President Donald Trump posted a scathing attack directed at the National Counterterrorism Center director who quit over the Iran War.
Joe Kent became the most senior official within the Trump administration to resign over his opposition to Trump’s war with Iran when he quit last month. In his resignation letter, shared to social media, Kent wrote that he could not “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.”
Still stewing over Kent’s departure a month later, President Trump lashed out in a Truth Social post on Thursday night.
“Who’s dumber, Tucker Carlson or Joe Kent?” the 79-year-old asked. Kent sat down for an interview with Carlson shortly after announcing his resignation.
The president then described meeting Kent at Dover Air Force Base after his wife, Shannon Mary Kent, was killed while serving as a cryptologic technician for the U.S. Navy.
“I said hello to all of the families,” Trump wrote. “Kent, horribly, lost his wife,” he continued, before making an unnecessarily personal jab at Kent. “Her casket was being brought to Dover, along with the rest, although he married again, quite quickly, in my opinion.”
Shannon was killed by a suicide bomber during a military operation in Syria in 2019. Kent met visual artist Heather Kaiser a year after Shannon’s death, and the pair married in 2023. In 2024, Kent published a book about Shannon’s life titled Send Me: The True Story of a Mother at War.
Kent mentioned Shannon’s death in his resignation letter, writing, “As a veteran who deployed to combat 11 times and as a Gold Star husband who lost my beloved wife Shannon in a war manufactured by Israel, I cannot support sending the next generation off to fight and die in a war that serves no benefit to the American people nor justifies the cost of American lives.”
Trump then described “feeling sorry” for Kent after his failed congressional campaigns, and claims that he told his aides to find a role for him within the White House. Kent ran for Congress in Washington in 2022 and 2024, losing to Marie Gluesenkamp Perez both times.
“Hire him for the White House. Give him a job, make him feel good, he lost his wife and two Elections,” Trump quoted himself as saying.
“They did so and, while I rarely saw him, I certainly didn’t expect disloyalty, but that’s what I got,” Trump ranted. “He was really a SLEAZEBAG, and some would say, on top of it all, A LEAKER!”
Shortly after Kent announced his departure, Semafor reported that the 46-year-old was being investigated for allegedly leaking classified information. The FBI claims that the investigation predates Kent’s resignation. Kent has denied any wrongdoing.
“I don’t know whether or not that was true, but next time, NO MORE MR. NICE GUY!” Trump continued, before mentioning several other prominent right-wing commentators who have criticized his war with Iran.
“Kent is a LOSER, just like Tucker, Candace, Megyn, and the rest of them are LOSERS — You’re born that way, LOW IQ, and there’s not a damn thing they’re going to be able to do about it!”
The Daily Beast has contacted Kent for comment.
Trump had previously posted about Kent on Truth Social following his resignation, sharing a message Kent had posted on X for the president in 2020, seemingly supporting intervention in Iran.
“We should not sit and wait for the next attack, wipe Iran’s ballistic capability out and get our troops out of Iraq - they are only targets now,” Kent wrote at the time, adding, “No US WIA/KIA is a tribute to the professionalism of our military and intel professionals not Iranian restraint.”
He also authored an opinion piece for Fox News making the same argument, expressing concern about the possibility of an “endless war” in the Middle East and calling it “a war we don’t need.“
Despite being concerned about the “full weight of the FBI and the government” being brought down on him, Kent has continued to criticize the president’s war, which has resulted in thousands of Iranian casualties as well as the deaths of 13 U.S. service members.
“The American people didn’t have the full story and our country did not have a vital national interest in this current fight,” Kent said at the annual Catholic Prayer for America gala last month.
“I will not, in good conscience, send young men and women off to die in foreign battlefields,” he told attendees to loud applause.
