Pentagon press secretary Kingsley Wilson holds a briefing with right-wing personalities. (Screen grab via Department of Defense/YouTube)
On Tuesday morning, as the Pete Hegseth–led Defense Department remained ensnared in scandal over its lethal “double-tap” airstrike in the Caribbean, press secretary Kingsley Wilson strode onstage in the Pentagon press briefing room and took her place behind the podium. “Welcome to the Department of War,” the 20-something said, using the administration’s preferred terminology.
“I would like to take a moment today,” Wilson continued, “to welcome all of you to the Pentagon briefing room as official new members of the Pentagon press corps.” But rather than opening the briefing with a response to the deadly boat strikes roiling the department and its leadership, she used the platform to attack the press. “Legacy media chose to self-deport from this building,” she falsely asserted after every major news organization, including Fox News, was barred from the Pentagon in October for refusing to sign unprecedented restrictions on reporting.
“The American people don’t trust these propagandists because they stopped telling the truth,” declared Wilson, who was appointed to her position despite a lengthy online record of advancing antisemitic and bigoted conspiracy theories. “So we’re not going to beg these old gatekeepers to come back. And we’re not rebuilding a broken model just to appease them. Instead we are welcoming new media outlets that actually reach Americans, ask real questions, and don’t pursue a biased agenda.”
Wilson delivered her prepared remarks with a straight face, though even she surely knows they were entirely untethered from reality. Indeed, as she smeared journalists at legacy outlets as “propagandists,” the people assembled before her were…
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Tim Miller interviews Olivia Nuzzi. (Screen shot via The Bulwark)
Nuzzi's Narrative: Olivia Nuzzi broke her silence Tuesday while promoting her new book, “American Canto,” blasting her ex-fiancé Ryan Lizza for writing what she described as “violating fan fiction-slash-revenge porn.” (Lizza responded in a Q&A with his Substack followers that “telling the truth is not harassment.”) Nuzzi first participated in a Q&A with subscribers of Emily Sundberg’s Feed Me newsletter, where she flatly stated that she does not believe Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is doing a good job as HHS secretary and that she has no plans to return to the campaign trail as a political journalist. Nuzzi also penned a list outlining “signs your book rollout has gone awry,” including that “Monica Lewinsky reaches out to check on your mental health.”
Later, Nuzzi appeared on Tim Miller’s Bulwark podcast, which turned out to be a largely sympathetic venue. Miller did, however, press her on why she didn’t speak out during Kennedy’s confirmation hearing— a question she never fully answered, reiterating only that…
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