Joe Kent’s Interview on Shawn Ryan Show (Transcript)

I mean, Secretary of State Rubio said that, the President said it, many others have as well. So it’s right there up in our face.

And so again, for me, it was just something that I felt like I couldn’t influence anymore from the inside, and I could no longer be a part of.

The Cost of War

SHAWN RYAN: But it’s insane. I mean, even if Israel spent 6.4 billion on this war since March, you know how much the US has spent? Approximately 18 to 25 billion, with another request for another 200 billion from Congress. Now why the f* are we the ones floating the bill for this?

JOE KENT: That’s the way it is every time. The Israelis will have their objectives, they will convince senior American officials that these are also their objectives. And if the Americans don’t agree, then the Israelis will set off a series of actions that make us react. And the next thing you know, we’re having to contribute our blood and our treasure.

That same playbook is playing out now. And I referenced the Iraq war, I referenced what happened in Syria as well in my letter, because this is the same playbook we’ve seen over and over again. And you and I saw it at the tactical level when we were deployed in the war on terror. And then now I saw it at pretty senior levels take place over the course of the last year.

Trump’s Statement and Iran’s Response

SHAWN RYAN: We’re going to get into all this. I want to start by reading President Trump’s statement today on Truth:

“I am pleased to report that the United States of America and the country of Iran have had over the last two days very good and productive conversations regarding a complete and total resolution of our hostilities in the Middle East. Based on the tenor and tone of these in-depth, detailed and constructive conversations, which will continue throughout the week, I have instructed the Department of War to postpone any and all military strikes against Iranian power plants and energy infrastructure for a five-day period, subject to the success of the ongoing meetings and discussions. Thank you for your attention to this matter. President Donald J. Trump.”

Do you know what Iran’s response is to this?

JOE KENT: I’ve seen.

SHAWN RYAN: So they immediately responded. And I would love to believe our President and our administration, but just like we talked about at the very beginning, everything that has come out has been a bait and switch, a complete 180 f*ing lie.

This is what Iran says. The Iranian Foreign Ministry and State Broadcaster IRIB stated: “No conversation has taken place between Iran and the US, and Trump’s claim about having these talks is false.” They described it as psychological warfare intended to manipulate energy prices, markets, and buy him time. And a senior Iranian security official quoted: “Tehran is not in talks with Trump and that he backed down from attacking energy infrastructure after Iran’s credible military threats and market pressure. There has been and is not any negotiation underway.” IRGC-linked outlets and Iran’s Parliament speaker called reports of negotiations — in Trump’s own words — “fake news.”

The Five-Day Truce and the Israeli Problem

JOE KENT: We’re in a bad situation. I mean, I pray that this five-day somewhat truce holds. I hope it lasts. The problem is the Israelis have said they won’t stop striking throughout the entire period.

SHAWN RYAN: They came out and said they don’t care.

JOE KENT: Right. So this is the fundamental problem. The fundamental problem is that we right now are not capable of restraining the Israelis. I think if President Trump focuses on it, I think he has the power to restrain the Israelis. But that’s the key first step in any formula towards peace. He’s got to restrain the Israelis before he can even get the Iranians to the negotiating table.

Suspicious Market Trades

SHAWN RYAN: Now there’s a lot of speculation that maybe the President made that statement to jump-start the stock market today. Here’s a post:

“Just minutes before Trump’s announcement of talks with Iran, massive trades hit the market. In one move, 1.5 billion in S&P 500 futures were purchased. This trade was so large, it sent the entire index 0.3% higher. That exact minute, 192 million in oil futures were also sold. These orders were four to six times larger than anything else at that time. Whoever made those trades made 60 billion.”

I wonder if that was Congress. I wonder if that was insider trading from Congress, the administration, the Senate.

JOE KENT: I hope people look into that.

SHAWN RYAN: I hope they look into it.

JOE KENT: They should look into it because it definitely should be researched.

SHAWN RYAN: Well, a lot of people are looking into it because it’s going viral on X right now.

JOE KENT: The problem is, even if it was — worst case scenario, and this would be very bad — a way to make money, at the end of the day the five days expire and we’re still in the exact same spot that we’re in, where there’s going to be a stranglehold from the Straits of Hormuz, there’s going to be continued escalation, energy prices. Even if they stabilize for these five days, what’s going to happen when day five arrives? We have a problem that we have to solve again.

Look, I believe that President Trump can solve it. Restrain the Israelis, work with the GCC countries. That’s the way to get out of this.

Who Is Joe Kent?

SHAWN RYAN: Well, Joe, let me give you a quick introduction, because I think a lot of people have forgotten just exactly who the f* you are and what you’ve done for this country.

Joe Kent — former Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, retired Green Beret, former member of a classified special missions unit, former CIA paramilitary officer, Gold Star spouse, with 11 combat deployments, six Bronze Stars, author of Send Me: The True Story of a Mother at War — a tribute to Shannon’s courage and a testament to what real service looks like. Trusted by President Trump as his foreign policy advisor, and the leader who most recently served as head of counterterrorism for the United States of America, now being investigated by the FBI for leaking classified information.

I wonder how many of the pedophiles that were in the Epstein files are having active FBI investigations on them. Probably f*ing zero. Probably zero.

As of this recording, Polymarket says there is a 13% chance that US forces will enter Iran by March 31, and a 19% chance of a US-Iran ceasefire by March 31. What do you think about those odds, man?

JOE KENT: A ceasefire? I’m skeptical. Again, until the Israelis are restrained, there won’t be a ceasefire. Boots on the ground — as you know, when you have combat resources in theater and you’ve got active combat going on, saying that you can control any of these factors is more of a wish than a plan. So my fear is that we could rapidly escalate.

The Resignation — How Long Was the Frustration Building?

SHAWN RYAN: Let’s talk about your resignation. How long have you been frustrated with what’s going on?

Joe Kent on Iran, Israel, and the Road to Conflict

JOE KENT: Basically, since the lead up to the first iteration of our conflict with Iran in June. I was very frustrated that we had kind of backed ourselves into a corner artificially. I was and remain a big supporter of President Trump’s overall thesis of foreign policy, of peace through strength, of stopping us from getting involved in costly wars, in particular with Iran.

I think President Trump was uniquely postured to cut a great deal with Iran. He had in the first Trump administration killed the terror mastermind, cost them so much money. Once he left office, the Iranians went right back up to their old tricks. They funded their proxies. They were attacking our troops in the region. October 7th happened. America generally was not respected by the Iranians.

When Trump came back into office, the Iranians automatically said, “Okay, wait a sec, this is a whole different administration. We might be able to cut a deal with this guy, but also if we don’t, he will use force like he did against Qasem Soleimani.” So they stopped their proxies from attacking us.

Last time I was on your show, we were talking about how there had been over, I think, 150, 200 attacks against our forces in Iraq and Syria. That stopped when Trump came into office because the Iranians knew who was back. They also knew that President Trump was willing to make a deal and actively seeking a deal. President Trump deployed, I think, a very, very competent diplomat, Steve Witkoff, to go get a deal going with the Iranians.

Now this was a major threat to the Israelis because the Israelis viewed this as the prime time and Trump is the prime vehicle to use for regime change in Iran. Now President Trump’s stated policy had been, and he says this all the time, that Iran can’t have a nuclear bomb. Now the Iranians actually agreed with President Trump and they had a prohibition, a fatwa, a religious decree on actually producing a nuclear weapon that had held since 2004.

And what the Iranians did say was, “Hey, we’re not going to make a nuclear bomb, but we want the ability to enrich uranium.” Because they had seen what had taken place in Libya and Iraq and they said, “Hey, if we go the Gaddafi route in Libya and say, here’s all of our nuclear making material, then they’re a sitting duck, then they can be invaded and regime changed at any given time.” They saw the Saddam route. If they actually pursued a weapon or even kind of BS’d that they had a weapon, that same thing, they would be immediately invaded. So they kind of had this ability to say, “Hey, we have a prohibition on a nuclear weapon, but we have some ability to enrich.”

This was a major threat to the Israelis’ goal. So what I watched the Israelis do over the course of the last year was use their government officials, engaging with our government officials, but then also their surrogates in the media. Levin, who I’ll talk to you tonight. Mainstream media, think tanks, Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a lot of talking heads on Fox News, to move the red line. So Trump had said, “My red line is no nuclear weapons.” Khamenei said, “Great, I don’t want nuclear weapons either. Let’s talk.” So they moved the red line by saying enrichment. Iran can have no enrichment. Enrichment equals a nuclear weapon, which is just fundamentally not true. So that would be parroted from officials in the Israeli government and then also on the news.

Moving the Red Line: Enrichment vs. Nuclear Weapons

SHAWN RYAN: I mean, let’s backtrack. I don’t think not one of our 18 intelligence agencies had mentioned that Iran was enriching uranium. Correct.

JOE KENT: They were doing enrichment to some degree. So there was enrichment.

SHAWN RYAN: No nuclear weapons, but no nuclear weapons.

JOE KENT: And we knew, all 18 intelligence agencies agreed, that the fatwa against actually making a nuclear weapon was holding and the Iranians were not making a nuclear weapon. Tulsi Gabbard testified to that last year, she just testified to it again this year, that the Iranians, under the previous supreme leader who was just killed, now the Iranians more than likely are going to change their strategic outlook. That’s my guess. My guess is, hey, a lot of their hardliners are now saying, “Do you see what this moderation got us?” And now they’re going to attempt to buy one or spread. That’s just my guess.

