[4] Pletka is Jewish, appearing on the Sept. 28, 2024 edition of PBS Newshour wearing a Star of David necklace and yellow ribbon pin commemorating the Oct 8, 2023 hostages kidnapped by Hamas.

[6][7][8][9] In March 2002 Pletka was hired by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a conservative Washington, DC think tank, as vice president for foreign and defense policy.

"[10] According to Howard J. Wiarda, the fact that Pletka was not a scholar herself created some tension within AEI after she took over the role from Jeane Kirkpatrick, who had a Ph.D and was a full professor at Columbia University.

[7] In testimony in 2019 before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Pletka argued that the U.S. should seek "to provide sufficient support, incentives and disincentives to ensure the limitation of Iranian reach" in Iraq, and to "end all involvement" of Iranian-backed Popular Mobilization Forces militias in the Iraqi government.

[23] In a November 2018 appearance on the Sunday morning talk show Meet the Press, Pletka cast doubt on the scientific validity behind a recently released report by the U.S. government on projected economic damages caused by climate change; NBC's invitation to Pletka to appear on the show was criticized by Jon Allsop, writing in the Columbia Journalism Review, and Jack Holmes, politics editor at Esquire magazine.

Pletka described the report as "Feinstein's partisan screed" and argued that the CIA techniques provided actionable intelligence and were legally allowed by the Justice Department.

[27] In 2020, she wrote in an op-ed for The Washington Post that she "may be forced to vote for" incumbent Republican President Donald Trump because "he wears his sins on the outside" while Pletka feared that the Democratic nominee Joe Biden "would begin an assault on the institutions of government that preserve the nation’s small 'd' democracy.

[30] Pletka is married to Stephen Rademaker, who was Assistant Secretary of State for International Security and Nonproliferation (including head of the Bureau of Arms Control) in the administration of President George W.