The Trump Administration Is Learning to Ignore Their Employees' Scandals

Last week, Mother Jones reported on the long history of bigoted and xenophobic remarks by Kingsley Wilson, a 26-year-old MAGA enthusiast who's now a deputy press secretary at the Department of Defense. Following that article and other outlets' reporting on Wilson, members of Congress, the Anti-Defamation League, and the American Jewish Committee, among others, have expressed concern about Wilson's extreme rhetoric and her fitness for the job.

Most scandals pass with little action from the White House, Trump, or the agencies involved. But this time, it seems like the White House is making a clear choice to ignore Wilson and other recent controversies involving Trump administration officials altogether. The response has been notable – near-complete silence.

Wilson spent years espousing extreme ideas on Twitter and on various podcasts, including promoting the debunked lie that Jewish lynching victim Leo Frank was guilty of the crime for which he was wrongfully accused, an idea that is rarely repeated outside of dedicated antisemitic and white supremacist circles. She also aligned herself with extreme anti-immigrant and nationalist sentiment, repeating a phrase associated with the German far-right.

Both the ADL and the AJC expressed outrage at her comments, with the AJC calling her "clearly unfit for her role" and the ADL describing itself as "deeply disturbed". Congressman Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.) wrote to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth calling for Wilson to be removed from her role. Republican Senators Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Deb Fischer of Nebraska also condemned her remarks.

The Pentagon didn't respond to five requests for comment made over the course of the last week about Wilson's past and whether she passed a background screening or underwent other vetting before being hired. It's not clear what the administration is trying to hide, but it's becoming increasingly clear that they're choosing to ignore news they don't like.

This isn't an isolated incident – several other Trump administration officials have been embroiled in scandals without facing significant consequences from the White House. Marko Elez, a staffer for Dogecoin, resigned after a history of racist tweets was reported. Darren Beattie, an acting State Department official, repeated false statements about his boss Marco Rubio's sexuality and called him "low IQ".

Beattie's own career shows that even the previous Trump administration didn't approach personnel issues this way; he was fired as a White House speechwriter in 2018 after a CNN report catalogued his racist, homophobic and otherwise offensive tweets.

It's another irony for an administration that has dubbed itself "the most transparent administration in history". The promotion of a new state media, a group of ultra-conservative outlets and influencers who are granted unusual degrees of access if they cheer the administration's every move, is also revealing a pattern of favoritism.

The administration seems empowered to ignore news they don't like, lavishly reward pseudo-coverage that paints them in a flattering light, and avoid public accountability for issues that would be messy or embarrassing to deal with. It's unlikely to be the last.