When former National Counterterrorism Center Director Joe Kent resigned on March 17, 2026, it was big news. Kent’s walkout was attended by a sophisticated media rollout, with the former CIA official, Special Forces soldier and congressional candidate dismounting from office into a lengthy interview with Tucker Carlson. He spent the next day onstage at a “Catholic Prayer for America” conference in Washington, alongside podcaster Candace Owens.
A major message from Kent’s early statements and appearances involved the idea that Donald Trump was being pressured into war with Iran by Israel. He said Trump “started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby,” and in the interview with Tucker, intimated that security failures may have led Trump to feel he had “no choice” in his war decisions:
He sees what happened in Butler with the other assassination attempts, when he sees what happened with Charlie, I think it’s reasonable to believe that somewhere in his head he thinks that like maybe I don’t have a choice. Maybe they could harm me or they could harm my family.
In some interviews Kent has said that he’s only working off the information everybody else gets reading the news, in other interviews the wording is more vague. On the day of an apparent cease-fire with Iran — when Trump went from promising a “whole civilization will die tonight” to saying “We’ll be loading up with supplies of all kinds, and just ‘hangin’ around’ in order to make sure that everything goes well” — we hoped to clarify how he arrived at certain conclusions, what he thinks of the latest developments, and how (if at all) his thinking has changed.
Racket readers will see that I lost my hotel Internet connection just as the interview started, but Michael gamely completed the discussion. Here’s the video, along with a transcript, of our talk with Joe Kent:
Matt Taibbi: Hello, this is Today’s News. I’m Matt Taibbi with Michael Tracey and former director of the National Counter Terrorism Center, Joe Kent. Mr. Kent, thanks for coming on.
Joe Kent: Great guys. Thanks for having me.
Matt Taibbi: So, we just had a ceasefire, allegedly. And in the space of about a day, we had Donald Trump, President Trump, go from saying a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. And today we get a cheery tweet saying we’ll be loading up with supplies of all kinds and just hanging around in order to make sure that everything goes well. So this is really a two-part question. Number one, what do you think of the ceasefire? What do you think it means? And number two, do you agree with the people like Representative DeGette or Ed Markey who think that there’s something about Donald Trump’s mental stability that needs to be investigated?
Joe Kent: Number one, the ceasefire is good news. Obviously, this time yesterday we were bracing ourselves for something much more drastic, which I think would’ve been catastrophic. So if President Trump was using that as a negotiating tool, it appears that he was. I’m glad that he opted for the pathway of negotiations. Big question is will this hold? I think the real question there is going to be, can we withhold the Israelis? Because the Israelis’ stated goal, their strategic objective, is to take down the Iranian regime, regardless of how long it takes, regardless of how chaotic things are. Up to this point in the war, we have had a very hard time saying no to the Israelis, basically as the New York Times even reported on just I think two days ago, just talking about how Bibi was the driving influence behind President Trump and the presentation that Massad gave him, how easy this would be.
That’s what took us into this war. That was my experience as well and a big reason why I had to leave. So if we can hold back the Israelis and separate ourselves from them and treat them like the junior partner that they truly are, that’s going to give President Trump the negotiating space that I think he needs to come up with a sustainable deal with the Iranians. Now, what exactly is that deal going to look like? I think that remains to be seen. I think his main goal at this point is to get the Strait of Hormuz reopened for energy commerce and just for the free flow of commerce as well. So that’s kind of where we’re at right now.
Michael Tracey: Given the volatility of yesterday morning saying we’re going to destroy the entire Iranian civilization and then this morning saying we’re going to have a beautiful joint venture with Iran or we’re just going to be hanging out. It seems to swing back and forth pretty wildly.
Joe Kent: It does, but it kind of always has. So I think because this tactic has worked out for him before in the past, I think this is basically just kind of classic Donald Trump. It concerns me when you start talking about the total annihilation of a civilization and the Iranians weren’t backing down either. So the stakes are high. That negotiating tool that President Trump is very fond of, I would not use in this circumstance. And also I think there’s an element too where that negotiating tool loses its effect over time because we’re already engaged in a hot war with Iran. The application of force and the military options haven’t been successful up to this point. So I’m hoping he leans more into diplomacy and commerce as opposed to the military stick because there’s only so much that you can actually threaten with the military stick. If anything, I think this last iteration of conflict with Iran has shown that warfare has just changed and we can’t solve everything through sheer military might.
Michael Tracey: And once you’ve threatened to obliterate all of Iranian or Persian civilization, what threat can you go up to next, right? That seems like you’ve probably exhausted the threat options.
Joe Kent: Yeah. And even without even addressing the morality, obviously that’d be immoral to use any kind of WMD or a nuke or whatever, but in order to annihilate or whatever, what did he say, like completely wipe out a civilization, you’d have to do that. But even if you did do that, putting the morals aside, the way that we would be viewed by the rest of the world would be counterproductive for anything else that we wanted to accomplish. At that point, we would basically have to be willing to go to nuclear war with pretty much everybody to force our agenda, because I think the rest of the world at that point would isolate us, and we wouldn’t be able to negotiate really with anybody. So at some point, it’s just like, okay, I understand he uses bombastic language frequently and sometimes it works out. I don’t think he’s losing it.
I don’t think he’s of poor mental sanity or anything like that. I just think we got very lucky here with this one. So we should be working as hard as we can to make sure this ceasefire holds and we can get the straits open again. We can cut a deal with Iran and we can hopefully learn from our mistakes and move on.
Michael Tracey: Yeah. I mean, it is true that he’s always used this bombastic language as a negotiating tactic. We’re all encouraged to read “The Art of the Deal” to learn the nature of his negotiating sort of philosophy. I actually have read it. It’s almost like our new holy text, so I’ve made sure to read it and I have a copy. But at the same time, I mean, it’s never gotten quite this extreme where I do think we have to dwell for a moment on the scale of that threat that was leveled, right? Because it’s one thing to use some kind of coercive language. It’s another to say that your entire ancient civilization is going to die tonight. And you’ve talked about how, in your experience, the policymaking process around Trump has shrunk to an insular circle compared to Midnight Hammer last June. Your perception was that it was really confined to a small group of people, maybe Hegseth, Rubio, Ratcliffe, Cain, Susie Wiles, that seems like probably around it and maybe Witkoff Kushner.
So by and large, it’s not as though we can consult some larger policymaking process to understand what the trajectory of the policy is. We have to, for better or worse, listen to Trump’s statements and words, right? And if those are the words coming out of his mouth, I don’t know. I mean, he is approaching 80 years old. He does sometimes seem to contradict himself a little bit more frequently, often within the span of the same paragraph. So was there any indicia of that that maybe gave you pause while you were still in government or did you just kind of chalk everything up to his standard Donald Trump?
Joe Kent: A problem with the circle of advisors being shrunk down so tightly, not only did you have basically an echo chamber that I’ve described before, where you had a lot of folks that were already leaning to be very pro- Israel, Israelis had, I think, really good access to those decision makers. And then you had the pro- Israel media wing of Fox News, the think tanks, FTD, et cetera, coming in and saying the same thing kind of in the private sector or on the media to Trump that created an echo chamber around him. But another big problem that we have is basically the way that the Israelis laid out this scenario that pushed us into the war and they kept getting Trump basically to say, “Hey, you’re going to get this catastrophic effect on Iran. The regime is going to crumble. It’s going to be very easy for you, but in order for it to be successful, the regime actually has to crumble.
They have to totally surrender. They got him very comfortable with using language like total surrender. And how do you actually get a total surrender? You either have to go in...
Michael Tracey: “Unconditional surrender” is what he said.