But for the last year, prior to this last conflict kicking off, we did not assess that they were trying to make a nuclear weapon. So that’s why they had to move the red line and say enrichment. And so finally, through official engagements and the media continuing to echo this, they basically got the US talking point to change, that Iran could not have any kind of nuclear enrichment. And that was a non-starter for the Iranians. And that’s how we basically got into the 12-day war, Operation Midnight Hammer.

Again, the 12-day war launched by the Israelis. We said, “Hey, we’re going to come in, we’re going to do a series of limited strikes to take away any nuclear capability that Iran may have, and then we’re done.” Now at the time, myself and others had seen how aggressive the Israelis were about wanting regime change inside Iran. So in the lead up to Midnight Hammer, we assessed that, hey, even if we did these strikes, the Israelis were going to come right back to us after a couple of months and say, “No, no, now is the time for us to do regime change.” And that’s exactly what happened.

The difference is we had robust debates in the lead up to Midnight Hammer. After Midnight Hammer, President Trump’s decision-making circle was very, very tight, and that’s his prerogative. He can do that. However, he had all pro-Israel hawks really in his ear, Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz, and then on the outside again, the media echo chamber, knowing that President Trump was watching Fox News, knowing what media he was consuming, and they’re all saying the same thing: Iran can’t have any enrichment, which basically put us on this collision course towards a conflict.

I think the Israelis once again got nervous about a month ago because they knew that Witkoff and Kushner and others in the administration were actively engaging with the Iranians to get a deal. And that’s why the Israelis launched their attack, knowing they could force our hands. And that’s why I think you saw Marco Rubio and others come out immediately and say, “Well, yeah, there was an imminent attack,” and the imminent attack was the Israelis attacking the Iranians. And then we knew that they would retaliate back against us.

Why Iran Retaliated Against the US

SHAWN RYAN: Why would they retaliate against us?

JOE KENT: Why would the Iranians retaliate against us —

SHAWN RYAN: — if they know that the Israelis are the ones that hit them? Why would they retaliate against us?

JOE KENT: Because they know that basically we fund the Israelis, that Israel would not have the offensive capability without us. The Israelis are very competent at conducting, I’d say, smaller, more clandestine, intelligence-type assassinations. Very good at doing that. They don’t need our help to do that. They don’t need our help gathering very much intelligence. But for big military lifts that involve deploying strike packages several thousand miles, they need our help and troops.

SHAWN RYAN: And also they want us to die for them.

JOE KENT: In order for them to commit that air power to go strike Iran, they’re leaving some of their airspace vulnerable. So they need us to back them up in that regard as well. So without us providing the defense and the offensive capability, Israel can’t do it.

Now, Iran, in the lead up to the 12-day war, during the 12-day war, and after Midnight Hammer, they observed the escalatory ladder very, very carefully. They didn’t have their proxies attack us, and they didn’t attack us until Midnight Hammer. So they let the Israelis strike them throughout the entire 12-day war, and they didn’t target any of our bases in the region. And then after Midnight Hammer, they shot back an equal amount of missiles at the empty sector of one of the bases in Qatar, as we dropped bombs inside of Iran.

So I think in this next iteration, they said, “We’re not going to be the ones climbing the escalatory ladder if you guys come after us this time.” Because they knew that the Israelis were going for regime change, they were going to try to take out the Supreme Leader. And that’s what led them to say, “If you guys are going to do this, then we are going to retaliate with the full force.” Because they didn’t want to get pushed around again.

The Intelligence Behind the Enrichment Narrative

SHAWN RYAN: Where did that intelligence come from? It didn’t come from us. The intelligence about them enriching uranium.

JOE KENT: It wasn’t even intelligence. It was literally just talking points. I don’t even think it was portrayed as intelligence, because this is what the Israelis are very good at. The Israelis will come and they will have engagements with our intelligence services, with our diplomats, and they will give information and they will say something like, “Well, this isn’t in intelligence channels yet,” because we formally share intelligence with the Israelis. But that makes its way through our own checks. And it’s not a perfect system, but it’s at least a system. And they’ll say, “Hey, this isn’t in intelligence channels yet.” And then we’ll go back and we’ll check it to see if it’s actually in intelligence channels. And a lot of times it’s not.

And that’s the way this enrichment talking point was really, really spun, because they just basically said, “No, no, America’s policy has always been no enrichment.” And I went back and I looked, and people can fact-check me, the only American official who ever said America’s policy is zero enrichment was Mike Pompeo in the first Trump administration. So the Israelis in this Trump administration came and they were basically like, “Here’s President Trump’s policy. It’s from his last administration and he contained Iran. This is it. This is the policy.” And they echoed it over and over and over again. Whereas all President Trump had said was no nuclear weapon.

And so to short-circuit the agreement, essentially, that the Supreme Leader and Trump had, that got them to the negotiating table, the Israelis moved the red line by basically having their surrogates, their official government interactions, but then also the media, echo that. It’s a very clever, pretty sophisticated plan, but they got it done through repetition.

Addressing the “Flip-Flopper” Accusations

SHAWN RYAN: You got a lot of flack for something that you said on my show the last time you were here. I think you said that Iran’s — we’ll roll the clip right now — but I believe you said that Iran had attacked us over 150 times using proxies, and people are calling you a flip-flopper. What do you have to say to that?

JOE KENT: If they look at the totality of everything I’ve ever said, I am neither an isolationist nor am I a hawk on Iran. If their proxies attack us, we should hammer them. I will debate anybody on the utility of killing Qasem Soleimani. President Trump was justified and he was correct and he was bold for killing Qasem Soleimani and his deputy, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis. He was really bold in the fact that he took them off the battlefield, but then he didn’t get suckered into what we’re in right now, which is a regime change war in a massive country like Iran.

So I’ve always been against us doing prolonged kinetic strikes inside of Iran. When Iran shot ballistic missiles at our troops, I thought we would have been justified to basically counter-battery and take out some of those ballistic missiles. Now, right after the Iranians shot the ballistic missiles in retaliation for Soleimani at our troops at Al Assad, they accidentally shot down that Ukrainian airliner, and that basically ended the conflict right there. But I have never been in favor of a regime change war inside of Iran. If their proxies attack us, if they attack us, we hammer them back.

But again, going back to the Iranian escalatory ladder, if you look at how Iran has behaved since President Trump killed Soleimani and then since he came back into office, they were very, very deliberate about what they were and what they were not going to do. They didn’t hit us until we hit them.

And again, just for the record, I’m not a fan of the Iranians. I’m not a fan of the Quds Force. I fought them, you fought them, they’ve killed friends of ours. But at some point, we do have to find a way that we can de-escalate these situations and move on. The default answer can’t always be, “Well, we’re going to do another regime change war and get sucked into this place for 20 plus years.”

SHAWN RYAN: That’s my beef. I mean, the way I look at it is you got in there, you have access to a lot more information, and you changed your mind. And yeah, you’re right. They weren’t — I think they were in charge. They were the ones that developed the EFP bomb too. Correct. That killed a sh*t ton of our friends.

JOE KENT: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: But I think we both agree we shouldn’t have been in the Iraq war.

The Iran Strategy: Hardliners, Proxies, and the Rally Around the Flag Effect

JOE KENT: We should have. And then also just in terms of being effective, if our goal is to stop the Iranians from doing things like that, I argue, and I’ve argued this for quite a while, we would only strengthen the hardliners in Iran. We can only strengthen the Quds Force, the IRGC and the hardline ayatollahs if we go in there and try and take them out. It’s the basic rally around the flag effect. And I think we’ve done that.

I mean, the Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, that we killed — not a great guy, probably a bad guy — but by killing him, we basically said, the next guy who’s in charge, he’s going to say, we’re not going to have a prohibition on developing nuclear weapons. And if we end up killing him, too, and we end up killing some of the other folks that are more moderate, they’re not going to be replaced by like a mini Thomas Jefferson. They’re going to be replaced by more and more hardliners.

There’s always been a tension in Iran between the clerics and the IRGC, and the IRGC is full of pipeheaders, man. I mean, it’s the guys who fought the Iraq-Iran war, they fought us in Iraq, they fought against the Israelis in Lebanon with Hezbollah. So if we give these guys the ability to basically say, “Hey, don’t listen to the moderates. Our job is to fight the Americans, it’s to fight the Israelis,” then this is going to get harder and harder. There’s going to be more terrorism, there’s going to be more blood, and then basically the only recipe for getting out of this is going to be more and more continued war.

Problem is, though, you’ve got the Straits of Hormuz as a choke point for major world energy. So this is going to become — it already has become — a major geostrategic issue and a major issue on the world economy.

SHAWN RYAN: That’s like 20 to 25% of the world’s oil comes out of there. Everybody’s pissed at us. Back to the Iranian proxies and them killing US Service members in Iraq and Afghanistan as well. That’s not why we’re there, though. And so I see everybody in there, they’re talking about the hostages, back in the day, they’re talking about how they — and they’re clipping you on my show. But that’s not why we’re there. You can scrounge around and find all kinds of justifications on why we would be starting a war with Iran, but none of that relevant stuff is the reason that we’re there. And it hasn’t been stated either by anybody but just f*ing Internet trolls.

