President Donald Trump’s director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Joe Kent, became the first major administration official to resign in protest over the ongoing U.S.-Israel operation against Iran on Tuesday.
Kent, a former GOP congressional candidate and MAGA commentator, made his resignation public in a scathing letter he posted to social media in which he accused the Trump administration of lying about the need for the war.
“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, arguing that Trump’s claims that Iran was soon going to attack the U.S. are nonsense. Kent served 11 combat tours as an Army Ranger, primarily in Iraq, and later joined the CIA. His wife was killed in a suicide bombing in Syria in 2019, which sparked his political activism.
Following Kent’s resignation and seeing the dissent within his party, Trump vowed to withhold his endorsement from any lawmakers who do not vote for the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act (SAVE) Act ahead of a Senate procedural vote on the legislation on Tuesday.
“Only sick, demented, or deranged people in the House or Senate could vote against THE SAVE AMERICA ACT,” Trump wrote in a TruthSocial post.
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