The White House had no idea Donald Trump’s top counterterrorism official planned to post his damning resignation letter protesting the Iran war on social media, according to a report.
Joe Kent resigned as director of the National Counterterrorism Center on Tuesday because he could not “in good conscience” support the Middle East conflict. He wrote that Iran posed “no imminent threat” to the U.S. and suggested Trump was drawn into the war because of “pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.”
Kent had informed top administration officials including Vice President JD Vance and White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles that he planned to resign on Monday, and Trump was also made aware of the decision.
But he blindsided the White House by posting his bombshell resignation letter on X, where it has been shared more than 250,000 times, causing the president major embarrassment, a senior administration official told The Wall Street Journal.
The incident sparked panic inside the White House and forced several officials to present a united front in condemning Kent’s actions and his criticism of Trump’s war in Iran.
“There are many false claims in this letter but let me address one specifically: that ‘Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation.’ This is the same false claim that Democrats and some in the liberal media have been repeating over and over,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt wrote in a lengthy statement on X.
“As President Trump has clearly and explicitly stated, he had strong and compelling evidence that Iran was going to attack the United States first.”
Trump, who had endorsed Kent to lead the National Counterterrorism Center, quickly turned on the 45-year-old after his resignation and suggested he was “weak on security.”
“It’s a good thing that he’s out because he said Iran was not a threat,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.
Republican Iran hawks and pro-Israel figures also attacked Kent’s letter, accusing it of pushing anti-Semitic tropes by suggesting Israeli officials and “influential members of the media” had persuaded Trump to launch the war.
Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell said the letter contained “virulent anti-Semitism,” while South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham accused Kent of repeating the “oldest storyline in the world” that “if it weren’t for the Jews, we’d all be safe.”
It was previously reported that Vance, who had been skeptical of launching a war with Iran, knew Kent planned to resign and urged him to inform Trump and Wiles first.
A spokesman for the vice president told the Journal that Vance “believes that it’s imperative for the national security team to remain cohesive, trust one another, and avoid mouthing off to the media about internal deliberations.”
Kent, a Green Beret veteran who was deployed overseas 11 times, had previously spoken out against U.S. intervention abroad after his first wife, Shannon, a Navy cryptologic technician, was killed by an Islamic State suicide bomber in 2019.
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.
