Through the Static

By Hannah Saunders

Today, Joe Kent, a staunch Trump supporter and former Washington state congressional candidate who repeatedly lost to the controversial Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, quit his job as the director of the Counterterrorism Center because of the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran. Kent posted his resignation letter to Trump on X, who nominated him for the director role, which Kent secured after outrage over his involvement in the leaked Signal group chat messages relating to military plans. 

“I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran. 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,” Kent wrote.

Kent’s letter expressed his support for the foreign policies Trump campaigned on in previous years, but things have sharply changed, despite being a devout J6er. 

“Until June of 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,” he said. “Early in this administration, high-ranking Israeli officials and influential members of the American media deployed a misinformation campaign that wholly undermined your America First platform and sowed pro-war sentiments to encourage a war with Iran.” 

Israelis lied about the U.S. being a pressing target of Iran’s, and that this “is the same tactic the Israelis used to draw us into the disastrous Iraq war that cost our nation the lives of thousands of our best men and women.” 

Kent’s military career included 11 deployments, but he left military service after his wife, Shannon, was killed in a suicide bombing in Syria. Kent wrote columns for Fox News, Breitbart News, and CNN to express himself about the war on terror. In his letter to Trump, Kent wrote that Shannon died in a war that Israel created, and that he cannot support sending more Americans to die. He said he prays that Trump thinks over his actions in Iran, and that “bold action” is needed. 

“You can reverse course and chart a new path for our nation, or you can allow us to slip further toward decline and chaos. You hold the cards,” he wrote. 

Trump has remained relatively quiet on this highly public matter until a little over an hour ago, when he posted on Truth Social a picture of a tweet from Kent on January 8, 2020 that said: 

“We should not sit and wait for the next attack, wipe Iran’s ballistic capability out and get our troops out of Iraq – they are only targets now. No US WIA/KIA is a tribute to the professionalism of our military and intel professionals not Iranian restraint.”