Limited Strikes vs. Full-Scale War: The Case for Economic Pressure

JOE KENT: If we wanted to clean the deck on Iranian proxies that were outside of Iran or even inside of Iran, fine, do it. Do limited strikes, that’s fine. The Israelis are very competent. I mean, they’ve killed many Hamas. They’ve killed at least one Hamas leader inside of Tehran. They’ve killed how many members of Hezbollah, decapitated them with the pagers. Operations like that are pragmatic. They make sense. They’re limited in their scope, and they target exactly where we need to target.

Again, back to the policy of the first Trump administration — President Trump would use force where required, but then, like no other president I’ve seen, he would apply other leverage that only America has in terms of economic power and in terms of diplomacy. So after he kills Soleimani, he goes and he slaps maximum pressure sanctions on Iran. That makes the economic life in Iran very, very challenging. That results in waves and waves of protest that we were seeing back in January, just not that long ago. We saw Iranians out on the streets protesting against the current regime because of the cost of living.

Now, the regime knows that their own people could overthrow them if they’re not happy, especially with just how expensive it is and challenging it is to live. That organic protest movement was already happening, but it was happening in large part because of the economic pressure that President Trump had put on them. Now, if you want to ruin all that, you go as an outsider with the Israelis and you strike them, because then everyone is going to rally around the flag. That’s why we’re not seeing any protests. That’s why even the Kurds have said, “Hey, we don’t want to be part of any kind of regime change right now.”

Abandoning the Kurds: A Pattern of Betrayal

SHAWN RYAN: I’ve heard rumors that we wanted the Kurds to back us in this. My answer to that is, why the f would the Kurds back us in this? We abandoned them in Iraq. They got slaughtered when we did that. We just abandoned them about a month ago in Syria. I got buddies over at Fifth Group that were complaining about it — I mean, they fought with them. And we fing abandoned them again. And now they’re getting slaughtered in fing Syria. And then we ask them — the US has a pattern, and that’s what the pattern is. We come in, we pretend like we’re your friend, we get what we need, and then we fing abandon you and they slaughter your ass. And we do nothing. Happened in Afghanistan. Happened to the Kurds twice — in Iraq and in Syria.

The Syrian one just a couple of months ago. Now we’re already back asking them for — of course they’re going to fing say, “F you.”

JOE KENT: Yeah, I think that was the Israelis trying to basically use a media campaign to will that into existence. I don’t know if that was ever a very real thing. But again, if our goal is to get rid of the Ayatollah and is to get rid of that government, the last thing that we should have ever done was strike them. Because now, I mean, the Persians have their pride. I mean, it’s not that hard to imagine, to put ourselves in their shoes. Like, none of us — most people probably watching this show, or me or you — we didn’t like Joe Biden, but if a foreigner would have attacked America, hey, man, I’m going to saddle up and I’m going to defend my country.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah.

JOE KENT: I don’t think they’re that much different than we are. And we’re seeing that right now. There’s a massive rally around the flag factor happening inside of Iran. And again, we’re only going to get more and more hardliners.

Diverging Strategic Goals: The US vs. Israel

SHAWN RYAN: Now let’s talk about the strategy. What is the strategy? What are we doing?

JOE KENT: Well, right now, the problem is we have a drastically different strategic goal than the Israelis do. So we will say that Israel is our ally in this, they’re basically our co-equal in this. People like me will say, actually, we’re not really even co-equals — they’re leading because we’re having to react to them. But either way, we’re basically joined at the hip with the Israelis.

Now, the problem is they have a much different strategic goal and a much, I’d say, higher threshold and tolerance for chaos and bloodshed than we do. We have stated that our strategic goal — you’ll hear Secretary Hegseth rattle these off at his morning briefings that he gives to the media — it’s to destroy the Iranian navy, to destroy the IRGC, to destroy their ballistic missile capability, to destroy all their enrichment. So we kind of have a checklist of things that we want to bomb essentially to take off the battlefield. That’s about as far as we’ve gone with stating what our strategic goal is.

Which I think is a big problem that we had with the GWOT — we never really said what our strategic goal was. Obviously there was “get bin Laden and make sure the homeland isn’t attacked,” but I just remember being in Iraq being like, “What’s the goal here? Like, we’re building a government.” So same thing — we didn’t really learn that lesson. We haven’t stated our strategic goal.

The Israelis, as critical as I am of our relationship with the Israelis, have a very clear strategic goal, and that is to take out this regime lock, stock and barrel. That’s to get rid of the Ayatollahs, the clerical class that rules over — and then also the IRGC, which is a huge lift. It’s a big country. Those institutions are massive. They’ve got a lot of support. But that’s the Israelis’ goal.

Now the Israelis don’t really care necessarily if that happens and Iran then slips into chaos and the Straits of Hormuz remains inflamed and there’s a migration crisis and there’s an ongoing war. The Israelis don’t care about that. They care that the IRGC and the Ayatollahs can no longer fund their proxies or cause them problems inside of Israel.

So again, you’ve got us footing the bill, doing the majority of the combat, doing the dying, doing the fighting. We have a very, very murky strategic objective, whereas the Israelis are driving this. They’re driving essentially our commitment of combat power. They’re driving us having people lose their lives. They have a very clear strategic objective. And this is why I say the number one thing we have to do in order to get out of this is to restrain the Israelis and get our relationship with Israel straight. Otherwise it’s all going to be for naught and we’re going to continue to get sucked in further and further.

SHAWN RYAN: I mean, if we’re attached hip to hip with them, it’s got to be the same goal, right?

JOE KENT: You would think, but it’s not.

SHAWN RYAN: Is it just not articulated or is it really not?

JOE KENT: I feel like it’s truly not. And the Israelis don’t have a hard time articulating what their goal is.

SHAWN RYAN: Oh, I mean, us articulating.

JOE KENT: Yeah. So we just list off the tactical punch list of things we want to bomb to take out so the Iranians don’t have any more. And to me, that’s not a real strategic goal.

Kharg Island and the Danger of Deploying Ground Troops

SHAWN RYAN: You had a really good article in the Washington Post — I think it released today. But you were talking about some strategy here, and that made me think the potential deployment of US ground troops makes me very nervous. Citing recent reporting that the President is considering seizing Kharg Island, Iran’s main hub for oil exports, you quoted: “I just think that would be a disaster. It would essentially be giving Iran a bunch of hostages on an island that they could barrage with drones and missiles.”

Are you the only fing person up there that’s thinking straight? Because that’s exactly what would happen. You’re putting US service members in a fing fishbowl for Iran to kill. They’re stranded on an island. I mean, this is our strategy. Who came up with this f*ing strategy?

SHAWN RYAN: It sounds like Trump.

JOE KENT: It sounds like Lindsey Graham. I mean, Lindsey Graham was on the Sunday shows yesterday talking about how great it would be — it would be just like Iwo Jima. I mean, just insanity. And I don’t think the people who are pragmatic and are expressing their concerns are being listened to. Now, obviously the administration will push back and say, “No, no, we’re doing robust planning and we’re hearing all voices,” et cetera. But when I see ideas like that floated — and there’s much worse ones out there as well — basically, most of the formulas for putting boots in the ground inside of Iran are problematic. I guess that’s too light of a way to put it. They’re bad plans.

SHAWN RYAN: They’ve already stated they want us to do it.

JOE KENT: They’re ready for it, 100%. I mean, that would be handing Iran basically a strategic victory, because once they get our troops on the ground there, they’re going to be able to kill some of them. We’re going to take losses and then we fall back into that cycle. Once we take losses somewhere, we say, “Oh, no, no, now we can’t leave. We have to stay to avenge our fallen. It can’t be all for nothing. We have to stay. We have to keep fighting.”

We saw this over and over again in the GWOT. Every single time we talked about any kind of withdrawal in Iraq or Afghanistan, it was the same argument: “We’ve lost too much here. There’s still more that we could do.”

So in terms of Kharg Island, that makes me nervous because I have heard so many people like Lindsey Graham and others — that are not military, that are not in the Pentagon, that are not reading intelligence every day — talk about it very flippantly. Like, “Oh, we’ll just take that island. We’ll just take their oil.” I don’t want to tell you guys, it’s not 2003 anymore. You can’t just put guys there and they’ll occupy it. There’s ballistics, there’s drones. They would be sitting ducks in that area. And as a matter of fact, like you said, the Iranians would probably be like, “Please take the island. We’ll roll out the red carpet for you guys.”

SHAWN RYAN: I mean, do I need to read your bio again? Why is he taking advice from Lindsey Graham and Ted Cruz and whoever else that’s just career bureaucrats?

JOE KENT: This is the problem.

U.S. Troops, Global Reactions, and the Cost of War

SHAWN RYAN: And then you got a guy like you in there with tons of experience in war, in intelligence.

JOE KENT: Yeah. And there’s others, too. There’s plenty of us in there that can give him much better advice. I just hope the President reflects, and I know he’s mad at me. I hope he reflects and I hope he looks at the advisors he has around him currently that got him to the state that we’re in right now. Because we’re not in a good state. He knows that. And he needs to start listening to people that are going to give him better advice that can give us a clear pathway out of this.

SHAWN RYAN: Who are some people that would give him better advice other than yourself?

JOE KENT: Vice President, DNI Gabbard and their teams, I think, are absolutely key.

SHAWN RYAN: The Vice President and the DNI.

JOE KENT: And the DNI, yeah. Yep. And there’s good people at the Pentagon that can give you options.

