FBI Director Kash Patel’s girlfriend suffered a humiliating microphone glitch while attempting to perform the national anthem.
Alexis Wilkins, 27, the Nashville-based country music singer who’s been dating Patel, 46, since 2023, was in Brussels, Belgium, Sunday night to perform for the U.S. Embassy’s Fourth of July party, ahead of America’s 250th birthday.
Footage from the event, taken by Politico reporter Gerardo Fortuna, shows that things went horribly wrong for Wilkins when it was time for her to sing “The Star-Spangled Banner.” A technical glitch caused her microphone to cut out, leaving her inaudibly belting out the anthem in front of what Politico reports was thousands of people.
“Maybe that’s the karaoke version…” Fortuna said he heard a person behind them say.
The clip shows Wilkins wrestling with the microphone’s button. Politico writes that she appeared confused and “continued soundlessly until the camera cut away.”
She was apparently allowed to try again later that night, and “performed it again, this time with sound.”
Wilkins, whose tracks have yet to amass more than a few hundred thousand streams on Spotify, was already under fire for her performance of the same song at the opening of Trump’s Great State Fair in D.C. last week.
Social media users were critical of her rendition, with one person writing that “she sounds like a dead cat” and another that they would have preferred to hear her 46-year-old boyfriend Patel sing it instead.
Others noted she had announced the performance only the day before. They suggested she would not have secured the spot were it not for her relationship with the FBI director.
They also pointed out that many of the event’s headlining acts had pulled out ahead of time, citing how politicized the fair had become.
Trump himself delivered a prerecorded speech to Sunday’s event in Brussels, Politico reports. He focused largely on American casualties during WWII, and remarked that “I know the people of Belgium have never forgotten.”
Bill White, the U.S. Ambassador to Belgium, was similarly bullish. He hit back at critics of the decision to shut down Brussels’ Cinquantenaire Park for the occasion due to the event’s size, insisting it was necessary “because we’re the United States of America!”
White also took aim at pop singer Katy Perry. She appears to have been the initial pick to perform at the event, but had to decline due to conflicting obligations. “Who cares,” he said. “Karma is a b---h.”
The Daily Beast has contacted Wilkins for comment on this story.
