“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.” With those words, posted on X on March 17, Joe Kent became the highest-ranking official to resign from U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration over the U.S.-Israel war on Iran. Mr. Trump immediately dismissed him as “weak on security” and called his departure “a good thing”.
Mr. Kent’s exit as Mr. Trump’s National Counterterrorism chief has spotlighted simmering tensions inside the MAGA coalition as the conflict, now in its fourth week, tests interpretations of ‘America First’.
The tension surfaced early. When the U.S. and Israel launched strikes on Iran on February 28, the response from Mr. Trump’s most loyal media ecosystem was not uniform. Tucker Carlson, who had personally lobbied Mr. Trump against attacking Iran, went public with his opposition, questioning whether the campaign served American interests or risked repeating the long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican Congresswoman who recently resigned, was blunt, too. “We voted for America First and ZERO wars,” she said. Publicly, support remains strong. Polls show 77-90% of Republican and self-identified MAGA voters back the Iran action. But some of the movement’s most visible voices, including Mr. Kent, have begun to ask whether this war was ever part of the deal.
War veteran
Born on April 11, 1980, in a cabin in Sweet Home, Oregon, Kent enlisted in the Army at 17. He earned his Green Beret as a Special Forces weapons sergeant, rose to the post of chief warrant officer, and was selected into an elite Special Missions Unit. Over two decades, he operated across Iraq, Yemen, and other high-threat environments, earning multiple Bronze Stars. After retiring, he joined the CIA’s Special Activities Center as a paramilitary officer.
In 2019, his wife Shannon, a Navy cryptologic technician supporting special operations, was killed in a suicide bombing in Syria. Left to raise their two sons, Colt and Josh, Mr. Kent turned personal loss into public engagement, speaking about veterans, counterterrorism, and the human cost of prolonged conflicts. His Instagram bio reads: “Father of 2 amazing boys & husband”. He ran twice for Congress in Washington’s 3rd District as a Trump-endorsed, anti-establishment conservative. In 2025, Mr. Trump nominated him to lead the National Counterterrorism Center, where he reported to Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard alongside Vice President J.D. Vance.
A man who spent two decades in America’s elite fighting forces and was privy to the country’s most sensitive intelligence briefings, Mr. Kent has triggered ripples in the MAGA base with his opposition to the war and criticism of Israel’s influence. In 2024, Kent co-authored the book Send Me: The True Story of a Mother at War with Marty Skovlund Jr., detailing his wife’s high-risk deployments and the challenges of balancing elite service with raising their two sons.
In his letter, Mr. Kent held up Mr. Trump’s own first-term record as the model being abandoned — the Soleimani strike, the territorial defeat of ISIS — as examples of decisive force without getting drawn into a larger conflict. He accused Israeli officials and American media of running a “misinformation campaign” to push the President away from restraint, calling it “the same tactic the Israelis used to draw us into the disastrous Iraq war”. The FBI has opened an investigation into alleged leaks of classified information that began months before Mr. Kent’s resignation. His defenders, including Mr. Carlson, call it political retaliation.
Mr. Carlson defended Mr. Kent sharply: “Joe is the bravest man I know, and he can’t be dismissed as a nut,” he said. “He’s leaving a job that gave him access to the highest-level relevant intelligence. The neocons will try to destroy him for that.”
The anti-war sentiment inside MAGA is real, but it is not a majority. For many Trump voters, Iran is a designated state sponsor of terrorism with a long record of attacking U.S. forces through proxies. Loyalty to Mr. Trump remains the movement’s most powerful adhesive.
But the fault line is structural. It runs through two competing ideas of what ‘America First’ actually means — one rooted in restraint, where ending forever wars is the point, and another that sees projecting strength abroad as central to American power. For years, both strands coexisted within the MAGA coalition, largely untested. The Iran campaign has begun to force that distinction into the open.
With midterm polls months away, the political arithmetic is delicate. A prolonged conflict, spiking oil prices, rising living costs and any rise in U.S. casualties could further strain the MAGA coalition.
Published – March 29, 2026 01:50 am IST
