The MAGA Elite Is Being Torn Apart by Trump’s War in Iran
Joe Kent’s resignation shows that Trump’s illegal war in Iran is creating a fissure within the MAGA upper ranks, but don’t expect many others to quit soon.
A counterterrorism official with ties to domestic extremists resigned from Donald Trump’s administration on Tuesday, marking the first major departure over the US-Israeli war in Iran that has exposed a fissure in the broader MAGA coalition and its elite influencers and policy hands.
Joe Kent, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, announced his exit on Twitter after just seven months on the job. “I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran,” he wrote. “Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.”
Former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, an ex-Trump confidant and one of the most outspoken conservative critics of Trump’s illegal war, immediately rallied behind Kent, along with commentators Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens. “They are going to lie about Joe Kent and try to discredit him. Do not believe the lies!” Greene tweeted. “Joe Kent is a great American hero deployed 11 times and a Gold Star Husband!”
His service aside, we must note that Kent never should have been in this position in the first place, given his extensive ties to far-right extremists, his own noxious policy positions, and his support for Trump’s anti-democratic lies about the 2020 election – though none of these are considered bad things in the Trump administration.
And Kent was, it seems, fine with being part of Team Trump during this president’s other wars of aggression, both at home and abroad.
Now that he’s left the cult, Trumpworld is laying into Kent. Former senior Trump White House aide Taylor Budowich called Kent a “crazed egomaniac,” adding: “This isn’t some principled resignation – he just wanted to make a splash before getting canned. What a loser.”
Trump attacked Kent on his way out as well. “I always thought he was weak on security,” Trump said Tuesday of the man he appointed as his top counterterrorism official. “When I read the statement, I realized that it’s a good thing that he’s out.”
Opposing ‘Endless Wars’
The Trump White House would like the American public to believe that this Kent fellow is just a disgruntled, useless, appointee – and a persistent leaker who should have been fired – and not representative of a broader discontent among MAGAville’s upper echelons.
They also want you to believe that everyone who matters in the administration is fully supportive of this president’s war and that there’s no daylight among the Cabinet level. This simply isn’t true.