Name: Panel: Is Joe Kent right that 'Iran posed no imminent threat'?
Uploaded: 2026-03-18T16:31:22.000Z
Duration: 18 min 6 s
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Resignation like this is going to get headlines.

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It's a big deal that a senior Trump administration official is quitting explicitly in opposition to the war.

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On the other hand, the content of the letter is what gave a lot of people pause.

I mean, obviously you should be concerned when the director of the National Counterterrorism center quits over a war that you're in the middle of from the largest state sponsored terrorism in the world.

At the same time, you know, the things he said, the idea that we had that is that Israel stoked this war, that we got into this war because Israel, Israel pushed us into it.

I mean, Donald Trump is not the kind of guy to get pushed into a war.

You know, this is a very complicated thing.

This guy has said some anti Semitic things at the very same time, which is problematic.

At the very same time, soon after the war started, Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State, said that the imminent threat was that we knew that Iran was that if Iran was attacked and we believed that it would be attacked by Israel, that they would immediately come after us.

And that was the immediate threat that they used as a rationale for the war.

So both things are operating at the same time.

This guy is very problematic because he has anti Semitic sentiments.

At the very same time, the administration that was their first rationale for the war was that they thought that Israel was going to strike first, that Iran would strike back and they would strike us when they struck back, and

that that would precipitate a wider conflict and we would have consequences from that.

But there's one point that I think is important in that Marco Rubio was part of all of the intelligence briefings on this and Joe Kent was not.

So Marco Rubio had access to everything that Joe Kent did not have access to.

What was also left out of that letter was Joe Kent's plans.

Now, I suppose to be part of this resistance, go on podcasts that have been very critical of Israel.

This is someone who, over the course of the next few days, you'll see more reporting on how he was seen as a chief leaker in this White House.

And that goes to some of the problems I have with some folks who are now amplifying Joe Kent as if they agree with him or as if they suddenly believe that he is someone to be trusted.

On the Donald Trump amplified Joe Kip because he put him in charge of the National Counterterrorism, which are.

And if he was bad on national security, why leave somebody in a sensitive, important job like that?

If you thought that he was disloyal, leaking, and

he was bad on the substance of the thing that he was in charge of?

Assuming that the office of the Director of National Intelligence is an important job, I mean, it's kind of a bureaucratic, you know, know, where is Ville?

I'm torn on Joe Kent because on the one hand, he did primary and defeat a colleague and friend of mine, Jamie herrera Butler, in 2022.

On the other hand, he has decorated career as a Green beret, as a CIA paramilitary officer.

He lost his wife, Shannon in 2019 in Syria.

And, you know, I give him the benefit of the doubt on the reasons for his resignation in this case.

I think the question of whether or not a resignation, you know, should have been public is one thing.

If you do not feel you can, you know, faithfully execute and support the policies of administration you're working for, you should resign.

That is the appropriate thing to do in the natural course.

I have more questions about the statement that Tulsi Gabbard put out, because on the one hand, it was a masterclass in saying something without saying anything at all.

On the other hand, you're going before Congress tomorrow.

She has not been seen or heard of in months, probably for this exact reason, because we're at war with Iran.

And she has explicitly said she did not believe that we should be at war with Iran and has been on record saying it for years.

So let's not act as though this is a new thing with this administration.

She has been on record for quite some time through multiple administrations, voicing her opinion against going to war with Iran for the exact same reasons that many of the individuals who the Trump administration fired regarding Iranian intelligence, those individuals were against it as well.

I think that with Kent, it's important to recognize, and

it's a good point that I believe Charles made earlier.

This is a guy who's looking at his career path after this.

He's also somebody who understands the MAGA Fishers.

And at the end of the day, there are a lot of people who aligned around Trump in 2016 and 2020 and in 2024 who, who did it almost solely because this man talked about no more endless wars.

These are individuals who watch what happened in Iraq and Afghanistan.

These are individuals who trusted that he was going to put America first, meaning we're not going and creating wars and chaos in other places and recognize fully that their young men and women in, in the armed forces may be up next.

As we can recall, just a week ago, his press secretary did not leave it off the table that the possibility of a draft could happen, which wild, by the way.

This is a president who has not stood by the very thing that he ran on.

And many people are seeing this as problematic, but

are also questioning the allegiance with Israel because it does seem that there is some puppeteering going on backstage and that's not anti Semitic.

That is just a question that they have because they also usually when you bring up Israel and I don't think your intention was that, but

usually when people talk about puppeteering and Jews, they're anti Joe Kent's theory.

The case is clear in his resignation letters.

This is not about him quitting because he's got some big dispute with this Iran war.

By the way, if he had wanted to quit because of the Iran war, he could have quit three weeks ago.

Joe Kent, I predict, is running for office again.

He's going to go on Tucker Carlson's show tomorrow.

The same show or the next, this next week, the same show that Nick Fuentes on the air, he's expressed those same views and he's going to get support from that toxic part of the Republican Party that is both anti Semitic and anti Muslim and spouts all the kind of rhetoric that, that we, that we as Americans should be disgusted with.

What about this idea that there was no imminent threat?

And I think that's something where in Tulsi Gabbard's statement she failed.

She left a lot of room for ambiguity on that, whether or not she agreed with the Trump administration's decision.

And imminent threat can be interpreted a number of ways.

This is what is being used to just give the legal authority under the Article 2 Commander in Chief self defense provisions.

So this is where, you know, the legal statute, the legal kind of basis comes.

And it can mean Tulsi Gabbard is not wrong.

It can mean whatever the President wants.

Because I mean that's effectively the explanation from Trump is I felt like it.

So there was an imminent threat because I felt in my gut that it was going to happen.

Is that really the standard, the legal standard for, I mean, in this case?

And not only that the Article 2 self defense provisions have a very wide latitude.

The Supreme Court has been willing to grant a lot of latitude to the president.

Congress can check that, but they'll keep passing.

So the president basically saying, I've seen no actual evidence, but I just felt it.

The president could theoretically say that about any nation anywhere in the world.

But at least in Iran, I mean, really, I'm legitimately the standard.

When the Bush administration was making the case to go to war in Iraq, right, they presented evidence it was flawed, but

They went to the United nations and they said, look at this stuff.

But, Abby, that's more about what this president believes he can get away with with Congress and with the American public.

The president believes that he would put a case out to the American public, say, I want to go to war with Iran.

They presented him in threat, and he doesn't need to array the evidence.

And in fact, as it turns out, Congress hasn't done anything about it, Right?

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Panel: Is Joe Kent right that 'Iran posed no imminent threat'?

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