SHAWN RYAN: So he’s not taking advice from his own Vice President?

JOE KENT: I don’t know. I wasn’t at the Vice President’s level. I think they have a good relationship. I just, based on what I’ve seen and based on what we’ve seen in the public sphere, he has been taking more advice, obviously, from Lindsey Graham, from Ted Cruz, from Mark Levin on TV, than he has been from people who may say, “Hey…”

SHAWN RYAN: Mark Levin on TV, that’s who he’s getting advice from?

JOE KENT: F* in terms of how easy and great of an idea this will be. I mean, so the media ecosystem, they’re not giving him tactical military advice, but they were, I believe, in my opinion, a big part of echoing the Israeli talking points about no enrichment. “You have to strike now. If you strike now, you’ll be a hero.”

There was also this false narrative, basically, that said, “Hey, because the people were on the streets in January, if you take a couple strikes right now and you really hammer them, the rest is going to be easy. It’s going to be a cakewalk. The people are going to rise up, they’re going to overthrow the regime, they’re going to love you, they’re going to cut a deal. It’s going to be quick and easy, like Venezuela was.”

I think Venezuela did a lot to give us some false confidence in how quick and easy a regime change, regime modification, whatever you want to call it, can be. So people like Levin, people on Fox, New York Post, New York Times, et cetera, a lot of those talking heads — coincidentally, not so coincidentally — a lot of them were the same people who talked us into the Iraq war. Convinced him how quick and easy this would be.

But I mean, to your point, I think if he took some more advice from the Vice President, from DNI Gabbard and their teams, I think we’d be in a much better spot and I think we’d be able to carve our way out of this.

U.S. Troop Presence and Israel’s Role

SHAWN RYAN: How many troops do we have over there right now waiting? 25,000?

JOE KENT: Honestly, I don’t know. I mean, I see what you see on the news. I’m disconnected from all of it.

SHAWN RYAN: How many has Israel sent?

JOE KENT: Far less than us. Most of their military operations are taking place in Lebanon. They’re doing a lot of air support and power projection via air, which is heavily funded by us.

SHAWN RYAN: Are they talking about sending ground forces?

JOE KENT: If they could, it’d be tiny. They just don’t have… I mean…

SHAWN RYAN: Oh, so we’ll do it.

JOE KENT: We would have to do it. Yeah, 100%. I mean, they might do a commando raid or something, that’d be about it. But in terms of any kind of meaningful hold ground, even for a limited amount of time, that would have to be American boots.

SHAWN RYAN: Oh, okay. That’s kind of what I thought. But I’m getting angry, Joe.

JOE KENT: I can tell. I hear you, man.

SHAWN RYAN: Angry. “No new wars. No new wars.” It just echoes in my head all day long. And here we are. Here we are right back in war.

A Completely Avoidable War

JOE KENT: Completely avoidable. Completely avoidable. And I pray again, he listens to some of the voices that can get him out of this. I think there’s still time, but this is very bad and this could get worse.

And I think platforms like yours are important because people like you, big podcasts, I think you guys brought a lot of people out to vote for President Trump. And I think it’s really important that all the people that are watching this show and all the other podcasts, call their senators, call their representatives, make their voice heard, because there is again, that media ecosystem that kind of exists, oddly, in the White House. We’ve got to penetrate through that. They were listening during the campaign, and I think they’ll listen again if people take this as a call to action.

Global Reactions: China, Russia, and Regional Allies

SHAWN RYAN: I mean, so we’re talking about war strategy a little bit here. What is the rest of the world’s pulse on this? Is anybody other than Israel encouraging us to hit Iran?

JOE KENT: I doubt it. I strongly doubt it.

SHAWN RYAN: I mean, China gets like… not that China’s our friend, China’s not our friend. They get like 75% of their f*ing oil from the Strait of Hormuz.

JOE KENT: They’re still getting it. The only difference is they’re selling the transactions in yuan. And so I think China may like this because obviously we’ve taken our eyes off the Pacific. For people who care about Taiwan, the Pacific is truly our border. We’re a Pacific power. I think a lot of that has kind of gone by the wayside because we had to move so much combat power into CENTCOM.

So I’m sure China’s happy with it. Russia too. We’ve taken our eyes off of getting a peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine because there is scarcity now. We’ve created scarcity while it’s taking place in the Straits of Hormuz with the energy sector. Russian oil, Russian gas, all that is going to be worth more on the market now to fund their war.

So I think our major competitors, Russia and China, I would say they’re probably pretty happy about this, but all of our regional allies, I think, are probably pretty furious about it.

SHAWN RYAN: And China’s becoming more aggressive towards Taiwan since we started this.

JOE KENT: Right, right. And then two, in terms of like…

SHAWN RYAN: Now that’s a real threat.

JOE KENT: That’s a real threat.

SHAWN RYAN: And then take those chip plants. That’s a real threat. They will win the AI race like that.

JOE KENT: It is done. Yeah. And it was always debatable we’re…

SHAWN RYAN: …going after fake nuclear weapons.

JOE KENT: It was always debatable if we could defend it before. But now with all the combat power pushed into CENTCOM, that’s a huge issue.

Another major issue is the strength of the dollar. The dollar has already been weakened so much because of our deficit spending. We can deficit spend because we’re the world’s reserve currency holder. And a lot of that strength comes from the petrodollar — that any oil that’s bought from the GCC, you’ve got to settle the transaction in dollars. China’s already kind of short-circuited that…

SHAWN RYAN: …and then they reinvested in our stock market.

JOE KENT: Right, right. But so if you want to keep that system going — which I’m not sure if it’s the best system, but we should at least deliberately move away from it — if we’re going to do it, it shouldn’t disappear over the course of a month because of a war, because the straits being choked off.

Iran knows this. They know that if they choke off the straits and they only let Chinese ships, et cetera, come through and they settle the transaction in another currency, that they’re eroding away at the petrodollar. And we also need the GCC to be on board. All the Gulf Cooperation countries in the region, they’ve got to be on board with the petrodollar, too.

The reason why they went with the petrodollar is because we provided their security guarantees. Well, how are the security guarantees now? We can’t defend them against what’s taking place. We can’t defend them from Iranian ballistics, Iranian drones. They know full well that the war was launched by Israel and now they’re suffering the consequence. So all of a sudden, we’re not the best ally. So how long do we expect them to continue to settle their transactions in the dollar? So the ramifications of this conflict, I think, are massive.

Europe, Qatar, and Who Really Benefits

SHAWN RYAN: What about Europe? I mean, when the facility in Qatar got hit — yeah, I mean, they’re now having to renegotiate all their contracts with China, Italy. There was a handful of European countries that did get the majority of their oil from there. Now they have to renegotiate because they’re going to default on the contract.

JOE KENT: Yeah. There’s only one country that gains in this, and that’s Israel. That’s just the bottom line.

SHAWN RYAN: Is there anything that we gain? Do we gain anything at all by doing this?

JOE KENT: I don’t believe so. I mean, my critics would say, “No, we’re finally once and for all taking out the Iranian regime.” Again, for all the reasons I previously outlined, I just disagree with that. And again, we don’t seem to have a strategy that’s working in that direction, minus the punch list of things that we’re bombing.

Trump’s Remarks and a Congressional Race Reality Check

SHAWN RYAN: Well, Joe, I want to take a break here real quick, but before we do, I saw Trump’s speech this morning about you, too. He’s poking fun that you lost your congressional run. So I pulled some stats. I’m poking fun at you this morning about losing in Washington, losing your Congress race. Trump actually lost there in the last presidential election by a 17% margin himself. You only lost by a 3.8% margin. Who’s the f*ing loser?

Rubio’s Role and Targeting Civilian Infrastructure

SHAWN RYAN: All right, Joe, I know we were going to move on about strategy from the Epstein War — I mean, the Iran war — but I got a couple more questions for you. So, one, what is Rubio doing in all this?

JOE KENT: I’m not sure. I mean, I think he’s doing the best he can to give the President options. I mean, he came out right away and I think was pretty honest when he said we had to attack, otherwise he’s really going to…

SHAWN RYAN: What are the other options that he’s given? Are you aware of those?

JOE KENT: I’m not, no. I don’t know.

SHAWN RYAN: Is he for this?

JOE KENT: That I don’t know. Honestly.

SHAWN RYAN: You know, there’s a lot of strategy, there’s a lot of stuff floating around about strategy — attacking their infrastructure, taking away the fertilizer for their food, creating famines, hitting their water supply, starving them of water, hitting their energy grid. Is there any validity to that?

JOE KENT: I’m sure it was looked at because we look at everything, but that I don’t know. The only…

SHAWN RYAN: Those are innocent people.

JOE KENT: The only strategy I’ve seen is the punch list of military targets. And I still believe the US Military would not deliberately target civilian infrastructure in that way.

SHAWN RYAN: You don’t think we would do that?

The U.S.-Israel Relationship and Strategic Goals

JOE KENT: I don’t think we would. I just, based on my experience in the military, I don’t think that we would. Now will the Israelis? This is the problem. This is the problem that we have being partnered with someone who has different values than we do. Look, the Israelis believe this is existential. The Israelis, we’ve seen what the Israelis, what they did in Gaza.

SHAWN RYAN: They have a different — 20,000 kids.

JOE KENT: They have a whole different way of fighting wars than we do. They fight total war. They fight very, very biblical wars. We do not.

