Alexis Wilkins, the 27-year-old aspiring country singer and MAGA WAG, has apparently secured a spot singing the national anthem at tonight’s Trump rally, which kicks off the Great American State Fair. But do not ask if she got the gig because she’s dating FBI Director Kash Patel, or whether that might raise any ethical concerns. “I’m no longer accepting false narratives and total sham accusations that diminish my hard work and earned accomplishments,” she told her critics yesterday on X. Wilkins boasts a total of nine songs and 7,372 followers on Spotify.
Previously, Wilkins has been in the news due less to her musical achievements than to allegedly having an extremely doting boyfriend in Patel. In December, MS NOW reported that Patel had, on multiple occasions, ordered FBI agents to drive Wilkins’ drunk friend home after a night out partying. (Wilkins denied the report, saying its three anonymous sources were “the voices in [reporter Ken Dilanian’s] head.” She has since sued MS NOW for defamation.)
Before that, Patel was criticized for assigning his girlfriend a protective detail composed of “members of an elite SWAT team,” which is a departure from the bureau’s norms. (According to MS NOW, even the spouse of the director typically isn’t issued official protection, unless they’re traveling as a couple. “The inappropriateness of this cannot be overstated,” an FBI source told the New York Times.) According to the Times, Patel has also been dinged for “making extensive use of the director’s small private jet and a larger Boeing 757” to make jaunts to and from Nashville, where Wilkins lives.
Patel’s alleged use of government resources on his girlfriend became particularly controversial when, during the longest government shutdown in history, he flew the FBI plane to State College, PA, to see Wilkins sing the national anthem at a wrestling event. Critics point out that Patel’s alleged spending spree (what the Times characterized as his “heavy use of taxpayer-funded resources during his first nine months on the job”) has been concurrent with his attempts to slash the FBI budget. Last year, Patel described Wilkins as a “rock-solid conservative and a country music sensation who has done more for this nation than most will in 10 lifetimes.”
Wilkins was apparently booked to sing the anthem after scheduling woes rocked the Great American State Fair. Last month, during a multi-day conflagration, almost the entire lineup of the event’s concert series pulled out, claiming that they’d felt misled by organizers, who had apparently framed the event as a nonpartisan birthday celebration for America. In fact, the Great American State Fair is not hosted by America250—the nonpartisan commission established by Congress to plan the semiquincentennial—but Freedom 250, the rival organization that president Trump created to “give America the most spectacular birthday party the world has ever seen.”
After the cascade of artist cancellations, Trump wrote on Truth Social that he would instead invite “the Number One Attraction anywhere in the World, the man who gets much larger audiences than Elvis in his prime”—and indeed, he did wind up booking himself. The President will be headlining tonight’s kickoff event, which will also feature performances by Lee Greenwood (of “God Bless the USA” fame) and multiple military bands. All of this will occur beneath military flyovers and in proximity to a scaled-down replica of the gargantuan arch that the President wants to build in honor of himself in Virginia.
Wilkins said on X that it’s a “great honor to be a part of the 250th birthday of this great nation.” We hope that her SWAT team agrees.