Joe Kent: Yeah. Yeah. Unconditional surrender. Anytime we’ve got an unconditional surrender in the past, it’s like World War II. We either dropped the nuclear weapon or we came in and we fought a prolonged ground campaign and we forced our will upon the Iranians or whoever we’re fighting with boots on the ground. The more you play out the scenario in Iran, it’s huge. And even if we could commit the full US military and let’s say the nation’s all in and we go and we do a conventional land war there, we simply just can’t control and quell the population of Iran. So basically, by getting Trump conditioned to say total, complete surrender, the regime has to totally and completely fall, which again, that was never our stated strategic objective in this, but that was the Israelis. The Israelis, because of the echo chamber and their access to President Trump, they made us essentially share their strategic objective with them.
They basically make this equation that in order for this to be a successful operation, you have to have a complete collapse in Iran and it’s total regime change and we have total control that can’t be done with boots on the ground. So you do come back to this point where it’s like, well, then maybe we do have to use a nuclear weapon. And luckily, I think President Trump kind of saw through this in the last couple days or maybe even a week or so where he saw like, look, I can’t drop a nuclear weapon on these people. I can’t subdue them. This is not going well. You can’t change geography. The Iranians are going to be able to apply very little force and still mess with shipping on the Straits or Hermus. That’s going to have an effect here back in America. Let’s go ahead and come up with a negotiation.
And now everything we’re seeing is this Trumpian bravado of, “Hey, we made this great deal.” So again, I’m hoping that that holds and we can hold back the Israelis because if the Israelis continue to have the amount of influence on President Trump as they did prior to this war, they’re going to go back to him and they’re going to say, “Mr. President, this isn’t good enough. This is a failure. We thought that you were going to be the guy that could bring down the regime, that could open the Straits of Hormuz. The Iranians are now making money off the Straits of Hormuz. They’re mocking you, et cetera. So I’m hoping he can put them in a box and tell them they’re the junior partner and we’ve reached a deal here and it’s going to stick.
Michael Tracey: While Matt fixes his connection, I will commandeer the conversation. So this kind of gets back to what you said in your initial resignation letter on March 17th, which caused such an uproar. And I thought to myself when I read this, okay, he’s actually somebody who’s got some integrity because what’s going on now is contradicting his seemingly sincerely felt beliefs and he feels like it’s no longer tenable for him to remain in government for a variety of reasons. At the same time, I felt that there were some things in there that may be a bit substantively off and that you were pinning almost exclusive or near exclusive responsibility on Israel for “deceiving Trump. “That’s the verb you use, deceiving Trump. And it seems like that gives short shrift to Trump’s actual worldview, especially in the second term, where it’s not like he’s been bashful about talking about how he’s doing the Venezuela operation to take the oil.
He’s saying he likewise would love to take the oil with Iran, seizing Greenland, declaring himself the ruler of Venezuela, declaring himself the ruler of Gaza, talking about taking over the Panama Canal. He says, “Once we’re done with Iran, we’re going to be taking Cuba.” So this is a pretty well articulated, consistent sort of paradigm now that he’s been espousing that it seems like the Iran thing fits pretty neatly into with or without the influence of Israel. Of course, Israel has influence and Netanyahu in particular is very well schooled at making a case to American presidents, given his background, living in the United States, being very well versed in American politics and so forth, but why can’t we view Israel almost like as an adjunct to American hegemony in the region and Trump has his own spin on how to maintain and expand American hegemony. The Iran thing fits comfortably into that and in that context, Netanyahu can make a case that is persuasive to Trump that gels with his own sort of preexisting ideology.
I mean, you see what I’m saying in there? Is that something that maybe hasn’t been emphasized enough or with the overemphasis, at least from my perspective on Israel, not to discount its influence entirely, but with overemphasizing it, we kind of fail to appreciate this ideological sort of paradigm that Trump himself is very frequently and vehemently declaring.
Joe Kent: Yeah, no, I see what you mean. In the case of Iran, just because we had been so anti-regime change war in the campaign, and I believe in Trump’s previous administration, I mean, he was pressured consistently to invade Iran. He killed Qasem Soleimani. I thought that was the right call at the time, but then he didn’t take the bait of getting sucked into a regime change war. I just think considering the driving force of the foreign influence coming from the Israeli lobby to get us into this war, it was very, very significant to me. And I felt like had he had more advisors around him that could have pointed this out or at least pointed to how the Israelis were using their access really to senior government officials, their longstanding relationship with our intelligence services, that we were basically doing this operation against Iran, which on a strategic scale is more significant than anything else he was planning on doing because of the implications of the Straits of Hormuz, the GCC, the petrodollar, et cetera, that I think we could have probably talked him out of it.
However, just the apparatus that the Israelis have built around the US government, around media, the amount of support they have here in the States, it was almost impenetrable that was built around Trump. And obviously President Trump has agency, he shouldn’t have let that happen. In the past, he had called out that the Adelsons were going to support Marco Rubio in whatever ...
Michael Tracey: Perfect little puppet, that was the famous tweet, 2015. I have it memorized somehow.
Joe Kent: Yeah, I mean, he’s aware of this, and he did let them in.
Michael Tracey: Well, Rubio is now his Secretary of State and National Security Advisor.
Joe Kent: Exactly.
Michael Tracey: So, there’s been an evolution, right?
Joe Kent: Right. And so, but once he let them in, I do think he was just swept up by all of it and he was deceived. I think something that had he been an outsider, he would have been like, “Well, those guys are getting ran by the Israeli lobby. I’ve seen this before.” And I think Donald Trump of 2015 would have called that out like he did. But once he was on the inside, I think his perspective changed. I think the Israelis and the Israeli lobby did a really good job of kind of getting into President Trump’s psyche. The confidence built, that he built up in the Venezuela operation, I think that combined with the protesters on the street in January, it made it easy for the pro- Israel lobby to basically sell to President Trump like, look how easy this is going to be. You’ve got the best military ever.
They can just zip in there and take out some targets and then the protesters are already in the streets and the whole thing’s going to fall, not letting any of the dissenting voices come in and really kind of bypassing his own intelligence community where I was sitting because that was not the assessment whatsoever coming from the USIC, but we basically didn’t even have a voice at the table in the discussions.
Michael Tracey: So, Joe, I mean, just to ... I don’t know if this was really in your purview at all in the position that you had, but just taking the stuff that’s gone on in the Western hemisphere, right? It would be hard to make a case that the pro- Israel lobby or Netanyahu had much to do with, for example, this gambit to seize Greenland, right? Or Venezuela. I know you could say that Venezuelan oil exports have gone maybe to Israel or something, an indirect connection there, or the Panama Canal or Cuba, that’s not really in the bailiwick of Israel. So there’s something ideologically that’s going on that flows from Trump himself that is informing his conduct of foreign policy, right? So then when that gets grafted onto the Middle East, obviously Israel has a more outsized role, but apart from the Middle East stuff, how would you characterize what his worldview is now with respect to these other initiatives that are going on that don’t have really much of a direct role on Israel that may ... Whatever those predilections are, they may intersect with Israel when we come to the Middle East, but they kind of exist on their own at the same time.
Joe Kent: I think in the Western hemisphere, there’s a school of thought that most of these governments that are adversarial to us, the populations are not hostile to us in a way that they are in the Middle East, because we’re so culturally similar, and that the Western hemisphere, Monroe Doctrine, that we should completely control it. So it’s basically securing our own borders to reach down and take out some of these more hostile governments. Now, I think a lot of that probably could have been done with soft power. I think we could have cut just as pragmatic of a deal. I mean, Maduro’s not like a ... There’s no ideology there driving Maduro. He liked money and he liked power. But at the end of the day, I think that there was, and I don’t have any insider knowledge on this one because it wasn’t really in our wheelhouse, but obviously we did some really good intelligence prep work.
There’s members of his government within Maduro’s inner circle that basically kind of carved a pathway for us. Our soft and our military went in there and just were able to grab him quickly. That could have gone sideways though. I mean, pretty easily. We’re lucky that that went as well as it did. It remains to be seen in the long run, like how beneficial that actually was. Was the risk actually worth the reward? So I don’t know exactly how that chess match is going to end up playing out. Again, I think Venezuela, with the amount of oil they had, I think we kind of could have just cut them a regular...