SHAWN RYAN: I mean, in all honesty, they fight a war how you should fight a f*ing war.

JOE KENT: Precisely. So if you want to win — that’s not in our interest. Because at the end of the day, if you’re going to do that, then you’re going to occupy the land, you’re going to fully take the land. We’re not going to do that. We’ve never been a very good occupying army. America has not been a good occupying army. I don’t think Americans have the colonial mentality. I don’t think we have the total war mentality. I’m glad that we don’t.

However, if we’re going to be — again, it goes back to: are we going to be partnered with the Israelis and attempt to pretend that we can have a different strategic goal, but then also a different appetite for how war is conducted? At some point we should just say there are certain things we can partner with the Israelis on, like limited strike counterterrorism operations — absolutely. But when it comes to fighting and trying to take over and quell and dominate an entire population, we cannot be joined at the hip with the Israelis, just due to the different strategic goals, but then also just a different value system.

SHAWN RYAN: Is there any way at all to differentiate that? To have our goal and their goal and be in this together?

JOE KENT: It seems one and the same to me. I don’t believe so. But we’re paying for the Israelis. We’re paying for everything that they’re doing. And so we are the dominant one in this relationship. We need to assert ourselves as such.

I honestly — and I know I’ve gotten a lot of crap and people said, “Oh, you’re anti-Semitic,” whatever. I’ve got no issue with the Israelis. They’re pursuing their objectives. I have an issue with our reaction to the Israelis. Our government should not — our actions should not be directed by a foreign government. That’s my biggest issue.

SHAWN RYAN: You’re upset because we are under their influence.

JOE KENT: Yes, exactly.

The Iraq War, Syria, and Israeli Influence

SHAWN RYAN: And in your resignation letter, you had talked about how the Iraq war —

JOE KENT: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: Syria —

JOE KENT: Yep.

SHAWN RYAN: — that was because we were under their influence, too. And I want to ask you, how were we under their influence in Syria?

JOE KENT: So I think the war in Syria wouldn’t have happened if the Iraq war wouldn’t have happened. The Iraq war was driven, obviously, by the neoconservative movement here in America, the military industrial complex. But a big part of that was also the Israeli lobby.

Benjamin Netanyahu at the time, who had just gotten done being the Israeli prime minister — I think he was still in government, he was the finance minister — he came and he aggressively lobbied and testified in the House and in the Senate that Saddam was developing weapons of mass destruction. So he helped launder that narrative that Saddam was developing weapons of mass destruction, in conjunction with the military industrial complex and neoconservatives, to say that we had to go in and we had to take away the nuclear weapons.

You also had others in the think tank realm, the same thing — the media echo chamber — who were saying that Saddam was linked to Al Qaeda and to 9/11 potentially. So they laundered those talking points as well.

Now, Benjamin Netanyahu and the Likud Party really wanted us to go in and take out Saddam so that they could have basically a launching pad for operations into Iraq and then also into Syria. They wanted us to do the heavy lifting so they could eventually get their goal of taking out Assad, who was supporting Hezbollah and Hamas, and then also taking out Iran. So that’s why they supported the war in Iraq.

The prime minister at the time, Ariel Sharon, initially said, “No, I don’t support this. I want America to focus on taking out Iran.” But then eventually he got on board. So you basically had both major political parties inside of Israel pushing for the war in Iraq.

The Israelis also wanted access to Iraq’s oil supply so that they could get a pipeline of oil coming out of Iraq and directly into Israel, circumventing Syria, because they didn’t want to go through Syria because Assad was supporting the Iranians and supporting Hamas and Hezbollah.

So once we got into Iraq and got into that quagmire, the U.S. government screwed things up so badly that we basically handed over Iraq to Iranian-backed Shias that were there. So by the time we were done in Iraq, Iran pretty much controlled Iraq through their proxies, helped them circumvent sanctions, made Iran even stronger.

So then you had the Shia Crescent — you basically had a unification of Tehran, Baghdad, and Damascus forming that crescent, that land bridge, with Iranian supplies going right into Israel’s backyard. So the Israelis at the end of the Iraq war were like, “No, no, this is not going to work at all. We have to break this up, we have to go to war in Syria, we have to take down Assad.”

The Rise of ISIS and the Syrian Conflict

Arab Spring happened. There was some energy from the people — I think it was somewhat organic. But then in short order we came in and we said we’re going to work with the Israelis, but we’re also going to have to work heavily with the Sunni population on the ground in Syria to create an uprising. And that’s where ISIS came from. We worked directly with Al Qaeda. Hillary Clinton’s emails confirmed this — the operations that we were doing to support the so-called Free Syrian Army. And there were some moderates there, but the most effective guys initially were Al Qaeda and then eventually ISIS.

Now obviously ISIS got out of control and they started plotting attacks in Europe, they started plotting attacks in America. They took over large swaths of Iraq. So we then had to go back and put out, once again, the brush fire that we had started, and go after ISIS. And that’s where I lost my late wife.

But Israel was the driving factor in that. We took down Saddam, who was a strongman against Israel. We then had to go in and take out Assad, who was a strongman against Israel as well. And now this is the third phase — we’re going now into Iran to take out that strong government for Israel.

SHAWN RYAN: And who did we put in charge of Syria?

JOE KENT: We handed that whole — well, again, we screwed the whole thing up so much that we handed it to a —

SHAWN RYAN: — leader of f*ing Al Qaeda.

JOE KENT: He was in ISIS initially. He was in Al Qaeda initially in Iraq, fighting against us. We had him in jail. He joined ISIS, broke off from ISIS, hand-selected by Bin Laden’s right-hand man, Zawahiri, to lead Nusra. And then they rebranded. And this is the number one way to fool Americans as a jihadist — just put on a suit and get a good PR company, and then apparently we’ll just believe whatever you say.

SHAWN RYAN: There are videos of this guy holding people’s heads that he cut off.

JOE KENT: He’s a thug.

SHAWN RYAN: He’s shaking — he’s a brutal — President Trump’s hand.

JOE KENT: Horrible advice. Yep.

SHAWN RYAN: And so what the f* are we doing? What are we doing exactly?

Trump, Syria, and the Middle East Quagmire

JOE KENT: President Trump at the beginning — again, this is where Trump —

SHAWN RYAN: This guy’s inviting a f*ing terrorist —

JOE KENT: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: — into our house.

JOE KENT: In the first Trump administration, he had Syria right. He said, “We’re going to go in, we’re going to take out the caliphate because it poses a threat to us, and then we’re going to get out.” And this is why I supported President Trump even after losing Shannon, because he was trying to get our troops out. The military was fighting him.

And then when Assad fell in December, right before President Trump even took office — when Assad fell and Jolani, whatever, HTS took over Syria — President Trump put out a Truth. You can still probably pull it up, where he says, “Whatever happens in Syria, it’s not our business. I always said it was a bad idea. I don’t want to be involved in Syria.” And that was actually the right approach, because it was too late for us to go back in and fight the new government. The best thing that we could have done is back off, let the Turks, let the Israelis, let our regional partners kind of take the lead there.

But instead we went all in with the Shara government and we embraced them. And now we’re pretending they’re part of the D-ISIS coalition, and it’s an entire mess.

The Middle East, basically — and again, President Trump used to understand this — the Middle East is a place where you can just get involved in these never-ending quagmires. You start one fire to put out another, and you never fully extricate yourself. And at the end of the equation, there’s never a clear benefit for the American people. And that’s gotten us to the state that we’re in right now, and we have to stop that.

The JCPOA, Iran, and Nuclear Inspections

SHAWN RYAN: What about the IAEA inspections? We were going in there and inspecting all these facilities in Iran, correct? And then Trump cut that —

JOE KENT: Oh, yeah. As part of the —

SHAWN RYAN: In his first administration.

JOE KENT: Right. As part of getting rid of the JCPOA.

SHAWN RYAN: Why would we do that?

JOE KENT: I think the idea with the JCPOA was it gave Iran access — and I partially agree with this — it gave Iran access to more capital with sanctions circumvention. That was the whole famous — initially, Obama unfroze a bunch of the assets that we had frozen. And that’s why we flew over the pallets of cash that everyone talks about so frequently. And then as part of throwing out the JCPOA, we got rid of the inspections.

Because when they put in the inspectors, there was some sanctions relief that came with that. By getting rid of the JCPOA and slapping the sanctions back on them, that made it more challenging for the inspectors to get back into the Iranian sites again.

Trump had used his leverage — he killed Soleimani. We were in a really good place at the beginning of this administration. President Trump was in a great spot with Iran. Him and the Supreme Leader both agreed: no nukes. We need to have a discussion about enrichment. We need to have a discussion about how that’s going to be supervised and checked. But this was a discussion that could have been worked out by diplomats sitting at a table, as opposed to a massive military conflict.

And Iran — and again, I’m no fan of Iran — they were restraining their proxies. They even restrained their proxies throughout the first iteration of the 12-day war. So again, I go back to: why are we doing what we’re doing right now? Look at the ramifications, look at how little we’re gaining from this. And again, all roads go back to Israel being the benefactor in all of this. And we’ve got to get that relationship to a place where it actually benefits us, and not just them.

Iranian Sleeper Cells in the United States

SHAWN RYAN: As far as these proxies — I mean, you know Sarah Adams, correct? She’s been talking about the sleeper cells in the U.S. for probably two years now, maybe longer.

