Joe Kent held problematic views before Donald Trump nominated him. He held them during his Senate confirmation hearings. He held them while serving as Director of the National Counterterrorism Center. And he expressed them, finally and openly, in the resignation letter full of conspiracies concerning Israel and the Jewish lobby, which has Washington performing its familiar theatre of outrage and selective amnesia, blocking from view who is responsible for the Kent debacle.
His record was never hidden. Kent’s association with Nick Fuentes, a Holocaust denier and self-described fighter for a “white majority,” was public during his congressional campaigns. So was a 47-minute livestream, now hastily made private within hours of his resignation going viral, in which Kent grovelled before a teenage white nationalist podcaster to win back Fuentes’ groyper movement’s approval after briefly trying to distance himself.
On that recording, Kent said he saw “nothing wrong with there being a white people special interest group,” and objected to Fuentes only on grounds of tactics, not substance.
His embrace of January 6 conspiracy theories, his appearance before the American Populist Union not once but twice: none of this was obscured. The Anti-Defamation League opposed his nomination.
A broad coalition of organisations, joined the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and the Western States Center to write directly to Tom Cotton and Mark Warner, the chair and vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, urging rejection. The evidence landed on Cotton’s desk.
Then he and 52 Republican senators confirmed him anyway. (All the Democrats and one Republican voted against). We have witnessed a form of DC performance art designed to ensure that no one is held accountable for anything.
Senator Mitch McConnell, who voted to confirm Kent, now thunders about “virulent antisemitism,” despite having cast the vote that put him there. Tom Cotton, who chaired the Intelligence Committee that vetted him and praised him for having “dedicated his career to fighting terrorism,” now says he “disagrees with his misguided assessment.”
Don Bacon tweets, “good riddance.” These men are not experiencing a moral awakening. The only thing that changed is that Kent became inconvenient, not because he displayed antisemitism, but because he deployed it against a war they support.
'Joe is the bravest man I know': Tucker Carlson
The Tucker Carlson wing has done the opposite, showing troubling coherence. Carlson told The New York Times that “Joe is the bravest man I know, and he can’t be dismissed as a nut.” Steve Bannon called his service record “beyond question” and demanded a full investigation into the war’s origins.
Former Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene called him “a GREAT AMERICAN HERO.” These voices are cheering Kent precisely because his letter confirms their worldview. It’s the point, not a mistake. The antisemitism isn’t a bug; it’s a feature.
The Democratic response is more mixed. Responsible voices, including senators like Jacky Rosen and former Biden advisor Amos Hochstein, were clear about Kent. Rosen told Jewish Insider, “This is Trump’s war. It’s 100% on him.”
Hochstein tweeted, “Whether you support the war or oppose it, Joe Kent is a well known neo-nazi racist. No one should be taking anything he says seriously - even if you happen to agree with some elements.” But others were less careful. Patty Murray, who called Kent “a radical, unqualified conspiracy theorist” whose record was “disqualifying” at confirmation, declared on Tuesday: “Good riddance to Joe Kent, a disgraceful white supremacist, but that’s a major public admission that there was NO justification for this war.”
She condemned him and used him in the same breath. Senator Bernie Sanders went further still, explicitly endorsing Kent’s claim that Israel and its American lobby drove the country to war. Hypocrisy is bipartisan and alive and well on Capitol Hill.
Nobody on the Right, not a single commentator, not a single Republican senator, is prepared to state the obvious: Trump knew. Trump nominated him. Trump praised him as someone who had “hunted down terrorists and criminals his entire adult life.”
Trump personally recruited him at Dover Air Force Base as Shannon Kent’s body was being returned home, and later took credit for encouraging him into politics. These are not the actions of a president who privately harboured doubts about his nominee’s character. They are the actions of a president who saw in Kent exactly what he wanted, and got it.
Now, Trump says about Kent that he has “always thought he was weak on security.” You do not appoint men you privately consider weak to run your National Counterterrorism Centre. You do not recruit them personally at their most grief-stricken moment. You do not praise them as terrorism hunters on the day of their nomination. That claim is, simply, a lie.
There is a final irony that deserves to be named. By appointing Kent, knowing precisely who he was, confirming him through a process that put every association on the public record, with major organisations writing directly to the Senate Intelligence Committee in opposition, the administration and its Republican allies in Congress have handed the Carlson wing exactly the asset it needed: a decorated combat veteran, a Gold Star husband, a former senior intelligence official with impeccable MAGA credentials and a resignation letter that blames Israel on everything.
They built him. They credentialled him. They gave him a government platform and a security clearance. And now they cannot cope with what he has done with it. In the annals of Washington self-inflicted wounds, this is a remarkable own goal, led by Trump and scored by people who knew the player’s history, put him on the field anyway, and are now pretending they always thought he was weak or antisemitic.
The writer is a founding partner of Goldrock Capital and the founder of The Institute for Jewish and Zionist Research.