Megyn Kelly has warned that President Donald Trump’s apparent revenge campaign against internal critics could devastate Republican turnout in the midterms.
The right-wing podcaster lit up social media after news broke that Joe Kent, the former director of the National Counterterrorism Center, is under federal investigation for allegedly leaking classified information. Kent, 45, had just resigned in protest at Trump’s war on Iran—the first senior Trump administration official to do so. According to Semafor, the investigation predates his exit.
Before the probe became public, Kent, a former Green Beret, appeared on Tucker Carlson’s show to reject Trump’s claim that Iran had posed an imminent threat, the central justification for the war that has cost the lives of 13 U.S. service members and an estimated 1,5000 Iranians.
Kelly’s response to the probe into Kent was unambiguous. “You wanna rip the GOP apart right to its core and prevent a single America First voter from participating in the midterms?” she posted on X Wednesday. “Indict Joe Kent and Tucker Carlson. See how that works out.”
She argues that pursuing Kent and Carlson—two figures with deep credibility among the anti-interventionist wing of the MAGA coalition—would look to America First voters like Trump using the justice system to silence dissent over a war he was never supposed to start. The result, she warned, would be a suppressed Republican turnout in the midterms.
Kelly has been one of the loudest anti-war voices in Trump’s media orbit, repeatedly challenging his decision to go to war in the Middle East despite campaigning almost exclusively on domestic issues. That put her on a collision course with Fox News host Mark Levin, 68, a vocal war hawk, and the two have traded increasingly vicious public barbs—Kelly at one point dubbing Levin “Micropenis Mark.”
Trump chose a side. In a 348-word Truth Social post on Sunday, he called Levin a “truly Great American Patriot” who was “under siege by other people with far less Intellect, Capability, and Love for our Country.” He aimed directly at Kelly’s influence, and although he did not name her, he suggested that her “sway” was “much less than the Public understands, and will, now that they know where I stand, rapidly diminish.” He added: “Those that speak ill of Mark will quickly fall by the wayside.”
Trump added that people whose “ideas, policies and footings are not sound” will join Levin’s detractors in the trash.
“THEY ARE NOT MAGA, I AM,” he declared.
The Kelly-Levin rift has exposed a larger schism. In the war hawks’ corner are prominent voices like Levin, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, and commentator Ben Shapiro. Opposed to the conflict are Kelly, Carlson, former congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, and commentator Matt Walsh.
Kent’s investigation has sharpened the fault line. The Army veteran and former CIA paramilitary officer wrote in his resignation letter that Iran had tricked Trump into war. He was deceived by “high-ranking Israeli officials and influential members of the American media” into thinking that war was necessary.
“This was a lie and is the same tactic the Israelis used to draw us into the disastrous Iraq war that cost our nation the lives of thousands of our best men and women,” Kent wrote. “We cannot make this mistake again.”
Trump and others in the administration then tried to discredit him.
Kent was “a nice guy” but “weak on security,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “It’s a good thing that he’s out because he said Iran was not a threat.”
The White House and the FBI have been contacted for comment.
