|
 |
Welcome back to False Flag! The MAGA civil war that erupted in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s murder began as a fight over Kirk’s legacy, but now it’s grown into an omni-feud that encompasses antisemitism, conspiracy theories, and how committed Republicans should be to democratic ideals in general. In the latest twist this week, Megyn Kelly, scrupulously avoiding criticizing the rising tide of anti-Jewish figures like Candace Owens and Nick Fuentes, instead turned on Ben Shapiro.
It’s gotten so ugly that right-wing commentator Jack Posobiec quipped that all the in-fighting would only inspire “the left” to commit more assassinations.
These pervasive bad vibes on the right have extended all the way to FBI Director Kash Patel’s romantic travails, where even committed Trumpers are starting to question his priorities. You might think having a private FBI jet and an admirable score on the Pete Hegseth fitness challenge would simplify our top lawman’s love life. Oh, if only it were that simple!
This is a tire fire that just keeps burning. If you want to make sure never to miss any of these newsletters, there’s no better way than to sign up for Bulwark+:
–Will
Kash Patel’s Girlfriend Is Driving MAGA Nuts
She’s litigious. They’re sexist. It’s a miasma of loathing.
|
| |||||||||||||||
 |
FBI DIRECTOR KASH PATEL’S RELATIONSHIP with country music “sensation” Alexis Wilkins (his word, not mine) has infuriated a legion of right-wing media figures who once counted Patel as an ally.
Pro-Trump pundits don’t care much about the $5,000-per-hour jet he’s been taking to see Wilkins in Nashville. They don’t even seem bothered by the Wall Street Journal report that Patel also used the jet to visit a Texas hunting lodge implausibly named the “Boondoggle Ranch.”
Instead, they are getting fed up with Wilkins’s penchant for suing conservative commentators over their claims that she’s an Israeli intelligence “honeypot” who’s only dating Patel to control him on behalf of the Mossad.
“Kash Patel has to step down,” Candace Owens tweeted on Monday, in the wake of another round of Wilkins lawsuits. “This is excruciatingly embarrassing. He’s a teenager in love representing the Federal government.”
The baseless claims that Wilkins is a Mossad agent date back to the spring, when Patel and Dan Bongino, the FBI deputy director, started to tell eager Trump supporters that billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein really did kill himself.
The honeypot accusations got worse when the Justice Department, with Patel’s participation, abruptly decided to stop releasing Epstein files.
This abrupt about-face from Patel, who had claimed before taking office that the FBI was holding back a real Epstein client list, created a conundrum for his admirers. And, as is their wont, some seized on a truly conspiratorial explanation: that Epstein was, in reality, an Israeli agent and that Wilkins, nearly twenty years younger than Patel, was a Mossad agent trying to cover it up on Israel’s behalf.
The Mossad connection to Wilkins is thin, even by the standards of right-wing media conspiracy theories. For one, Wilkins is a Christian. Still, her critics have seized on her work for right-wing content outlet PragerU, whose CEO worked in Israeli military intelligence, as the sole piece of evidence that she’s a Mossad operative.
Wilkins hasn’t taken it quietly. Since the initial Epstein blowup, she has been filing lawsuits against right-wing media figures. In August, she sued former FBI agent and Patel nemesis Kyle Seraphin, who responded in a recent court filing that he was using “satire” and “hyperbole” when he suggested she was a honeypot.
But the real drama picked up this week, when far-right commentator Elijah Schaffer revealed that Wilkins sued him on October 28 for $5 million over his own post about the honeypot allegation. Wilkins also sued conspiracy theorist Samuel B. Parker for his own honeypot suggestion on October 31.
Schaffer isn’t taking the lawsuit quietly either. In a video posted Monday, he said he was being punished for criticizing Israel.
“This is a proxy lawsuit to bully me,” Schaffer said, accusing Patel of being the hidden hand behind his girlfriend’s case.
Neither the FBI nor Wilkins’s lawyer responded to requests for comment.