Michael Tracey: And take the oil has been a longstanding sort of conviction of Trump’s, right? Even going back. So I mean, if take the oil, resource extraction applies from his perspective to both Venezuela and Iran, there’s like something going on there independently of the pro- Israel lobby that may have informed why it is that he’s chosen to undertake these endeavors.
Joe Kent: Yeah. I mean, he likes the idea, I think, of like, we get the better deal, we take the oil, we take the resource for the benefit of America. Again, if I were advising him, I would just say, “Hey, you can probably cut just as good of a deal that will be beneficial for us.” And the amount of blood and treasure you’ll have to spend or just the capital of our reputation on the world. Again, Venezuela, there’s no ideology there. They probably just wanted to cut a good deal with us. Chevron had already gone down there and built a lot of the infrastructure. So I’m not sure how much we needed to go smack them around or anything. Now the Middle East and just how far away it is in terms of oil. Again, is the juice worth the squeeze? I think if Trump had had more like pragmatic business people in his ear on that one, I don’t know if he would have been talked into it.
And I think again, the Israeli lobby came in and they basically told him that every other president for the last 47 years has been too weak to do this. You’re the only one that’s strong enough to do it. They really played to his ego. They made it seem like it was going to be easy. Venezuela was a confidence building exercise and that’s how we got into this mess.
Michael Tracey: Unfortunately, you’re stuck with me, Joe, for now because Matt’s frozen. So you mentioned that you had supported the Soleimani assassination, and I saw you mention that on Tucker in the first appearance that you went on after you resigned. And I found it a little curious because I was covering Tulsa Gabbard very closely at that time during the Soleimani assassination, knew her decently well. And she was vehement in her denunciation of that Soleimani assassination for reasons that seemed to me have proven rather prescient, meaning she says that she has said that Trump had instigated a new phase of kinetic warfare with Iran that was leading ineluctably toward a regime change war with Iran.
And she was pretty harsh about Trump himself. She said, “He doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing.” Just to refresh my memory, I pulled up a quote from her because I was with her at the time and she was saying that, “Look, this is going to lead to a war if we allow Trump to just continue on this path that’s going to come with a quote cost that will not be confined to within the boundaries of Iran. This will be a regional war that will take American lives.” Sure enough, the Trump policy trajectory led in that direction. I know your argument is that in assassinating Soleimani, Trump punched Iran in the face. I think that’s how you put it on Tucker, and that gave leverage to him to potentially broker some kind of diplomatic accord with Iran, but there’s been no diplomatic accord brokered, right?
And Tulsi coupled that with a critique of him even withdrawing from the JCPOA, which she said she had some misgivings about, but in withdrawing from it, Trump was pursuing a military solution rather than a diplomatic solution. So look, I mean, I know Tulsi’s in a different position now, but when I go back and look at what her analysis was at the time, when she was operating under some different incentives, she was on the mark. So I’m just sort of wondering maybe how you reconcile that given what’s come to pass in terms of Trump’s Iran policy and could you ever see yourself reconsidering maybe why it is that you supported those past iterations of the policy, at least pre-February 28th?
Joe Kent: So, I support the Soleimani strike or limited CT operations, targeted CT operations. When you have a guy, a terrorist, in Soleimani’s case, he was the hybrid between a proxy master and an Iranian general who is directing attacks against our forces, killing our troops. I fully support us finding him as soon as we can and killing him. Qasem Soleimani basically ran proxy armies against the US and Iraq and Syria since under Bush and under Obama and he really wasn’t touched because we thought there’d be massive political implications. He killed an American under Trump’s watch and Trump immediately struck back, killed him and his deputy Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, who actually had been targeting Americans since
Michael Tracey: When they were on a diplomatic mission to Iraq, right?
Joe Kent: Yeah. Yeah.
Michael Tracey: Kind of gives some insight into what we prefer, right? Diplomacy or a military solution, because the military solution was taken to thwart the diplomatic mission.
Joe Kent: Right. I mean, they both were operating under the auspices that they were Iranian diplomats or something like that. We knew exactly what they were doing. So killing them showed Iran like, “Hey, I’m not Obama, I’m not Bush. We’re not going to let you guys walk all over us.” And that’s a good use of targeted counterterrorism operations because that’s basically the only language that a lot of folks in that region respect. Now at the same time, President Trump stopped and he didn’t get sucked into a regime change war, even though he had Bolton and the rest of the Neocons and probably the pro- Israeli lobby in his ear saying, “Now’s the time. Take down the mullahs. You took down Soleimani. Let’s go in there.” Because by going in in a conventional war, we give the advantage back to the country that we’re trying to take over.
Regime change just never works. And it also has the reverse effect of what we want. There’s always a rally around the flag effect. So even people who might not like the Iranian regime, they’re going to rally around the Iranian regime when we attack them. So I think that got the Iranians to the negotiating table. Now obviously the election happened after that. Biden came in. The Iranians clearly did not respect Biden because after October 7th, we had over 200 attacks against our forces by the proxies. The second that Trump came back in, the Iranians stopped the attacks from the proxies. They immediately got to the negotiating table. And so I think they would not have done that had Trump not killed Soleimani. So that got under the negotiating table, that basically got us almost a full year of negotiations with the Iranians. Even after the 12-day war and after Midnight Hammer, the Iranians didn’t have their proxies to attack us.
They didn’t really meaningfully attack us. They fired the same amount of bombs that we dropped on the nuclear facilities. They fired that same amount of missiles at an empty quadrant on our base and Qatar. And then they basically said, “Let’s get back to the negotiating table.” And we went back to negotiating from June until this war kicked off. So I think the use of limited counter-terrorism strikes, I think is always appropriate if our forces are in danger or have been attacked. It’s almost the same thing with Afghanistan. We should have gone into Afghanistan after 9/11, killed Al-Qaeda guys, chased Bin Laden into Pakistan, but we shouldn’t have stayed and gotten bogged down in some regime change government building exercise. Us taking the bait in these regime change wars, it has never worked out for us.
Michael Tracey: Well, I guess Tulsi’s argument at the time was that this was taking the bait and sort of accelerating a policy that was fundamentally geared toward ultimately attempting some sort of full-fledged regime change war. She called it another tit-for-tat escalation that’s going to lead to this cataclysmic outcome. And she was right, but she also coupled that with her critique of at time the sanctions regiment, which I know you also supported because she felt that this was siege warfare. It was destabilizing the government in a way that again, was going to culminate in some sort of regime change confrontation. So again, I mean, do you think there’s anything to credit about her critique at the time in terms of even if the Soleimani assassination didn’t itself instantly lead to or full pledge of dream change war, it was part of a trajectory that led to that point, right?
Joe Kent: Oh, I agree, unfortunately, I think had Trump had better advisors around him. They could have said, “Hey, there’s a time to use force. You’ve already proven that you’re going to use force.” So all the pro- Israel people coming in right now and all the neocons coming in right now saying like, “You’re the only guy that’s tough enough to do this and we can just go kick their asses.” You already proved you can do that. You destroyed the ISIS caliphate, you killed Solmani, your tough guy Cart is punched. These people take you very, very seriously. Now it’s the time to show your strength through negotiation to show that you can be a stabilizing force. And I think President Trump would have understood that, but those voices were cut out. Instead, you just had the hawks come in and do what Tulsi predicted. And she was right.
I mean, she basically said, “If we kill this guy, it’s going to lead to the next thing, lead to the next thing.” She was correct. I think there is a way to balance that. Sanctions in general, I think in terms of Iran, we had the Iranian people to the point where they were frustrated with the economic conditions in their country. They were frustrated with their own leadership. So if our goal was to get rid of that leadership and have it be somewhat organic ...
Michael Tracey: By immiserating the civilian population as best we could.
Joe Kent: Yeah. It’s not perfect, man, but in some cases we should do some ...
