The White House responded to Joe Kent’s Tuesday resignation as director of the National Counterterrorism Center over President Donald Trump’s ill-conceived war of choice in Iran with a comically lazy smear campaign that Fox News’ MAGA propagandists vigorously channeled.
After Kent wrote in a letter to the president that he was stepping down because he could not “in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran” and that it “posed no imminent threat to our nation,” Fox’s hosts and guests described him as the “liberal darling du jour” and a “Trump hater” who “was about to be fired” and “never should have been in that position of leadership.”
Notably, none of them seem to blame Trump for elevating Kent — a notorious conspiracy theorist who unsuccessfully ran for Congress with backing from the likes of Tucker Carlson and Alex Jones — to the nation’s top counterterrorism post in the first place. Nor did Kent himself blame Trump for starting the war with Iran: He argued the president had been “deceive[d]” by an “echo chamber” composed of Israelis (a revival of blood-soaked antisemitic narratives) as well as “influential members of the American media,” a possible reference to Fox’s own stars.
Fox did not have much to say in the first hours after Kent’s announcement. But after Trump denounced Kent from the Oval Office, saying he had “always thought” Kent was “very weak on security” and calling it “a good thing that he’s out because he said that Iran was not a threat,” the propaganda network geared up on the president’s behalf.
Aishah Hasnie, a Fox White House correspondent, was the vector for an anonymous “senior administration official” to attack Kent. Hasnie posted to social media that her source had said Kent was “a known leaker” who “was cut out of POTUS intelligence briefings months ago” and “has not been part of any Iran planning discussions or briefings at all.” (The source also claimed “the WH told DNI Tulsi Gabbard he should be fired for suspected leaks,” but other Hasnie sources disputed that.)
Likewise, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt criticized Kent’s claim that Iran posed “no imminent threat to our nation,” claiming: “As President Trump has clearly and explicitly stated, he had strong and compelling evidence that Iran was going to attack the United States first. This evidence was compiled from many sources and factors.”
The administration’s argument is thus Trump appointed Kent as the nation’s top counterterrorism official even though the president believed he was “very weak on security,” and he subsequently didn’t see all the bulletproof evidence that Iran was an imminent threat to the United States because he had been cut out of classified meetings on the subject — but not fired — for being a “known leaker.”
Meanwhile, the administration has produced no evidence that Iran was preparing an attack to either the public or Congress. Indeed, according to Reuters, Pentagon briefers “acknowledged in closed-door briefings with congressional staff … that there was no intelligence suggesting Iran planned to attack U.S. forces first.”
Fox runs with the Kent attacks — without implicating Trump
None of this hangs together, but it was more than enough for Fox’s stable of propagandists, who ran with those talking points while ignoring their damning implications for the president.
“Respect to Joe Kent's service, he is an American veteran, but he never should have been in that position of leadership,” Hudson Institute senior fellow Rebeccah Heinrichs said on Fox’s America Reports, albeit without referencing who nominated him to the post in the first place.
“He was leading a counterterrorism unit, and Iran is the greatest source of terrorism,” she continued. “And even last year, Joe Kent even alluded to the fact that the Iranians were trying to assassinate President Trump. So clearly he should never have been in that position of leadership, and it's a good thing that he has decided to step aside.”
Fox host Laura Ingraham called Kent “the liberal darling du jour,” citing praise of his “very huffy letter” on other networks.
Ingraham then brought on Dan Bongino, the Fox contributor who sandwiched a year as deputy director of the FBI between tenures as a right-wing podcaster. Bongino downplayed Kent’s role in the administration and claimed that the “open source” evidence shows Iran was an imminent threat and that Trump “has a bevy of material that if he could do the Men in Black thing and erase your mind tomorrow, if he told you right now, you would come to the imminent threat conclusion in a snap.”
Ingraham added that “a senior U.S. official told Fox on background that Joe Kent was cut out of presidential intel briefings months ago due to allegations that he was suspected of leaking and that he hasn't been part of any Iran discussions or briefings,” though she caveated that “he's beloved” and “served his country, you know, proudly.”
Fox host and Trump shill Sean Hannity, after praising the Iran campaign, commented, “Now, a handful of very loud, oh, let's say isolationist Democrats, people that have agendas, once pretending in some cases to be part of President Trump's base, they're not happy.”
“This includes the now former director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Joe Kent,” he added, before suggesting Kent is a “Trump hater” pushing “conspiracy theories” and a “Democratic talking point.”
Hannity went on to claim that Trump would not “be swayed by lobbyists, politicians, countries, world leaders, the media, or anyone else on planet Earth,” and disputed Kent’s claim that Iran had not posed an “imminent threat” on the grounds that Iran was purportedly “a week away from 11 nuclear bombs potentially being built.”
On Fox News @ Night, former Republican National Committee spokesperson Elizabeth Pipko cited past Kent comments she said made “the perfect argument” for Trump’s strikes on Iran. “I fear that what he did was actually not sincere, not genuine,” she added. “And I think when American troops overseas are risking it all for us, a move like this and a statement like that is actually dangerous.”
And the co-hosts of Fox & Friends provided a perfect on-message recap for their viewers on Wednesday morning:
Lawrence Jones first brought up Kent, prompting Brian Kilmeade by saying that “some people in the administration” are “known to be leakers.”
Kilmeade, one of the biggest Iran hawks on Fox, replied that it was “just incredible,” branding Kent as part of “the podcast isolationist wing” and that his letter “said hey, Democrats, we have something for you to talk about.”
After the group talked up the case for war and aired Trump’s comments criticizing Kent, Jones commented, “That's why the administration cut him out of briefings months ago.”
“He didn’t have the intel, and obviously they didn't trust him to be in the inner circle on the decision making,” Jones added.
Kilmeade stressed that by issuing his letter, Kent had been disloyal to Trump. “You can do whatever your conscience wants you to do,” he commented. “But by doing it in this way, he's actually hurting the guy that gave him the best job of his life after he lost two straight congressional races.”
“Good point, good point,” Ainsley Earhardt commented. “And they say he was about to be fired, people had suggested that.”
None of them questioned why Trump nominated such an ignorant, disloyal, deceitful person to such an important post in the first place.
Reprinted with permission from Media Matters
