Joe Kent is a conspiracy theorist, not a principled dissenter

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Joe Kent is a cautionary tale.

When Kent resigned as director of the National Counterterrorism Center to protest the Iran war, critics of the conflict - especially opponents of President Donald Trump - quickly cast the decorated military combat veteran as a principled dissenter. Superficially, that tracks. And yet those tracks are laid on quicksand.

Kent risked his life for the US for decades: He served in the Army Special Forces in Iraq and as a paramilitary officer for the Central Intelligence Agency. Kent's first wife, Shannon, also wore the uniform and was killed in Syria by a suicide bomber in 2019. Those experiences led Kent, a Republican, to turn against the war on terrorism and overseas military operations. And like many voters who grew suspicious of projecting American power abroad after years of fighting in the Middle East, Kent found a political champion in Trump.

The 45th and 47th president has staked three White House campaigns, in part, on resisting so-called forever wars and regime-change wars. What better example of the unraveling of the Trump coalition and - from the naysayers' point of view - the shaky premise of the Iran war than Kent's defection? A couple of lines from his resignation letter to Trump:

"I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran. Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation," Kent wrote, adding: "Until 2025, you understood that the wars in the Middle East were a trap that robbed America of the precious lives of our patriots and depleted the wealth and prosperity of our nation."

Except that Kent, 45, is a conspiracy theorist of such questionable character that he lacks almost all credibility, rendering him useless as an avatar for foes of the Iran war and Trump. This shouldn't necessarily be a revelation. Kent was twice rejected by the voters of Washington state's 3rd Congressional District. They chose Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Perez over Kent for the swing seat in 2022 and opted for her again in their 2024 rematch.

Maybe Kent was spurned because he was (and is) an outspoken proponent of Trump's stolen election conspiracy theories. Kent echoed claims that former President Joe Biden's 2020 victory was illegitimate and, as The New York Times reported, referred to the Jan. 6 attack on the US Capitol as an inside job. Or maybe Kent lost because during one of his congressional campaigns, he played footsie with Nick Fuentes, the antisemitic and racist influencer who recently sat for a friendly interview with Tucker Carlson, and others of that right-wing ilk.

That brings us back to the folly of lionizing Kent as a conscientious objector to Trump and the president's hawkish foreign policy as of late.

In his resignation letter, Kent also said, "It is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby" and that "high-ranking Israeli officials and influential members of the American media deployed a misinformation campaign that wholly undermined your [Trump's] America First platform."

It's perfectly fine to criticize the Israeli government, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the policies coming out of Jerusalem. I have, and do, frequently. But this sort of conspiratorial blarney that Israel and its paid domestic agents (i.e. lobbyists) are puppeteers of the American president is the mother's milk of an age-old philosophy best described as antisemitism. (Many political observers who might have lauded Kent have, in fact, rebuked him for this line of thinking and cooled to him as some sort of heroic MAGA defector.)

And of course, where did Kent run to bask in his newfound notoriety? Carlson, a stoker of animosity toward Israel and Jews.

During an appearance on his show last week, Kent hinted that the Jewish state was behind the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. Kent also sought refuge with Candace Owens, a blatantly antisemitic influencer on the far right, and her podcast audience. Kent also appeared at a Washington gala of Catholics for Catholics, where he was celebrated - and where Owens delivered a keynote speech. The group has been dismissed as a fringe organization by mainstream Catholic leaders.

Regardless of opinions on Kent personally, might his resignation signal a crackup of Trump's Make America Great Again base inside the Republican Party? At the very least, might these voters be on the cusp of abandoning the president because he turned into one of those so-called neocon warmongers he swore he wasn't? Well - no.

"Beyond MAGA," a project completed earlier this year by the research initiative More In Common, explored Trump's unique coalition in depth and identified four types of voters: MAGA Hardliners, Anti-Woke Conservatives, Mainline Republicans and the Reluctant Right. Stephen Hawkins, More in Common's global director of research, told me about an online community of a "couple of hundred" GOP voters his organization keeps an eye on. In a recent surveying, "MAGA Hardliners" were the most supportive of the Iran war. In fact, Hawkins said none of the voters in this cohort voiced opposition to the war.

"Among American voters, the critics [of the war] seem to be coming from the groups that are already critical of Trump," Hawkins told me. "The alignment, support and enthusiasm seem to be echoing from the same groups that were already supportive of him, so it's continuity, not change - as opposed to breaking open a new fissure." (These findings mirror the other public polling since the Feb. 28 start of the Iran war.)

Given Kent's quackery, and his lack of a constituency other than some very loud podcasters sympathetic to his worldview, it might be worth asking Trump why Kent was hired for such a plum position. The president now claims he knew Kent was essentially unqualified for the job.

Indeed, it might be worth asking Republican senators why they confirmed Kent, rather than demanding the administration nominate more equipped personnel.

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David M. Drucker is columnist covering politics and policy. He is also a senior writer for The Dispatch and the author of "In Trump's Shadow: The Battle for 2024 and the Future of the GOP."