Michael Tracey: Which Tulsi used to have a very vehement moral objection to.
Joe Kent: If we’re going to be the world’s reserve currency holder, the idea of us doing sanctions kind of shoots ourselves in the foot to a certain extent because we should want the whole world to use the dollar. So you have a limited amount that you can actually use the sanctions. As we saw when we went after Russia and we were like, “We’re going to throw Russia off the SWIFT system.”
Way to shoot ourselves in our own foot there. I get it. There are some moral implications of targeting that in a way is targeting the civilian population, but it is better than what we’re seeing right now, which is a full on regime change war. But again, look, I think the combination of killing Soleimani, maximum pressure sanctions, that had the Iranians to the point where they were willing to go to the negotiating table with us. They even withstood one iteration of war and were still willing to go to the negotiating table with us. Unfortunately, I think we squandered some of those opportunities. I think just through the sheer will and force of President Trump’s personality, we’re at another juncture where maybe we can cut another deal. It’s probably not going to be as good of a deal as we could have gotten before because now the Iranians are realizing their power with the way they can throttle the Straits of Hormuz.
Michael Tracey: But at what point does whatever problem exists as you see it stem not from a lack of suitable advisors, but Trump himself, I mean, Trump’s the one who picks his advisors, right? After he won the 2024 election, he had maximum political capital, especially in the Republican Party. They would have confirmed Fred Flintstone for him if he had nominated him to be some cabinet official. And he chose Marco Rubio, a longstanding interventionist, quote unquote hawk on Iran and all man of other issues. He chose to be not just Secretary of State now, this hybrid national security advisor, Secretary of State role where he’s like Kissinger Redux, probably even more influential. He chose Hegseth was on the record as somebody who was very gung-ho about military action with Iran and all kinds of other places with this sort of religious inflection that he invokes. He chose Mike Waltz as his initial national security advisor who’s now UN ambassador, also a very committed long-term interventionist.
So I mean, look, I mean, this is who Trump thinks best reflects his foreign policy agenda, right? So it’s not a matter of just trying to sneak some different advisors in there at this point. I mean, we’re like 11 years into Trump being the most dominant political figure in the country. So at what point is it about him on some level?
Joe Kent: Yeah. And he probably should have realized in the ‘24 campaign season that if you’re going to take hundreds of millions of dollars from the pro-Israel lobby, they’re going to come back and demand a couple seats at the table and then those advisors are going to lead you down a certain path. So no, I’m with you. I think he got some bad advice. I think he still has the capability to pull it off. I still, as much as he might not like me right now, I still believe it overall in his message and some of the policies he campaigned on. But yeah, obviously at the end of the day, the buck does stop with the commander-in-chief.
Michael Tracey: I know he once said that he liked you because you look as though you came straight out of central casting and that hasn’t changed. So maybe you can salvage the relationship.
Joe Kent: So, you’re saying there’s still a chance.
Michael Tracey: I mean, you have a much better jaw line than me, I’ll admit that.
Joe Kent: I’ll take what I can get.
Michael Tracey: Going back to 2024 for a second. So you were running for Congress at the time and you had in 2022 as well. And I remember, and I had been aware of you for years, I forget exactly how, but it was something to do with Tulsi, but I kept an eye on that campaign, your messaging and so forth. It was against Marie Gluesenkamp, is that her name? Yeah. Perez. Yep. Yeah. And not long before that, that district had been represented by a Republican, right? It was, what’s her face? The woman, I forget her name now.
Joe Kent: Karen Butler. She was one of the impeachment voters.
Michael Tracey: Yeah. Oh, that’s right. Yeah. So she was not long for this world in terms of being in Congress as a Republican. Anyway, this is what you said. Not to do a gotcha. It’s not really what it’s meant. I’m just genuinely curious if you see any cause to maybe introspect about some of this and see maybe if your analysis might need a little bit of updating or revision. This is what you said on September 24th, 2024. You said, “Iran’s leaders & our national security blob want a war w/ Iran. War focuses power & money on the ruling class, it unites the people around the regime.” Okay, fair enough. But then you say, “Our blob & Iran fear Trump avoiding war & using diplomacy & economic leverage. Trump is good for the American ppl & ppl in the region”. So basically you’re saying that what stands in the way between the United States and war with Iran or the national security blob getting what they want is Donald Trump.
He’s the impediment. And it’s just like, I mean, come on, you got to now maybe do a little bit of a rethink on that, don’t you?
Joe Kent: You got me. I mean, you can pair that with, I guess, my resignation letter, unfortunately. I hate to say it. And I still, in my heart, I believe that Trump wanted to be that guy. Unfortunately, just political reality of who he took money from on the campaign trail, who got an insider track on being key advisors. We’re at where we’re at. Again, I think he could still walk it back. All that could still end up being true because he’s still going to get pressured by the national security blob, the pro- Israel lobby, which I wasn’t as aware of until I was in the position I was in. To go back and to do something against Iran that’s even bigger, whether that’s a ground incursion or what he was talking about just the other night. So I still think he can be the Trump that all of us voted for and campaigned for.
Michael Tracey: I mean, he started taking money from Sheldon Adelson, it was then, in 2016, and then again in 2020, and then again 2024, and it increased each cycle. So it’s nothing new. I mean, I appreciate that maybe if you became a little bit more aware of it as time went on or given the perspective that you had in the government, that’s all fair and good. I just think that I was a little flustered, especially in 2024 when I saw this image being presented of Trump as something that the record didn’t really seem to support, meaning somebody that was deep down looking to thwart Israel when he was going around saying, “I’m the most pro- Israel president of all time. Adelsons are great.” On Gaza, his problem was that Biden hadn’t sent enough heavy munitions. And even though Biden sent the most munitions to Israel of any president ever.
And so he was a huge wealth of evidence suggesting that this is what Trump’s disposition was on Israel. It’s not like it was a mystery. And sure enough, that’s what’s come to fruition in the second term. So I don’t know. I’m venting to you about my frustrations at the time because I like to try to dispassionately analyze each nominee as best as I can. And I didn’t see a lot of good dispassionate analysis of Trump in 2024.
Joe Kent: Yeah. I mean, I think the money is an interesting point that a lot of people who aren’t deeply involved in politics don’t understand. And it’s like this weird feature of the American political system where you need money and whoever can pour the most money into a campaign, they’re going to have a lot of power. And then as a candidate, and I know this from being a candidate who has outspent, you kind of end up with this, I guess it’s like the prisoners bargain. If I don’t take the money, then my opponent’s going to take the money. So what do I need to do to get the money? And I think APAC and other special interests have...
Michael Tracey: Did you raise money from pro- Israel groups or individuals when you were running for Congress?
Joe Kent: So, I think if you look at APAC Tracker, I think I got a couple individual donations where people donated a couple hundred or thousand dollars in the name of APAC. But I went to a couple of different breakfasts and like fundraisers and stuff they had and said, “Hi, I’m Joe. Here’s what I believe in. “ And I guess they didn’t like me. So I never got a ton of money from them, but it’s challenging. So I understand where Trump and other candidates are like, “No, I had to take this money.” But I think the way that’s coming out now, I think this younger generation, so I’m like 46, the people that are younger than me, I think they actually are acutely aware of this. And so I think in short order, it’s going to become pretty toxic to actually have taken some of that money. So it’s actually going to be a net negative, which I think is overall a good thing.
It’s informing people. And I think this is going to be a big wake up call for the coalition that President Trump built that we need to start rewarding candidates who aren’t taking money from all these different special interest groups, especially from special interest groups that represent foreign countries.
