The most senior Trump official to break with the administration over the Iran war has lifted the curtain on his dramatic resignation and what unfolded when he told President Donald Trump he was quitting.
Joe Kent resigned as director of the National Counterterrorism Center on Tuesday, saying he could not continue his job “in good conscience” due to the president’s war with Iran.
It later emerged that Kent met with Vice President JD Vance and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard the day before going public with his resignation, and that Vance encouraged him to meet with Trump before making a final decision.
In an interview with the Washington Post, the Iraq War veteran and former CIA paramilitary officer declined to detail his conversation with Vance but opened up about his phone call with the president later that day.
Trump, 79, told him he was “a little bit surprised,” Kent said. The commander-in-chief also pushed back against Kent’s claim that Israeli officials had drawn the U.S. into an unnecessary war.
Despite their disagreements, Kent told the Post that he and Trump “ended on good terms.”
“I’ve been around the president enough to know that when he’s really p---ed off with people, he will let them know,” Kent said. “He was just incredibly calm and respectful to me.”
In the resignation letter he released the next day, Kent, 45, blasted Trump’s shifting stance on foreign wars and said that “Israeli officials and influential members of the American media deployed a misinformation campaign” to “deceive” the president into believing that Iran posed an imminent threat.
“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 in his letter.
Trump responded to Kent’s resignation by saying, “It’s a good thing he’s out, because he said that Iran was not a threat.”
“I always thought he was a nice guy, but I always thought he was weak on security, very weak on security,” he told reporters on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt rushed to dismiss Kent’s claims in a lengthy post on X. It has since emerged that the FBI is investigating Kent for allegedly leaking classified information. The probe reportedly predates his departure.
Kent, who lost his wife Shannon in a 2019 suicide bombing while she was serving as a Navy cryptologist in Manbij, Syria, told the Post he decided to step down after 13 U.S. service members died in the war launched by Trump.
He said that while serving in the Iraq War—a conflict he believes was based on lies by the George W. Bush administration—he promised himself that if he ever had “a seat at the table,” he would work to prevent a similar war.
The two-time failed Republican congressional candidate was once fully on board with the MAGA movement, having spread conspiracy theories about the 2020 election and the Jan. 6 Capitol attack.
Kent told the Post he’s hitting the right-wing media circuit—speaking with Mark Levin, Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, and others—to rally MAGA voices opposing the war and draw Trump’s attention to the dissent.
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment.
