‘Sounds Like a Dead Cat’: Internet Ruthlessly Mocks Kash Patel’s Girlfriend After She ‘Murdered’ National Anthem

Alexis Wilkins, the country singer girlfriend of former Trump official Kash Patel, was ripped apart online on Wednesday night after performing the US national anthem at Donald Trump’s Great American State Fair on the National Mall in Washington DC. The 27-year-old, who has defended herself as performing on merit rather than connections, delivered the Star-Spangled Banner to a sparse crowd, and the internet promptly decided it had heard a crime scene.

For context, the Great American State Fair, billed as a patriotic pro-Trump extravaganza, has been limping towards its debut under a cloud of cancellations. Acts including Milli Vanilli’s Fab Morvan pulled out in the days leading up to the event, with Morvan telling CNN the whole thing had ‘turned into a circus’. It was into that vacuum that Alexis Wilkins stepped, promoted as a country star and, inevitably, as the partner of a man closely associated with Donald Trump’s political world.

Alexis Wilkins Faces Brutal Reviews After National Anthem Rendition

Clips of Alexis Wilkins’ performance were quickly shared across X, formerly Twitter, and the commentary landed with all the gentleness of a brick. One user wrote, ‘She sounds like A DEAD CAT!!!’ Another quipped, ‘Hello, D.C. police. I’d like to report a murder.’

Alexis WIlkins singing the national anthem. pic.twitter.com/POv5iBRvlh

— Acyn (@Acyn) June 24, 2026

The theme continued. ‘Yes, someone has viciously murdered the national anthem,’ a third person posted, while another dragged the no-show headliners into the mix with, ‘Wasn’t Milli Vanilli available?’

Other reviewers leaned into more creative insults. One viral comment declared, ‘I think we’ve discovered the vocal equivalent of a bowl of potato salad with raisins in it,’ a line that probably stung more than a straight-up pan. Another user said the performance had ‘the energy of a senior who forced her way into the freshman talent show because she couldn’t get into choir even though she auditioned every year.’

Not every remark was a total write-off, although the backhanded compliments were hardly kinder. ‘She did fine. I’m sure once she graduates from high school and her voice matures she will do her church choir proud,’ one commenter observed, in a line that managed to sound vaguely encouraging and utterly savage at the same time.

IBTimes UK cannot independently verify the full, unedited performance that triggered the storm, so every colourful review being flung around social media should be taken lightly. What is clear is that the digital jury very much enjoyed the spectacle of tearing it apart.

Alexis Wilkins Pushes Back On Nepotism Claims Around Trump Fair Gig

Beyond the mockery of her vocals, Alexis Wilkins found herself at the centre of a second, more pointed accusation, namely that she had only landed the Trump fair national anthem slot because of her relationship with Kash Patel. Patel, 46, is a prominent Trump loyalist and a veteran of his administration, and online critics swiftly framed Wilkins as the ‘FBI director’s girlfriend’, despite him not currently holding that role.

One user asked bluntly, ‘Does having the FBI director’s girlfriend getting paid by the taxpayers to perform violate federal ethics laws?’ The implication was clear, even if the job title was not.

Before she even walked on stage, Wilkins had tried to cut off that line of attack. In a social media post, she insisted she had been ‘invited to sing this anthem on my own accord’, stressing that she was not ‘accepting payment for this great honor’. She also rejected the idea that taxpayers were footing any bill for her appearance.

No financial documents have been made public to support or contradict her claim, and there has been no formal ethics complaint at this stage. Nothing is confirmed yet so everything should be taken with a grain of salt. Still, the suggestion that her romantic life opened doors at a high-profile Trump-branded event was enough to fuel a fresh round of outrage and eye-rolling in certain political corners.

Trump’s Struggling Great American State Fair Puts Alexis Wilkins In The Spotlight

For starters, the Great American State Fair was already under scrutiny because of its line-up woes. What was pitched as a star-studded patriotic showcase for Donald Trump has been repeatedly undercut by acts withdrawing. Against that backdrop, critics saw the booking of Alexis Wilkins as a symbol of how far the fair’s ambitions had shrunk.

Marcy Wheeler, a veteran national security journalist who runs the independent site emptywheel.net, did not hold back. Posting on X, she wrote: ‘BREAKING: Because Trump can’t get real stars, the FBI Director’s side piece gets a slot!!! Goddess Bless America!’ The language was barbed, and again reflected the recurring, and largely unverified, framing of Patel as an FBI boss.

Matthew Sitman, co-host of the Know Your Enemy podcast and an associate editor at Commonweal, opted for a drier jab. ‘When I heard Vanilla Ice wouldn’t be participating, I had my fingers crossed she’d step in! It’s a July 4 miracle,’ he wrote, poking fun at both the thinning roster and the frantic effort to keep the schedule filled.

Seen from the ground, away from the mad swirl of social media, the scene appears almost mundane. Photos from the evening show Alexis Wilkins and Kash Patel backstage at the National Mall, the pair smiling as they stand among three people dressed in oversized mascot heads resembling America’s Founding Fathers. Wilkins later posted the picture with the caption ‘FBI Family day’ followed by a heart emoji, a line that undercut her earlier annoyance at the FBI-related rumours but probably played well with her own followers.

Patel, who has long styled himself as a loyal Trump lieutenant, was in Washington not just to support his former boss at the Great American State Fair but to back his partner’s turn on stage. Publicly at least, he seemed unfazed by the noise around them.

In the end, the story of Alexis Wilkins at the Great American State Fair is less about one slightly shaky rendition of the national anthem and more about the ecosystem it dropped into, a mix of partisan fandom, online snark and suspicion about who gets invited to stand in the spotlight near Trump. The anthem finished, the crowd moved on, the internet did not.