Michael Tracey: Well, you even have mainline prospective Democratic presidential candidates like a Gavin Newsom or people saying that they won’t take APAC money. So that’s at least an indicator in the Democratic Party. It’s a little bit more slow going in the Republican Party. Obviously within the younger cohort, maybe that’s something that they would like to see happen, but we shall see. I mean, just to drill down a little bit more on the origins of the war, because I think it’s important for the historical record to understand that as best we can. Just like people are going to be debating for years or decades, why did Putin invade Ukraine on February 24th, 2022? Why did Hitler invade Poland on September 1st, 1939? I’m not likening Trump attacking Iran necessarily on the substance of those conflicts. Just something that’s got to come up as people study history.
And I’m just not quite following how it is that Israel could have so decisively deceived Trump to, for instance, amass the largest US force presence in the Middle East since 2003. That’s not something that Bibi could have engineered somehow. Yeah, he could have made his case to Trump, but Trump did that on his own volition, maybe in concert with Hegseth, whomever it was with Israel and these pro- Israel people in the media whispering his ear, sure. But when you so emphasize Israel, it almost creates the impression that Trump’s being puppeteered by them rather than acting with his own agency first and foremost, which is my view because I like to take Trump seriously when he’s introducing this expansionism thing that he’s on in the second term that spans the world. Cuba’s next, I guess. And he previewed this in his inaugural address.
And then in terms of the Rubio statement, when the war was launched, a lot of people pointed to where Israel was about to attack, so we had to attack preemptively to thwart any reprisals against American forces. Okay, but at the same time, why were the forces there in the first place? Because Trump sent them right to a mass against Iran in this pressure campaign thing, right? And that wasn’t Israel doing per se in terms of what the cause of it was. And also in that New York Times report, they say Trump made its decision weeks in advance. It was just a matter of timing. And the timing came when the intel was presented to Trump about the Ayatollah having this meeting or the Supreme Leader having this meeting in daylight or something like this. And you can even see reporting in the preceding week where sources are telling Politico, look, US officials think it might be more politically palatable if Israel strikes first.
So it just seems like there’s this pretty obvious coordination that’s going on between Trump and Israel where it’s not just a matter of him being pressured or deceived. It’s that Trump, for better or worse, views his interest or America’s interest as aligned with Israel, right? So maybe that’s wrong, but it’s not a matter of him being snookered or swindled.
Joe Kent: Well, I think a lot of it, initially when Trump came in January of ‘25, he was putting on a full court press to get a deal with Iran. He dispatched Steve Witkoff and I think Witkoff was on the cusp of getting a deal pre-Midnight Hammer and potentially even after Midnight Hammer, but definitely before Midnight Hammer, I think Witkoff was on the cusp. Now, what the Israelis did that was very, very clever, and they used the echo chamber to do this, was they moved the red line. So President Trump had said, “Iran can’t have a nuclear weapon.” He still says it all the time. He had said it before. So that was basically the US policy, no nuclear weapon for Iran. The Iranians basically had no nuclear weapon policy under the previous Ayatollah fatwa going back to like ‘discussed03. I’ve even seen this walk through in great detail to the president why they don’t have a nuclear weapon yet.
He and I even had a discussion about this, why don’t they have a nuclear weapon? Couldn’t they develop one, couldn’t they build one? And we explained to him that like, yeah, they have a prohibition on building a nuclear weapon. And this is a pragmatic strategy because they saw ...
Michael Tracey: A religious prohibition.
Joe Kent: Yeah. So they saw, but they still want to be able to enrich because they saw what happened to Gaddafi who said, “I’m going to give up all my nuclear capabilities.” Well, he got regime changed. They saw what happened with Saddam right next door when Saddam was like, “Maybe I do, maybe I don’t.” And he tried to play coy with it. Well, he got regime change. So the Iranians basically had what I called the Goldilocks formula of like, we’ve got some enrichment, we could build a bomb, but we’re not going to. And we actually have a prohibition on it and you guys can come monitor it.
Michael Tracey: Yeah, it’s a deterrent from their perspective.
Joe Kent: Deterrence, totally. Yeah. And so what the trading space was then at that point was like, how much enrichment? How could it be monitored? These aren’t things that are going to take a country off the war. There’s lots of time to discuss that, et cetera. But what the Israelis did was they came in and they took a statement that Mike Pompeo had said back in 2018 where he said, no enrichment. The US policy is zero enrichment. And they used their access to our advisors and they said, they kept saying this is the US law ...
Michael Tracey: So what month is this?
Joe Kent: This is probably between February and June of ‘25.
Michael Tracey: So Witkoff comes out in May, I distinctly recall this, because it seemed to me very important, where he comes out and makes a statement on some Sunday TV show saying our red line is zero enrichment.
So how is that? So that’s Witkoff declaring it. Witkoff’s the personal representative of Trump in this diplomacy along with Jared Kushner. And it seems like Witkoff himself is like, he’s already preexistingly very pro- Israel, as is Jared Kushner, right? So there wasn’t a whole lot of like subterfuge maybe that would have to be done to get the Israelian-Witkoff position aligned. And then Trump also supports it. And then Trump and Rubio had also been saying around this time starting when that 60 day negotiation window was launched. So Trump declared an ultimatum, 60 days also there will be bombing, he said, like there will be blood, the movie. And Trump and Rubio said that their conditions were that Iran would have to basically accept the US coming in and blowing up or supervising the blow up of their nuclear facilities. And Iran was never going to capitulate to that.
There would be a national humiliation. So that’s US policy as articulated by the president, the secretary of state, his top advisor, et cetera. So that’s not really coming from Israel per se, unless you’re just like talking about Israel kind of just always being in the ether in Washington, which is true enough, but like that’s not the position of the Biden administration.
Joe Kent: Well, in the Trump administration, the zero enrichment talking points all came from Israeli government representatives engaging directly with our representatives, obviously Rubio and other officials, but then echoed in the media by Levin, by FDD, by all these different talking heads and all of them engaging personally with President Trump too. So they were able to move that, which it wasn’t his red line. They were able to move that red line and then once it was said publicly enough times, and then we’re in this trap where you can’t go backwards on that, otherwise you look weak. And so they did a very effective job of playing to President Trump’s, his psyche, but it was never President Trump’s, that I’m aware of, it was never his, they can have zero enrichment because him and Witkoff were talking about enrichment. Witkoff was having discussions with like how enrichment can be monitored to what percent, et cetera.
And then kind of out of nowhere after there was lots of different engagements from senior Israeli officials of our officials and then a concerted campaign on the media that they know that President Trump consumed, that’s when it came out that like our red line is no enrichment knowing, like you said, that the Iranians were like, “Well, no, that negates our entire strategy.” That’s actually our red line. But the Iranians still stayed at the negotiating table. They were like, “Okay, maybe this is just a bluster and maybe we can get through this. “ Even after 12-day war, even after Midnight Hammer, they basically accepted Trump’s framework where Trump said, “Okay, if we can’t agree on enrichment, we’re just going to bomb all of it and we’re going to take all of it off the negotiating table.” The Iranians basically at the end of that said, “Okay, cool, that works. That works for us too.”
Michael Tracey: Which is amazing. I still don’t quite understand their whole posture here because there were mountains of evidence that this is where the train was heading, like the train left this nation, but they still at least were signaling their openness to diplomacy. What happened after Midnight Hammer though, at Rubio’s urging, the snapback sanctions get placed back on, right? So that’s not meaning these UN sanctions that had been suspended as a result of the JCPOA, but the European countries had not yet acceded to reinstating them. And so that’s another punitive measure against Iran. And then when the 60 day window back in, I think it was in March of ‘25 was declared by Trump, in conjunction with Netanyahu, who was like one of his third or fourth trip to the White House already at that point, they characterize it as what Iran has to accede to is the Libyan model. You mentioned the Libyan sort of precedent here where Gaddafi ends up getting regime change and also like sodomized to death in the streets. And Trump himself says, yeah, they have to blow up their nuclear facilities. I’m sorry, that’s not a premise for a negotiation with Iran that’s ever going to lead to a nonviolent outcome, maybe because one wasn’t sought, right? Maybe Trump did want to take military action against Iran.