JOE KENT: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: Says there are thousands — thousands of terrorists in sleeper cells all around the country. Now, how are we going to know if Iran is the one that activated them?

Threats Within U.S. Borders and the Butler Assassination Attempt

JOE KENT: Right. Or were they just inspired by events that are over there? So I testified publicly in December that we at NCTC had identified 18,000 known suspected terrorists who had access to America. The more we dug into the data of the last four years, the more I realized we have no idea who’s in our country. Just because there was no border. The CBP1 app and the ability for people to come into the country undetected, but then later apply for a benefit knowing they’d get a parole status, which gives them a legal status in America, which we’re still caught up in the courts and fighting the courts with. We just simply don’t know.

At the beginning of this war we were looking at other data sets of people who could have come from either Iran or Lebanon, Iraq, countries that have large Shia populations. And again, the data was — to me, it was as murky as the numbers of who came into the border. The one consistent factor I kept coming away with, or the one takeaway I kept coming away with, was that we have no idea who is in our country right now, and that is incredibly dangerous.

So, again, I think we should be focusing the majority of our efforts on securing our homeland and making sure that people who came into our country in the last four years are located and we get them out now.

Sleeper cells — I think a lot of people, when they hear sleeper cells, they’ll think like it’s a handful of guys who are specifically trained and infiltrated to conduct an attack at a certain time that could be taking place. I don’t think that’s the main threat. I think the main threat is people that have come here legally and illegally being inspired by media they consume or by seeing social media clips and then saying, “Now I’m going to conduct an attack as a lone actor.” Because that’s even harder for us to pick up on.

Cells, when they infiltrate, they have to communicate with each other. The US Intelligence community and law enforcement — we’re pretty good at infiltrating those cells and detecting them. It’s not 100%. It could still happen. But when it’s a lone actor and it’s someone who’s just inspired to take action based on the fact that they shouldn’t even be in our country in the first place, and they see some media and they take action, then that’s hard for us to actually get ahead of and stop until it’s too late.

And at the beginning of this conflict, we’ve already seen several attacks. There was a guy down in Texas who went in the bar and shot up several people — I think killed three people, shot several more. He had an Iran T-shirt on.

SHAWN RYAN: You said ODU — Old Dominion University, University of Virginia.

JOE KENT: Exactly. Right there, too.

SHAWN RYAN: And then how do you know that they need to communicate and that we would pick that up? Because it’s been reported by Sarah and her counterparts that they are only communicating back to HQ in Afghanistan through couriers and that they’re totally isolated. They don’t know each other. So the only way they have to communicate is through couriers, which we would not pick that up.

JOE KENT: That’s definitely possible, too. Yeah. That’s certainly possible. I wouldn’t rule it out. Again, it goes back to — the border was open for four years. So it’s kind of like if you and I wanted to attack our adversaries and they left their border open for four years, how creative could we get? And that’s the opportunity that we gave all of our enemies.

So when people would say, “Well, how many bad guys do you think are in the country? What’s the number?” I’m like, “I don’t know. I’ll tell you the truth. The more we dig through the data, the more we realize we really, truly don’t know.” And then people would say, “Well, do you think it’s sleeper cells? Do you think it’s this, that or the other thing?” It’s like, well, honestly, again, we kind of go back to the only thing we created for the last four years under the previous administration was a massive opportunity for terrorists to exploit our country and to kill people here.

Iran, Proxy Attacks, and Domestic Terrorism Motivations

SHAWN RYAN: If they were to attack with a proxy, would you be 100% confident that it was them?

JOE KENT: If Iran — I mean, at this point, what we’ve seen more of is we’ve seen younger people, some of whom were born here, conduct these attacks, and they were just inspired by something that they saw. And then a lot of them, too — I know Sarah has her theory of the case. I think the bigger threat, based on what we saw last year, the terrorist attacks we saw here in America — most of those people were inspired by media content they had consumed coming out of Gaza, the Gaza conflict, and they cited Gaza as being a driver pushing them towards violence. So, yeah, obviously if we intercepted a cell of Iranians that we could prove they had ties back to Iran, then, yeah, absolutely, we’d have to hold them accountable for that.

SHAWN RYAN: I mean, there are other motivations for this as well — to get us all riled up.

JOE KENT: Oh, for sure. 100%.

SHAWN RYAN: Do you think that’s a possibility?

JOE KENT: I think war always presents an opportunity for people to exploit, to further their objectives. So if you want to sell more surveillance, more infringements upon our civil liberties, now is the time to do it. Because, like I just described, it’s a very scary security environment. You can legitimately say, “Hey, we don’t know who’s in our borders. Terrorists could attack.” Because what’s taking place in the Middle East, there’s been a massive decline in law and order in general in our cities. So therefore, we need — take your pick — what kind of intrusions on our civil liberties. And it becomes easier — I mean, the more people are scared of what’s happening, the easier that is to sell. So I definitely think there are going to be elements of the government and big tech that will exploit this chaos.

Leak Allegations Against Joe Kent

SHAWN RYAN: You’re being accused of leaking classified information.

JOE KENT: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: What classified information did you leak?

JOE KENT: That’s a good question. I didn’t leak any classified information. I had my full security clearance until last week when I walked out the door. I had full access to everything. So my security clearance was never suspended, never pulled. I think most of these leak allegations are just a media narrative to take away from the conversation that you and I are having. The first leak accusation surfaced right as I was going live with Tucker. So they were just trying to take the wind out of my sails, I think, a little bit by saying, “Don’t listen to this guy. He’s a leaker.”

SHAWN RYAN: I mean, that’s what I think. It seems very reactionary to me. When did the investigation start?

JOE KENT: I don’t think there is an investigation.

SHAWN RYAN: There isn’t?

JOE KENT: No. No one has come to me and said, “You’re being investigated.” The only proof of there being an investigation is someone in the government leaking to the media, saying that Kent’s under investigation for being a leaker. So they had to leak that I’m a leaker.

SHAWN RYAN: Another leaker.

JOE KENT: Right, exactly. That’s why — I mean, I take it seriously. The FBI has ruined innocent people’s lives, like General Flynn, with an accusation before. So I take it seriously. I’m confident I didn’t leak any classified information. But at the same time, we kind of know what the game is here. And if they really were going to investigate me, they would come to me and say, “Hey, you’re being investigated,” or “We’re going to ask you some questions,” et cetera. If they really were going to investigate me, too, I don’t think they would tip their hand ahead of time by leaking it. I don’t think that works out in their advantage at all. So I think it’s just media.

SHAWN RYAN: If they knew you were leaking, why wouldn’t they have fired you and then continued on with the investigation? They were just going to wait for your resignation?

JOE KENT: Right. They at least would have pulled my clearance.

SHAWN RYAN: “He’s going to resign soon. Don’t fire him. We know he’s leaking classified information, but he’s going to be gone, so.”

JOE KENT: Exactly. Yeah. It doesn’t make any sense.

The Butler Assassination Attempt and Broader Security Concerns

SHAWN RYAN: What’s going on with the Butler assassination attempt? Are we looking into that?

JOE KENT: Yeah, I think there are basically two schools of thought as to what’s taking place right now and how we got in the situation with Iran — that Trump should know better, and I think he does know better. I just gave you the more than likely scenario. I think he just got a lot of bad information.

There’s a much smaller chance, but I think it can’t be ignored, the fact that there were several assassination attempts against President Trump that really haven’t fully been explained. One of which — Butler itself, no one is saying is linked to the FBI. But two days before the Butler assassination attempt, we arrested a guy named Asif Merchant. He was just prosecuted and I think going to jail. We arrested him for being recruited by Iran to come here and attempt to assassinate President Trump — to avenge the killing of Qasem Soleimani.

Merchant had an FBI informant that was working with him. Merchant didn’t know he was an FBI informant, obviously, and they basically set up a scheme to conduct an assassination against President Trump using a sniper. They arrest Merchant, and then two days later a sniper tries to kill Trump at Butler. I wanted to look for potential linkage between those events and was completely shut off and blocked from that. I was at NCTC, the National Counterterrorism Center.

SHAWN RYAN: Why would they cut you off? That seems like definitely possible terrorism, especially considering the first one was supposedly sent by Iran.

JOE KENT: Yeah, exactly. I don’t know. Again, we were told, “Hey, the Merchant trial is ongoing, so you can’t look into any of the information. You can look at a little bit of the information, but we can’t really do much there.” But my question was always, is there any linkage between anyone that Merchant talked to and the people who were there at Butler — and Crooks — because we can say all day long they’re not linked, but are we sure that we had everything that Merchant was doing under control? Is there any linkage between those two events? From my vantage point, I didn’t see that investigation being done very thoroughly. I think this matters.

SHAWN RYAN: Who’s conducting that investigation?

JOE KENT: That was all the FBI.

SHAWN RYAN: Oh, the FBI. Yeah.

JOE KENT: I think this matters in terms of what we’re talking about, because you had Butler, you had the other assassination attempt at West Palm Beach, and then once Trump came into office, you had several breaches of his security perimeter. You had the famous stoppage of the escalator at the UN. You had, when he went out to dinner, there was the table of Code Pink protesters who sat down next to him. And then you had the police officer — who I think is probably a good patriotic American, but he was armed, he wasn’t part of the President’s detail — come up and shake President Trump’s hand, basically circumventing the Secret Service.

