Sergeant was in charge. There was not a single officer in the camp.
The Nazi commandant demanded that Sgt. Edmonds call the Jewish Americans forward and separate them out. The Nazi position was that they had impure blood and needed to be enslaved or incinerated. Coincidentally, all of this occurred on the same day that Soviet Red Army forces overran a series of concentration camps that beggared description called Auschwitz-Birkenau in Eastern Poland outside of Krakow.
Sgt. Edmonds refused.
The Nazi commandant held a gun to his head.
Sgt. Edmond did not blink. He refused.
He said that they were all Jews. He then invited the Nazi officer to execute all of them as Jews and become a war criminal who would be hunted down when the war was lost.
The Nazi commandant walked away.
There were more than 300 American Jews in the prisoner ranks. They were not betrayed.
Thanks especially for the Edmonds story, Steve.
As far as I'm concerned, Lindsey got it backward. Wilson is completely in line with Trump's agenda. Ask the pardoned "Proud Boys."
It is not a surprise. And there are likely more who are worse than her and no one knows about them. The damage to the United States cannot be repaired once the rubicon has been crossed, and it has.