They thought he was led to believe or he came to believe that they were attempting to assassinate him, right? I mean, so maybe that’s just like what his conviction was. I just feel like there’s a lot of people who don’t want to accept that and do a lot of mental gymnastics to reach any conclusion other than that.
Joe Kent: Maybe I’m one of those people, but look, I think had he had a more robust discussion and different advisors around him and then really unpacked the intelligence, I don’t think that this would have happened. But unfortunately the Israeli influence network, the senior government officials and the media apparatus, they were able to basically bypass the intelligence community. There wasn’t a lot of robust debates after ... Leading up to Minute Hammer, we had lots of robust debates. There was deputy committee meetings, there was national security council meetings. This was debated hotly whether or not they were developing a nuclear weapon. What would happen? I mean, we played out all the scenarios as the US government has been doing now for decades. What happens if we go to like a total war with Iran? So all of this was known and all of it pointed to like, we want to stay at the negotiating table with the Iranians.
There actually isn’t a good kinetic military solution. And that’s why I believe, in my opinion, after Midnight Hammer, there was no more discussions. It was a very, very tight echo chamber around President Trump. And then to your point, they kept taking all these different actions that further provoked Iran. And again, when people come back and say, “Well, Iran is run by crazy Shia Jihadis,” it’s like, “Well, if you look at the escalation ladder they used from the time Trump came into office, even post Midnight Hammer, it took us actually attacking them first knowing that the Israelis...” And the Israelis were so frustrated with the negotiating process at the beginning of this war because they knew that Trump was still at the negotiating table, or at least we were still attempting to get a negotiation, that they just said, “You know what? The conditions are right.
We’re going to go ahead and attack.” Because like you said, they had already gotten basically Trump to move forces into the region. He was already enamored with the military from Venezuela, et cetera, but there was still obviously a potential for us to get some form of a negotiation. That’s why the Israelis said, “Hey, we’re going, you guys can’t stop us. We’re going to go. “ And so ..
Michael Tracey: Well, speaking of antagonistic behavior, Trump even just admitted a few days ago, for the first time that I’m aware of, that the US had sent guns or firearms or weaponry of some kind to the protestors in late December, early January. I mean, were you aware of that?
Joe Kent: I wasn’t aware of that. That was probably closely held, but I’m sure the Iranians were aware of it too, and they still didn’t ... I mean, again, observing the escalation ladder, they didn’t want this conflict. So yeah, it’s very unfortunate. And again, I hope that the ceasefire that we have right now holds and we can get pragmatic Trump back.
Michael Tracey: Okay. So I want to go to a slightly different topic. I watched you on Breaking Points shortly after you resigned and Saagar, as he’s wanted to do, couldn’t resist bringing up Jeffrey Epstein, our favorite subject. And basically, he was trying to get you to expound on whether you saw Epstein had been an intelligence asset. I thought it was a little bit odd, frankly, that you did think he was an intelligence asset of some kind, but you said it was based on the same stuff on the internet that you were reading that everybody else was reading. There was nothing you could have gleaned to that effect with a very high level security clearance. Do you see how I might find that peculiar? If you do have that view, shouldn’t there be some information available or would there be some information available to you that can substantiate that idea beyond just reading this standard stuff on the internet that every schmuck in their mom’s basement can read?
Joe Kent: I mean, the only thing that’s different with me is my background in the CIA and special operations. So to me, it looks like an intelligence operation. We at NCTC and ODNI, we didn’t have access to any of the Epstein files. All of that was under DOJ, lock and key. So we had no ability. All of it was sealed up. We weren’t involved in any of the declassification or any of the investigation. So to me ...
Michael Tracey: What do you mean lock and key? Like you couldn’t do an inter-agency request for something if you really thought that it was needed?
Joe Kent: No. I mean, we would have to prove what our investigatory nexus was and because most of it involved American citizens and most of it was, there’s other people that there were legal implications for, all that would be DOJ’s purview.
Michael Tracey: Did it ever occur to you that maybe if you could, that might be something you might want to inquire about?
Joe Kent: Oh, I would have loved to. If I am the whatever, in some position in the government ever again, I would love to look in there and see what we can come up with. However, the way that these intelligence operations run, especially something like this that’s going to deal with so much illegal activity, the record keeping on it, it’s not really going to exist. It’s going to be ran through multiple layers of cutouts. I’m amazed that there was so much documentation in the files. And I think a lot of that is because it involved Americans who eventually ended up getting caught up in the court system and arrested like Epstein did. But in general, these types of operations that intelligent services engage in, like there’s not files at Langley or in Jerusalem or any other capital, like a lot of this is done through multiple layers of cutout.
So I’m a little skeptical sometimes when they’re like, “Oh, we have files here about this horrible thing this intelligence agency was engaged in. “
Michael Tracey: But couldn’t cut that cut against the idea that he was an intelligence asset, at least in a traditional sense or in a way that most people would have conceived of that consisting of just in that I don’t know any intelligence assets really who have millions of emails and photos of themselves and are constantly sending unencrypted texts and emails and aren’t really bashful about being out there or don’t seem to have any opsec whatsoever. I don’t know. Isn’t that like an alternate theory that like, although he might have had some engagements with some intelligence agencies, just by way of, if only of him having this relationship with the former prime minister of Israel Ehud Barak, but he also had relations in some way or another with the members of the French government or former officials, British government, US government obviously, even Saudi, Mohammed bin Salman and a million others.
So I don’t know, isn’t there sort of like a potentially plausible contrary view of that, given his total blase attitude toward his personal texts and calls and everything else?
Joe Kent: Maybe he just thought he was protected. It seems to me like he just thought he was untouchable. I don’t know where’d the money come from, et cetera. I don’t really know. To me, it looked like even if it was completely independent and organic, with the amount of influential people that he was interacting with, I find it hard to believe that like multiple intelligence agencies weren’t in some way, shape or form linked with him. But again, that’s me using my background and reading the same thing that you’re reading on the news.
Michael Tracey: You seem to intimate a bit, and correct me if I’m wrong, that you at least found it plausible that when you have a network like the Epstein network, whatever that consists of exactly, I’m not sure it’s like a particularly well defined network, but whatever that was, that it’s possible that Trump, just given he did have an association with Epstein, not saying that he’s incriminated in any kind of child sex crime or anything like that, but he did have an association with Epstein that’s well documented. It was a pretty close one actually and a long term one that therefore, just by virtue of that association, maybe there’s some pressure that can be brought to bear on Trump to somehow influence his conduct of foreign policy or what he’s doing as president. Is that a theory that you think is credible?
Joe Kent: If we don’t want people to believe that, then we should have been way more transparent with the way the Epstein files rolled out.
Michael Tracey: Sure.
Joe Kent: For one, I think if ...
Michael Tracey: I mean, we don’t declare it a hoax, right? Which Trump did?
Joe Kent: Yeah. Right, exactly. If there was anything incriminating on Trump in the Epstein files, I just think it would’ve come out a long, long time ago. However, like you said, there was a lot of powerful people in the Epstein files. So there’s a potential that there’s something greater there about structures of power that people that are in power are incentivized to keep suppressed. So that’s a potential as well. I mean, Trump came out and I mean, I guess he’s said before, there’s nothing there, et cetera. So I don’t know. I just think if we should have maximum transparency considering the implications so that if we’re afraid of conspiracy theories like this spreading, the best way to combat it is transparency and it’s exactly the opposite way that it was handled.