And then you had the assassination of Charlie Kirk. And Charlie was one of the most vocal advocates against a regime change war inside of Iran. He was advocating heavily that we change our stance in regards to our relationship with Israel. He was in the White House lobbying President Trump to not attack Iran in the lead up to the 12-day war. So Charlie would have been very, very much against what was going on, what’s going on right now. Now he’s then killed in September. And so I think it’s irresponsible for us not to look at all of these things on a broader timeline and see where they fit into what’s taking place right now.

SHAWN RYAN: Are you saying that you don’t think that the kid that’s been propped up to have killed Charlie is the guy?

The Charlie Kirk Assassination Attempt and Foreign Connections

JOE KENT: I’m not saying that at all. I mean, that kid, his fingerprints are on the gun. That case is going to be made. What I do know is that NCTC was investigating the foreign, any foreign linkage, not necessarily just to the suspect, to Robinson, but any foreign linkage that could have taken place regarding that case. And again, we were stopped really early on from thoroughly investigating.

And all that I can say is that we had more foreign connections. I’m not saying a foreign government, but I’m saying foreign connections to look into to thoroughly do our due diligence from an investigatory standpoint. That, in my opinion, was not done. Now, the FBI will tell you, we got our guy, he turned himself in, his fingerprints are on the gun. There’s been some debate over whether or not he confessed. I guess we’ll see when he goes to court.

But now that the whole case is being handled 100% by Utah, and again, considering how prominent Charlie Kirk was, I think it’s important that we continue that investigation and that every angle is looked into and then a complete investigation actually takes place. And from what I saw, did not happen.

SHAWN RYAN: So this is going to wind up just like JFK.

JOE KENT: I hope not. I hope not. I think we have the ability to really look into every aspect of it, no matter what the truth is. And no matter where that leads us. And again, look, people are saying, why are you speaking cryptically? I can’t speculate. I can only tell you what I know. And the only thing I know for sure is that our due diligence was not done on looking at the foreign links. The rest of the case could be rock solid if they’ve got Tyler Robinson.

SHAWN RYAN: There are foreign links.

JOE KENT: There’s foreign connections we need to look into.

SHAWN RYAN: What are those connections?

JOE KENT: That I can’t get into because that’s all tied up inside of classified channels, essentially. But there was more work we needed to do. And you know how an investigation works. You chase down 99 leads and 100 leads, and 99 of them are BS, and you get one good one. So even the things that I know of that I don’t want to speculate about, half of them could be — 75%, 90% of them could be trash leads, but they’re stuff that we need to look down.

Charlie was a very influential figure. He traveled the world. He traveled the nation. There was a lot of people from all over the place looking and watching Charlie Kirk speak there. There was people speculating about what was going to happen to Charlie Kirk online ahead of time. So there’s more work that we needed to do in regards to foreign linkage to the Kirk assassination. Man, I just…

The Rush to Close the Case

SHAWN RYAN: It’s just — I just don’t understand why you wouldn’t want to know, why you wouldn’t conduct a full investigation on who tried to kill you if you’re the President of the United States.

JOE KENT: Right.

SHAWN RYAN: I just. That does not compute in my brain.

JOE KENT: Right.

SHAWN RYAN: Why would you not want to know?

JOE KENT: Especially after we were told for quite some time that Thomas Crooks was an enigma. We didn’t know who he was. He’s just this crazy kid. He had no online footprint. We were told for a while that they couldn’t get into his devices, that they were locked, couldn’t get into his devices. And then when they said they finally got into his — the FBI finally said they got into his devices — they’re like, no, there’s nothing there.

Well, fast forward a couple months, and Tucker Carlson’s investigative journalist finds a full online persona of this kid. He’s communicating with other people. He’s commenting on YouTube videos. He’s interacting with people that are overseas. So there’s more work there to be done, clearly. And there was a big rush to say, like, well, we shot the sniper. He’s kind of an enigma. We don’t know anything about him, but case closed. Cremate the body 10 days later.

SHAWN RYAN: Tucker’s the one that came up with all that.

JOE KENT: Tucker’s investigative journalist that works on Tucker’s team found Crooks’ online persona. Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: And the FBI didn’t —

JOE KENT: The FBI didn’t report it. I don’t know what the case is.

Where Does Tulsi Stand?

SHAWN RYAN: Where does Tulsi stand in all this stuff?

JOE KENT: She’s obviously in a tough spot. So I don’t want to say anything else that’s going to put her in a tougher spot than she’s already in. She’s doing the best that she can.

SHAWN RYAN: How many people up there are against what we’re doing?

JOE KENT: It’s hard to put a number on it. Look, you know how the government is.

SHAWN RYAN: Maybe a percentage.

JOE KENT: Yeah. Most people that serve in the government, I found they want to make their boss happy and they don’t want any friction at work and they want to salute and they want to move out.

SHAWN RYAN: I think that’s where everybody’s lost it.

JOE KENT: 100%. I agree.

SHAWN RYAN: The job is to protect and serve the people of the United States.

JOE KENT: Yeah. Yep. And look, there’s a lot of good patriots that are still there who think that they’re doing the right thing. And this is a dilemma that I had. I was like, well, do I stay here and do I soldier on and be a good soldier and do I show up every day and do my darndest, and then if the big strategic picture gets messed up, well, that’s not really on me. I did that for 20 plus years in the military and in the agency and kind of see where that got us. Right? When we knew better, see where that got us.

And so like I said, 20 plus years ago, I made a promise to myself. If I ever had the ability to speak out and try to get us on a better path, I would do so. If my late wife hadn’t gotten killed, if I hadn’t been through the experiences I had been through, I don’t think I have the clarity and the courage to do what I’m doing now.

So I am sympathetic to people who are inside who are still like, hey, I’m just a guy. I’m not that important. I’m trying to do my job. I’ll do what I’m told. However, the people who came in with President Trump in key leadership positions that are a part of this movement and leading this movement, I think they’ve got to reflect on what we ran on, because this is not what we ran on and they have to live with it. And so they can either make a decision to try and influence the situation from inside, but once they realize they can’t influence that situation inside, then they have a choice to make. Do they stay and be complicit with it, or do they leave and try and get us back on the right path?

How Do We Get Out of This?

SHAWN RYAN: In your mind, how do we get out of this thing? I mean, we’re in it now with Iran, we’re in it. How does this end? How do we get out of this? What are the options?

JOE KENT: If we don’t deal with the Israelis, then this thing will just keep going. There might be fits and starts, like maybe this five day ceasefire will work. I’m a little skeptical.

SHAWN RYAN: I’m hopeful.

JOE KENT: But unless we restrain the Israelis and tell them, like, you’re done, and if you continue to attack and you continue to do things without telling us and asking us first — we’re paying for it, you’re going to ask us first — then we are going to negate our other part of the deal. And our part of the deal says that we defend Israel and we provide their Iron Dome system. We provide their air defense. We provide a lot of their defense.

SHAWN RYAN: We provide their Iron Dome.

JOE KENT: We provide —

SHAWN RYAN: I don’t even have a —

JOE KENT: We provide a lot of the funding for the Iron Dome. For sure. For sure. So I would say to the Israelis very bluntly, you’re done going on the offense. We will tell you what operations you can conduct. If you disobey us and you don’t run your operations by us that we’re paying for, then we are going to start taking away features of your defense system to the point where all you can do with your military, basically, is stay on the defense.

That’s the only way to restrain the Israelis, in my opinion. I think we’re past the point of being able to have nice conversations, like, hey, could you guys please not — because every time we say, “Could you please not?” the Israelis say, “Yeah, sure, that sounds good.” And they turn around and they conduct strikes that basically negate any kind of negotiation that we’re trying to pursue.

SHAWN RYAN: I mean, did Netanyahu literally just say that? Yeah, again with this statement.

JOE KENT: Again, as frustrating as I get with the Israelis, sometimes they’re not very subtle. Like, the Israelis are not doing a lot of lying and BSing to us. Like, they’re pretty upfront with what they’re doing and what they plan to do. So I would take them at their word, and I would just say, no, you’re not, because we’re paying for all this and we have to restrain them.

And I know a lot of people are going to be very, very frustrated when I say that, because there are people who really like Israel. And I’m not saying, like, you cut off Israel, whatever. I’m not saying any of that. I’m saying you take away the resources that they have right now to go on the offense, make it so Israel could only defend themselves. That’s fine. But they can’t go on the offense anymore.

Once we do that and once we restrain the Israelis, then I think we have a place where we can use our allies in the Gulf. We can use the Omanis, the Qataris, et cetera, to get the Iranians to come to the table and come up with a way that we can reopen the Straits of Hormuz. I think we’re going to need to say to the Iranians, okay, we need to lift sanctions on some of their oil. We have to give them something.

So I think lifting the sanctions and letting them get a lot of their oil introduced back into the world market — I think that’s actually a pretty good carrot to get them to the table. And that’s also going to help lower the price at the pump and get more oil and petrochemicals flowing for the fertilizers and everything else that the world needs in terms of energy.

But again, step one is restraining the Israelis. That’s the only way I can see out of this. And look, we’re going to have to make some concessions. We’re going to have to say, hey, we’ll work with whoever is there in Iran. We’re going to have to give them red lines that might need to be enforced every now and again. Like, your proxies will not attack us. You will stop attacking the Gulf countries. Otherwise this will continue. But at this point, they know we’re pretty serious about using force. I think we have to show them now that we’re serious about using diplomacy and getting to the table.

