The timing couldn’t have been worse — and that’s exactly the problem.
As a full-scale manhunt continued for the Brown University shooter, FBI Director Kash Patel was busy doing promo for a cozy podcast appearance with his much younger girlfriend, turning what should have been a moment of federal urgency into a public relations disaster.
The backlash was immediate and brutal.
“Doing podcast fluff while the Brown shooter is still at large?” wrote Blakeley Bartley, a New York songwriter and political commentator with more than 70,000 followers on X.
Patel, 45, appeared Tuesday evening in a video alongside his 26-year-old girlfriend, country singer Alexis Wilkins, promoting an upcoming podcast hosted by Katie Miller, wife of White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller. The teaser revolved around light banter and talk of Patel possibly proposing — all while a mass shooting suspect remained on the loose.
No one knows exactly when the podcast was recorded. But in politics and law enforcement, optics aren’t a side issue — they’re everything.
“As FBI Director, shouldn’t Kash be focused on finding the mass killer still on the loose rather than discussing his private life on a podcast?” asked Pekka Kallioniemi, a Finnish researcher and political commentator with more than 206,000 followers on X.
This wasn’t Patel’s first optics nightmare. His relationship with Wilkins has already triggered scrutiny after reports surfaced that he used an FBI Gulfstream luxury jet to attend one of her performances. Not long after, Patel fired an FBI veteran he accused of leaking details of that trip. He’s also been accused of ordering FBI agents to drive his girlfriend’s “inebriated” friend home and assigning an FBI SWAT team to provide security for her.
“Personally, I’d rather see the director of the FBI catching criminals and putting them behind bars vs going on podcasts with his girlfriend,” wrote Michael Zimmermann, a Texas-based political commentator.
While the public was shaking its head, insiders were sharpening knives.
According to FBI sources speaking to Salon, morale inside the bureau has cratered. One 30-year FBI veteran said morale is at an “all-time low,” pointing the finger squarely upward. Another insider said the FBI is “in shambles” under Patel’s leadership.
Rumors of Patel’s potential exit have been swirling, and if insiders are to be believed, few would mourn it. Staffers claim Deputy Director Dan Bongino’s office has been empty for “close to two weeks,” with one insider bluntly saying, “Nobody here will miss him. He has no credibility.”
Even Bongino’s chief of staff, Jimmy Paul, has reportedly already left for a Baltimore field office posting — another quiet signal of instability at the top.
The White House, for its part, is trying to shut down the speculation. Spokeswoman Abigail Jackson insisted, “President Trump has full confidence in his entire law enforcement and justice team.”
But confidence is hard to project when mistakes keep stacking up.
Former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner says Patel is repeating the same errors, over and over.
“It looks like FBI Director Kash Patel is either unwilling or unable to learn from his mistakes because in yet another high-profile shooting, old Kash just got it wrong again,” Kirschner said.
Patel’s announcement of a person of interest in the Brown University shooting — which left two students dead and nine injured — was labeled “premature.” Kirschner laid out the damage point by point.
“Well, first of all, he made clear by inaccurately relaying that they’ve got the bad guy in custody … that the FBI screwed up because they got the wrong guy holed up in that motel room. Two, he inaccurately signaled to the people that the coast is clear,” he said, adding, “that was wrong, and that’s dangerous.”
Then came the kicker.
“Three, he’s disclosing facts to the public that the public doesn’t need to know. The public has no right to know.”
Between botched messaging, collapsing morale, insider revolts, and podcast teasers about his love life, Patel’s tenure is starting to look less like leadership and more like a cautionary tale. And judging by the mood inside the bureau, if he does walk out the door, he won’t hear much applause on the way out.
Hey no rush on solving the at large killer in my hometown
— Hayden (@the_transit_guy) December 16, 2025
