White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt was quick to dismiss his claims in a lengthy post on X
Donald Trump’s MAGA movement turned on counterterrorism chief Joe Kent after he announced his resignation(Image: AP)
Members of Trump’s MAGA movement quickly signaled the alarm after the president’s counterterrorism chief, Joe Kent, resigned from his position on Tuesday in protest of the war in Iran.
MAGA was quick to turn on the Kent after his scathing letter of resignation that said Trump was tricked into the conflict by an Israeli and pro-war “eco-chamber.” Kent posted about his resignation on X.
“I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran,” Kent wrote in a resignation letter posted to X. “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.”
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In his resignation letter to Trump on Tuesday, the Republican politician turned top aide to Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and claimed that the U.S. entered the war “due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt was quick to dismiss his claims in a lengthy post on X. “There are many false claims in this letter but let me address one specifically: that ‘Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation.’ This is the same false claim that Democrats and some in the liberal media have been repeating over and over,“ Leavitt wrote.
“As President Trump has clearly and explicitly stated, he had strong and compelling evidence that Iran was going to attack the United States first,” she raged. “This evidence was compiled from many sources and factors. President Trump would never make the decision to deploy military assets against a foreign adversary in a vacuum.”
Leavitt said the allegation was “both insulting and laughable.” She wasn’t the only one to push back on Kent’s claims on social media.
“Joe Kent is a crazed egomaniac who was often at the center of national security leaks, while rarely (never?) producing any actual work,” wrote Taylor Budowich, former deputy White House chief of staff. Budowich accused Kent of attempting to undermine the president.
“This isn’t some principled resignation—he just wanted to make a splash before getting canned,” Budowich added. “What a loser.”
MAGA influencer Laura Loomer claimed that Kent “was caught leaking President Trump’s private meeting with @marklevinshow to Tucker Carlson a couple of months ago.”
Loomer alleged that “he was told by White House advisors that if he got caught leaking again, he would be fired.“ Kent isn’t the first to suggest that the U.S. launched strikes on Iran on Feb. 28, starting a war that has now entered its third week, under the influence of Israel.
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A few days after the joint attacks, Secretary of State Marco Rubio provided a looping justification for the war, suggesting that the U.S. launched preemptive strikes on Iran because Israel was planning to strike Iran, which would have prompted Tehran to strike U.S. assets in the region.
“We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action,” Rubio told reporters on March 2, four days after the U.S.-Israel war on Iran launched. “We knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew that if we didn’t preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties.”
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