Michael Tracey: I agree with that. I’ve been always calling for maximum, if we’re going to get the Epstein files, let’s have a maximum disclosure without all these ridiculous redactions that are mostly about purportedly concealing information that relates to the identifying information of victims. So it’s not like about perpetrators or alleged victims anyway. So I think there’s some misconceptions around why it is that the redaction process has been so shambolic, but I’m just curious, have you been seeing that the messaging coming out of the Iranian government where they’re constantly talking about Epstein, like this Larijani guy who was the head of the National Security Council or what it was, who’s a very learned guy actually. I mean, he wrote treatises on the philosophy of Kant and so forth. Two or three days before he was killed,
He was putting out tweets like taunting Hegseth saying, “Whereas our top Iranian officials are boldly striding around the streets of Iran and like being with the people, U Pete Hegseth and Trump, I guess, are hunkered down in some kind of bunker on Epstein’s Island.” And you see press TV, which is the state media organ, they’re putting out Epstein stuff constantly. They’re surrogates are mentioned, they call the US the Epstein regime or the Epstein Coalition, stuff like this. They’re putting out these crazy AI videos where they’re like singing Legos or singing raps about Epstein and implicating the US. I don’t know, what do you make of that in terms of like how this has been embraced by Iran and also Russia, by the way, they put out the same stuff. What’s your assessment of that?
Joe Kent: I think, I mean the Iranians, I think most of our enemies actually, because US media is so prevalent, I think that they do a very good job and they take studying our media and our culture very, very seriously to see where the divides are. So I think this just shows a lot of their savvy. So they’ve probably got a good team of young people that are social media savvy. They’re like, “Hey, this is a hot button. This is a place where we can really curry some favor with an American audience and also just kind of like rub some salt in the wound.” So I think it’s mostly them being savvy. But at the end of the day too, I mean, look, if you just look at who Epstein was dealing with, it was basically the elite throughout the entire world for the most part.
And so it does speak to the potential that there is a class of people that exists kind of above government that can make governments do things like wars, et cetera. So I think it does speak to just the constant struggle that we have between the people and the elite.
Michael Tracey: Have you read any Epstein files since you’ve been out of government? Have you done any independent investigation any further?
Joe Kent: No, not a ton. It’s just what comes up in the news. I’d like to. I haven’t spent a ton of time on it.
Michael Tracey: Okay. I’ll give you a tutorial at some point that might be amusing. So I guess looking forward, right? So we have this apparent ceasefire and yet, just as you were, you put a video out, I think I saw it last night where you’re saying, US has to make sure that Israel’s reigned in here. I don’t know, why would we assume that Israel launching the biggest bombing raid or bombing spree on Lebanon of the entire conflict so far, six or eight hours after the ceasefire was declared, which obviously would seem to imperil the ceasefire because it’s unclear, but it was at least suggested by the Iranian side that the ceasefire was supposed to include Lebanon as of last night. And now who knows? I mean, maybe it’s subject to change, but hard to say. But why should we assume, given what’s in the record right now in terms of like Trump and Israel being handing love or Trump and Netanyahu being hand in glove, that Israel launching the bombing raid in Lebanon, the biggest of the conflict was done in contravention of the United States.
Doesn’t the body of evidence now suggest that that would probably have been in tandem with the United States or am I crazy?
Joe Kent: No, this is why I said in order for any of this to last and for us to get out of this mess that we’re in, step one is restraining the Israelis. And it has to be more than just like, “Oh, we’re going to call BiBi or we’re going to call Dermer and say, don’t do this anymore.” It’s got to be us actually withholding key pieces of military aid because the Israelis have actually never been checked before. Even in the lead up to the 12 day war when we were talking about how to make sure the Israelis don’t force our hand, whenever the handful of us would say, “Hey, we should take away some of their offensive capabilities so they can only play defense.” We were basically like, people didn’t want to talk to us anymore when we said that. It was a hot button issue.
And as things have played out, it’s like, if we don’t actually restrain these guys beyond like a phone call or a smack on the wrist, they’re not going to take us seriously. So I think Trump’s got to get that under control. I’m hoping he’s frustrated enough right now with how badly this has gone that now that he actually has a ceasefire and the Iranians-
Michael Tracey: But the glorious victory you were told. Hegseth gave this triumphant press conference this morning. Did you see it where we got total victory? It was incredible. What did you make of that? I mean, I noticed he was bragging that the US sent boots on the ground last weekend, like he’s saying, look, we sent boots on the ground and they did this thunder strike or something in the heart of Iran and how it was all great. So I guess he’s trying to say, look, you naysayers who were telling us how bad it would be if we sent boots on the ground, suck on this because it was awesome. Is that how you interpreted that?
Joe Kent: Yeah. I mean, look, I was in the army for over 20 years. I mean, it’s always impressive when the military does things because our military does do very impressive things. And so if you hear us describe these impressive things, you can get very enamored by them. Does that mean those things strategically did anything good for our country? No, probably not. I mean, I can talk all day about all the cool things that we did when I was in special forces in Iraq and at the end of the day, the Iraq war is a complete and total disaster. So I mean, whenever you get a Pentagon press conference, they’re going to come out there and run the highlight reel of all the cool stuff that we did militarily.
Michael Tracey: Hegseth in particular seems to be really, really into it. I don’t know, you could tell, I mean, maybe it wasn’t a coincidence that they decided to quote unquote rename the department, the Department of War, maybe that spoke to something about their intentionality.
Joe Kent: I mean, he’s a great hype man and front man for the DOW. As a leader though, you’ve just got to know where that belongs. That’s one tool in the toolbox and it can’t be the only tool in the toolbox. So I hope now we put some diplomats in the lead.
Michael Tracey: All right. Just to close up here, Ukraine, I don’t know that I’ve heard you really speak much about that. I’m wondering to what degree that fell under your purview at all when you were in the government because, or what is your assessment of the current status of that? Because I seem to recall, correct me if I’m wrong, that that thing was supposed to be solved in 24 hours. So how many hours are we up to?
Joe Kent: Yeah. I was Tulsi’s chief of staff at the beginning of, before I was confirmed, we dealt obviously with Ukraine. A big problem that I think President Trump had when he came in to the administration is that Putin was already winning the thing in a very Russian sense. In an American sense, we’re like, “This is a bloodbath. Oh my God, this is horrible. You guys are losing thousands of soldiers.” Putin is just-
Michael Tracey: Attritional.
Joe Kent: The Russians are just like, “We’ll grind this out and we don’t care if we lose thousands to take back one kilometer.” So when that’s the mindset, it’s really hard to convince them. Now the problem that we have, it’s with Zelenskyy and the Ukrainians, and I understand the Ukrainians are under fire. I get that they’re defending their homeland. I get it, I respect it. However, for us to continue to string them along and tell them to keep fighting and giving them these limited capabilities, then they never get to the negotiating table. And I think a lot of the more hawkish big NATO supporters and neocons in Trump’s orbit convinced him that like, “Hey, you can still get both sides of the negotiating table. You’ll be able to get peace, but you kind of got to keep supplying the Ukrainians.” And the Ukrainians would go and do something offensive and the Russians would come back and hammer them.
And so it just like, I don’t think the Russians ever really took us seriously that we wanted any kind of meaningful peace because we never really took anything away from the Ukrainians.
Michael Tracey: In fact, Trump removed a restriction on long range Ukrainian missile strikes into Russian territory that actually even Biden had been resistant to remove. That was like last November, wasn’t it?
Joe Kent: Yep. And this is another one where it’s like, I mean, he already got handed such a mess that the best thing that we could do is just say, “Hey, we’re done funding it and you guys are going to sort this out because at the end of the day, who controls the Donbass really isn’t that important to America and let the Europeans and everybody else kind of yell at us about it. “ But I think even the Europeans weren’t saddling up to commit resources to it either. So it’s like, we just let ourselves get captured in the passion of combat and then also thinking that we Americans can solve everything. And I think a lot of times ...
Michael Tracey: And just inertia, right?
Joe Kent: Right.
Michael Tracey: I mean, when you have a military engagement, or I don’t know how you would classify the US mission to whatever extent there is one in Ukraine, I’ve always called it almost a joint operation because you have joint intel going on, targeting, Starlink, you have the weapons provision obviously. You have lots of troops in European command that are sort of playing this supporting role. There’s a bureaucratic inertia that takes hold, where it’s difficult to steer the Leviathan. And that crosses through to different administrations, even if maybe there’s some indication that a new course might want to be taken. So I mean, do you see that? Do you see anything that reflected that dynamic?
