WASHINGTON DC – Last June, as Joe Kent was seeking to become director of the National Counterterrorism Center for Donald Trump’s second term, the folks at the Southern Poverty Law Center who monitor the nation’s extremists warned of the disaster to come if he was confirmed in the post.
In a submission to Congress, they noted that “Mr Kent is unqualified and cannot be trusted to lead the nation’s counterterrorism coordinating agency”. They argued that the role “requires a leader with proven expertise, sound judgment and a clear commitment to protecting both national security and civil liberties without political bias or prejudice”.
Kent, they claimed, exhibited none of those qualities.
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“His connections with bigoted individuals, far-right violent extremists and anti-democratic movements” made him “a threat to public safety and civil liberties”, the Southern Poverty Law Center warned. It predicted that in power Kent would “target Black activists and treat them as domestic terrorists” and accused him of sowing “baseless conspiracy theories” claiming the violent Capitol Hill uprising by Trump supporters on 6 January 2021 was orchestrated by President Joe Biden’s FBI.
Joe Kent, then, is an unlikely folk hero, even on the other side of the Looking Glass on which America currently finds itself.
The White House must now regret expending significant political capital last year to drag his nomination across the finishing line. On Tuesday, Kent became the most senior figure in Trump’s inner circle to betray the President. In doing so, he spoke for the substantial number of core “Make America Great Again” and “America First” supporters who believe that by waging war alongside Israel against Iran, Trump has lost the plot, if not his mind.
Kent, who resigned as director of the National Counterterrorism Center (Photo: Mark Schiefelbein/AP)
In truth, the rot starts from the top, and Trump’s insistence that in his second administration he would only surround himself with proven Maga loyalists put him at the mercy of a very limited talent pool. Many of his sycophants made the error of convincing themselves that he actually believed what he said, especially about being determined to avoid dragging US troops into far-off wars that could quickly become quagmires.
Kent’s naivety in imagining that there is any core principle in Trump’s arsenal that will not be discarded at a whim, is matched only by the President’s limitless belief that none of the men and women who serve him will ever dare to point out that the emperor is, in fact, naked.
Kent’s resignation letter, first presented to Vice President JD Vance in an intriguing private meeting on Monday, is a classic of the genre. Flaying Trump for waging war on Iran at a time when the regime in Tehran “posed no imminent threat to our nation”, he thundered that “it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby”.
Fresh proof, in case Americans needed any, that even a broken clock tells the time accurately twice a day.
On his way out of the door, Kent managed to reveal that his own boss – National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard – is twisting herself into contortions over the war. Her response to his resignation was arguably the most carefully worded posting (indeed, perhaps the ONLY carefully worded posting) ever to appear on a Trump administration social media account.
“As Commander in Chief”, she wrote, Trump alone “is responsible for determining what is and is not an imminent threat”. Further underscoring her oft-stated opposition to any conflict that might become a forever war, she noted that “President Trump concluded that the terrorist Islamist regime in Iran posed an imminent threat and he took action based on that conclusion”.
Short of declaring herself to be Spartacus, Gabbard could not have done much more to observe that Trump’s war is leaving a number of his cabinet colleagues out on a limb. Vance is also among them, having assured voters during the 2024 campaign that it would be folly for a Trump administration even to think about using the military to attack Tehran.
On Monday, Vance accused a journalist of “trying to drive a wedge” between him and the President after he was asked whether he is “completely on board” with Trump’s war. In fact it was Kent who tried to hammer the wedge into place by consulting Vance about his decision to quit, a move that will only underscore in Trump’s mind that his own number two is not necessarily a man to be counted upon.
America’s President has never been known for displaying loyalty, and his reaction to Kent’s resignation was entirely predictable. “I always thought he was a nice guy, but I always thought he was weak on security… it’s a good thing that he’s out,” Trump told reporters at the White House. Why he placed a man he “always thought was weak on security” in the nation’s top counterterrorism position was not disclosed to the voting public.
Kent has revealed a chink in the presidential armour, and Trump needs an off-ramp over Iran to stop his entire enterprise from falling apart. With every passing day that he joins the Israelis in pursuing war on Iran, the President knows there are other senior figures on his team wondering just how much more of his U-turn on military conflict they can tolerate.