Country musician Alexis Wilkins is defending her relationship with FBI Director Kash Patel, who is 19 years her senior.
Wilkins, 26, and Patel, 45, have been dating for more than two years, after being introduced by a mutual friend in Nashville, Tennessee. While the couple’s age gap has drawn a fair amount of commentary, Wilkins tells the Daily Mail that she doesn’t think of it as a big deal.
“There are a lot of people in this administration with age differences. There are a lot of people out there with age differences,” she said, before noting: “There’s really no need to justify things like that.”
Though Wilkins didn’t identify any of those couples by name, it’s worth noting that President Donald Trump, 79, and first lady Melania Trump, 55, have 24 years between them. Similarly, there’s a 32-year age gap between White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, 27, and her husband, Nicholas Riccio, 59.
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“I feel like [within] a couple minutes talking to me, you probably couldn’t picture me dating a 26-year-old,” Wilkins said. “So it’s always made a lot of sense to us and our friends and everyone around us.”
An Arkansas native, Wilkins has in recent weeks been at the epicenter of wild conspiracy theories involving Israel and disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, who died in 2019 while awaiting trial on charges of sex trafficking underage girls. One of the more persistent rumors is that she’s a secret “honeypot” agent planted by Israel in hopes of influencing Patel and keeping the Epstein files under wraps.
Appearing on “The Megyn Kelly Show” last month, Wilkins dismissed such accusations, noting her relationship with Patel predates his appointment as FBI director.
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“When I met him, I just liked that he was so honest. He’s exactly who he is all the time,” she said. “His character is incredible, his values are incredible, and we both are very patriotic, so obviously there are things there that we definitely agree on.”
As for the “honeypot” claim specifically, she added: “It would have been a really long-game play.”
She reiterated that point in her chat with the Daily Mail, saying she’d “blocked the word ‘honeypot’ from my Instagram comments, if that tells you anything.”
In her Spotify bio, Wilkins is described as a “country music artist, writer, and political commentator” who has “made waves in both music and politics, proving that grit, patriotism, and an unapologetic voice still have a place in today’s culture.” Her most recent release is the 2023 single “Quite Like Whiskey.”