Joe Kent: I think that’s spot on. I mean, the president has a hundred things that he has to deal with on any given day. And so unless he is very specific and he has people below him that are very specific that say, “Go turn off all these different things that the last administration was doing for Ukraine in order to get us to the negotiating table and to get a ceasefire.” He can kind of say, “I want a ceasefire all day long,” but unless he deliberately turns off all those instruments of bureaucratic inertia, as you put it, which I think is accurate, then it all just kind of runs in the background. And this is a problem, I think, with a lot of our intelligence and a lot of the stuff that the DOW does, a lot of it just kind of runs on autopilot. And even if the policy has changed or we’re like, “Hey, that didn’t even work.” It just kind of keeps going because the machine is so big and everyone that’s a part of it is incentivized to keep it going because it’s jobs, it’s power, it’s contracts, et cetera.
Michael Tracey: Isn’t another part of this though that Russia has also gotten more maximalist and radicalized? I know personally, I would have been inclined to maybe be a little bit skeptical of people who wanted to focus on that at the beginning of the work because I was more focused on US foreign policy, the US role. Ukraine’s the one receiving weaponry and so forth from the US. That’s what would have been what I focused on, and it was. But then in late 2023, I went to Moscow, this Russian group organized, maybe I shouldn’t say this out loud, but I’ve talked about it before. This Russian group organized, they called them social media influencers. Most of them were just these dopes who were just basically aspiring Russian apparatchiks, which I guess they mistakenly thought I was as well. But I went and I was very struck by how adamant and vehement and ideologically sort of radicalized they were around the Ukraine war, meaning we got to take Novo Russia, we have to draw on these grandiose historical theories that Putin was talking about in his essay infamously in July of 2021, before eight months before the war.
And we’re now going to do actually some territorial conquests, which wasn’t the case initially, the four oblasts that Putin declared our eternal part to the Russian Federation. So that’s an aspect here too, because if you’re saying, “Oh, maybe we could work harder if we had some bureaucratic sort of strategy to reign in some of the stuff that’s been going on for four years, maybe we can get Putin to agree to a ceasefire.” Well, I don’t know, he gave a speech that his position, he declared to his Russian National Security Council in June of 2024. Last I checked, that is still the policy where there’s no ceasefire that he’s ever going to accept without underlying resolution of all the political grievances, right? So he was expressly against a ceasefire, and that’s what Trump 2.0 came in with a unified position with Ukraine eventually saying, “Freeze the conflict, ceasefire.” That’s directly counter to what Putin very plainly said he was never going to count.
So obviously, can positions move over the course of negotiation? Sure. But I don’t know. It seems like that’s another factor here that maybe it’s at least worth being mindful of, no?
Joe Kent: I mean, I agree because when you just look at how Russia’s pursuing this war, they think they’re winning, they’re willing to continue to lose for it. And like you said, obviously it’s not just about like, “Oh, we kind of want to secure these couple oblasts.” I mean, they have a historical view that they’re very passionate about. So again, they’re so passionate they’re willing to lose thousands of Russians, probably even a million by the time the whole thing’s said and done to get their territorial gain. So again, I think Trump on the campaign trail, I think he really thought that he could get a deal, but the further this thing went along, the more entrenched and the more hardcore the Russians got. So I think even by the time he got in the White House, even if he would have been able to go and rip out all the bureaucratic inertia supporting Ukraine, it’s still a long shot that Russia would have even taken him seriously.
I think Putin still would give him the meeting or whatever, but I think.
Michael Tracey: Throw a bone, right? There might be some improved sort of diplomatic overtures maybe, but in terms of the underlying policy, it’s pretty much the Biden status quo at this point, except with this weapons provision program where supposedly we’re being paid for the weapons through NATO as a conduit. I still don’t understand how that’s supposedly working. Is the US really getting quote paid for them? They won’t respond to my FOIA. So do you know anything more about that?
Joe Kent: I have no idea. I just think the whole thing is like, we’re not going to solve this. We’re not from that region. It’s not our backyard. It doesn’t really matter to us. This is a place where I think we should just kind of wash our hands of the whole thing and walk and say, “Hey, we hope you guys can come to a ceasefire and live in harmony and we can trade with both of you.”
Michael Tracey: Yeah. All right. Final question, are you sick of doing media interviews at this point? Do you feel overexposed or like, because I tried to mix things up a little bit. Tell me if I did an okay job. I didn’t get you to rehash the same old stuff, right? But are you sick of this yet for like the past, what is it, three weeks?
Joe Kent: Yeah, I mean, a little bit, but I do think the more that we can discuss these issues, I think it’s important. I think it’s going to be important in elections going ahead. I really hope President Trump corrects course, but also I think going forward with whatever remains of the MAGA coalition and whatever it’s forming on the left too, I’m not as familiar with because that’s not my political home, but I do see a lot of folks, like some of the messages that Ro Khanna was putting out, I think Americans being sick and tired of these endless wars, being sick and tired of foreign influence in our government, I think these are big things to talk about and I think there’s something here where we could form a new political alliance, maybe even just for the presidency, because I think really at the end of the day, the president controls foreign policy and all the other stuff that we argue about like in a presidential election, it kind of ends up not mattering.
Michael Tracey: Abortion, trans ... Trump had one domestic piece of legislation basically that he was focused on, the big, beautiful bill. And then beyond that, it’s been all foreign policy.
Joe Kent: Exactly.
Michael Tracey: Trump is very much sort of counterintuitively focused on foreign policy because that’s what the president has most unfettered control over. So it kind of makes sense. It was similar with Biden actually. So I agree with you. That’s what I’ve always focused on in terms of presidential power rather than, I don’t know, economy, okay, fine. But look, the president makes a call and then the military does it. That’s a unique area of his remit.
Joe Kent: And so if there’s agreement on the left and the right of, we should stop doing the foreign wars and stop doing the bidding of foreign countries, I do think there’s a potential if we can educate enough people that like, “Hey, you can vote for a president that just guarantees to keep us out of that, select his cabinet accordingly. And then all these other issues we disagree on, taxes, trainees, whatever, healthcare, that’s what you vote down ballot for. That’s what you vote at the state level for. “ So I mean, I think those are important discussions for us to have going forward in the next election cycle.
Michael Tracey: That was kind of the premise of Tulsi Gabbard’s 2020 Democratic primary campaign.
Joe Kent: Yes, it was. She was probably too early for it, but I think maybe now I think there might be an appetite for that.
Michael Tracey: Can you spill the beans on anything that’s going on with her at this point or are your lips sealed? I mean, I know that, okay, when she testified at the annual threat assessment meeting, her statement was, this is right after you resigned, right? Her statement was, “Look, the president gets to decide what constitutes an imminent threat.” I mean, she had no problem in a different capacity disagreeing with how Biden, Trump 1.0 and Obama determined what an imminent threat was or what a threat was in any respect. I appreciate that she’s in a different role now, but she very conspicuously did not ... She made a point to say that she was not giving her own personal view. So I guess at least this is speculation about what her personal view is at this point.
Joe Kent: Yeah. I don’t want to get Tulsi in any more trouble than I already have.
Michael Tracey: I got you. Last question. Do you want to come with Matt Taibbi and I on an expedition to Greenland?
Joe Kent: Are we going to take the oil?
Michael Tracey: Yes.
Joe Kent: We’ll
Michael Tracey: Take the oil, we’ll take the salmon, we’ll take the raw earth minerals, we’ll take anything that we can get our grubby hands on. How about that?
Joe Kent: It’s up for the taking. Let’s do it.
Michael Tracey: All right, Joe Kent, thank you. Sorry, Matt had to be in some hotel today with terrible internet, but hopefully I did my duty as best I could. All right. Take care. All right, man.
Joe Kent: Thank you. Appreciate it.