Trump’s Ability to Act Decisively

SHAWN RYAN: What are the chances you think that’ll happen?

JOE KENT: Every day that goes by, less and less. Right now, again, look, I know you’re frustrated with President Trump. I know probably a lot of your viewers are frustrated with President Trump. I think if President Trump sits and thinks about where we are and how we got here, I think he’ll understand that we’re in a bad spot and we need to get out of it. And in order to get out of it, he needs to take drastic action.

Now, that’s where the good news is. And this is what gives me some hope. President Trump is good at taking drastic action. He is decisive, he is unpredictable. But in terms of doing big things, that’s the story of President Trump’s life. He can do it. So I think other presidents in this situation, they wouldn’t be able to rapidly extricate us from this. I think Trump can. He needs to listen to his core beliefs and he needs to listen to different advisors, and he needs to have the courage to restrain the Israelis. Then I think he can do it.

It gets harder and harder every day that goes on, though. If he’s got this five day window that he’s created for himself, he needs to use it and he needs to pursue it aggressively. At the end of that five day window, I think it’s going to be exponentially more difficult.

SHAWN RYAN: I mean, what do you think? Our brand’s literally saying there are no negotiations going on, right? You think there are or do you think there are not?

The Israeli Lobby, Intelligence, and Political Fallout

JOE KENT: I’m sure we’re trying. I’m sure we’re trying. We have some people that I know are probably aggressively reaching out now. Are they getting responses? I don’t know. I just think that the Iranians, after us killing so many of the negotiators and so many of the leaders, so many of the leadership there, and then us basically saying after the 12-day war that we used the negotiations as a ruse. I don’t think that helps because I think before, again, there was a tension inside of Iran where you had the clerics and you had some of the moderates that were saying, “Okay, we won’t make a nuclear bomb. We are interested in some engagement with the Americans. We would like a deal.” But then you had the hardliners, you had the students of Qasem Soleimani who were like, “Absolutely not. Let’s go on the offensive. Let’s use our proxies to kill these guys. Let’s bleed them out of the Middle East.”

So right now, who’s winning that argument inside Iran? I fear the hardliners are winning that argument inside of Iran, because every Iranian leader that they target and they kill. I mean, Trump even said it today when he was at the planeside. He was asked, “Who are you talking with inside of Iran?” And he said, “I don’t want to name them because then they might get killed.” Well, they might get killed by the Israelis because the Israelis don’t want us to have negotiations.

SHAWN RYAN: This is crazy.

JOE KENT: It’s insane. No, no, it’s insane.

SHAWN RYAN: Crazy.

JOE KENT: It’s insane. So the Iranians are saying that.

SHAWN RYAN: He’s not saying that because if he names a name, the Israelis will kill them.

JOE KENT: I didn’t say that.

SHAWN RYAN: He said — you’re saying that we can’t —

JOE KENT: That —

SHAWN RYAN: I just don’t understand how. Essentially you’re saying we just need to tell them no. We have to.

JOE KENT: That’s it. And not just tell them no. You have to take things away from them. You can’t just say no, because we’ve said no to them before. How forcefully? I don’t know. I think it’s pretty debatable. But right now they’re having their cake and they’re eating it too. I mean, we are doing all the heavy lifting in this war for them, but we’re also continuing to provide them so much military assistance. We’re providing their defense package for them.

So we have to go to them and we have to say not just no, but “You’re going to run any strikes by us. And also, you’re not going on the offense anymore. You’re done being on the offense. If you’re attacked, we’ll back you up. If you guys want to do military operations on your own border, that’s your country, fine. What takes place now in Iran — that affects us, that affects the GCC, that affects the Straits of Hormuz and world energy. You’re done.” We have to say that to them and we have to take away things that make it so that they can only do their own defense. They can’t go on the offense. Until we do that, I don’t think the Iranians actually will take us very seriously.

SHAWN RYAN: We don’t have a problem doing that to any other country in the world.

JOE KENT: Pretty crazy, right?

SHAWN RYAN: Why do we have reluctancy to do it to Israel?

JOE KENT: I mean, there’s obviously the Israeli lobby factor — AIPAC and all the other surrogates that spend so much money on our elections. There’s major donors. Miriam Adelson gave — I mean, someone can look this up — I think $100 million to Trump’s campaign. And she’s not the only one. Someone can look it up. I’m not sure exactly off the top of my head, but it’s significant, and there are other really prominent donors that are very pro-Israel, many of whom are dual citizens.

SHAWN RYAN: Oh, yeah. I mean, the owner of OnlyFans — he just died today, right? He was the biggest donor to AIPAC.

JOE KENT: Right.

SHAWN RYAN: Did you know that?

JOE KENT: I just learned that today, actually. I had to check that myself because I wasn’t aware of that until he found out. Yeah, yeah. So we’ve got a pimp who funds AIPAC so that we can go to war. Yeah. Make it make sense.

But I think the Israeli lobby is part of it. I also think that there is a massive outpouring of support from the evangelical community in America — evangelical Christians. And I also think a lot of people, especially the baby boomer generation, have just been led to believe that Israel’s a democracy. The Israelis, they speak English, they sound like us. I’ve dealt with the Israelis quite a bit. They’re pretty pleasant to deal with. They’re easy to deal with. Because a lot of them are educated in America, it’s easy to get complacent around the Israelis because they don’t have that foreign feeling. And so they do a good job of selling, “Hey, we have the same interests here, man. We’re just the same.”

So a lot of it is financial. You have a spiritual component to it. And then you also have the Israelis basically providing us with a lot of intelligence and potential access — even though I think a lot of that is to influence us rather than inform us.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, you had already mentioned that a lot of that stuff isn’t in the intel pipeline.

JOE KENT: Right, exactly.

The Intelligence Pipeline and Israeli Influence

SHAWN RYAN: What is the intel pipeline? What is it? What is the flow of intel from the field to the top?

JOE KENT: Well, it depends on what manner of intelligence it is. But stuff that we get — and you know this from your past life — when we get information, especially from a foreign liaison service, it always has that caveat: “Could be used to influence and inform.” So everyone knows what they’re reading.

If you want to lean heavily on the inform side and you’re a partner of ours that has access to senior decision makers, you bypass the intel guys, because they’re going to check your stuff. They’re going to put it through a vetting process, they’re going to put it through analytical tradecraft. If you want to short-circuit that, then you go directly to key decision makers and you say, “Hey, I’ve got some intel for you.” It hasn’t gone through the intel channels, and a lot of those senior decision makers — although they have access to 18 intelligence agencies and top-secret clearances — they’re not familiar with intel. And so they might not know that there’s a vetting process that needs to take place, or things are happening so quickly they don’t have time to think about it.

So the Israelis, with their access — and again, a lot of that access comes from the media, it comes from the donors, it comes from just a certain familiarity and comfort that we have with the Israelis — they’re able to push that in there. Intel, as you know, it’s not 100%, it’s not always accurate. But when we get intelligence from the field, whether it’s from a human source, signals, or a liaison, there’s a vetting process that has to take place before it goes into finished intel, and then usually it’s explained how we got the intel. Again, the Israelis have done a really good job of putting an end run on that system to circumvent it.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah. The reason I’m asking — I’m just wondering if the intelligence that Iran had nuclear weapons went through the proper channels.

JOE KENT: It didn’t.

SHAWN RYAN: We know it didn’t.

JOE KENT: Yeah, it just didn’t.

SHAWN RYAN: Who’s the gate? Who’s the gate that’s keeping real intel from getting to Trump?

JOE KENT: That’s a good question. I mean, he, in theory, has control over who he has around him. He’s the president. He’s the commander in chief.

SHAWN RYAN: Somebody’s stopping real information from getting to him.

JOE KENT: Yeah, clearly. Or maybe he just doesn’t want to hear it. I don’t know what the case is.

SHAWN RYAN: I think he might not want to hear it.

JOE KENT: I think he got sold a pretty clean equation. They were like, “Hey, the protesters are protesting. The Iranians at the negotiating table have said they still want to enrich.” Because again, the Israelis and their allies moved that red line, making Trump basically think that US policy is no enrichment. It was very effective. And so they made it seem like the negotiations had stalled out, when in fact I don’t think they had. I think Steve Witkoff could have gotten us a deal back in June.

I think they just sold him a very simple, rushed equation to get us into this conflict. A big part of getting a quick action like this is rushing the president and telling him, “Hey, the protesters were just out there in June. We don’t have time in January. We don’t have time for a long deliberation. We need to conduct these strikes now.” And so I think they took away a lot of his decision-making space and time and only put a handful of advisors around him. And maybe those are the people that he requested. But because he thought that he was under the gun for a time crunch, I don’t think he had enough time to really fully assess that.

Joe Kent’s Resignation and Influence Questions

SHAWN RYAN: A lot of people are saying that your resignation and change of heart is because of influence from your wife. Is there any validity to that?

JOE KENT: No, not at all. I mean, we share very similar views. One of the reasons we probably got married.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, I had to address it. It’s out there.

JOE KENT: Sure, sure.

SHAWN RYAN: All right, Joe, I want to take a break. When we come back, I just want to talk about what this means for the midterms, what this means for the next election, what this means for the Republican Party, what this means for MAGA.

JOE KENT: Yeah, absolutely.

MAGA, the Midterms, and the Republican Party

SHAWN RYAN: All right, Joe, we’re back from the break. Midterms are coming up.

JOE KENT: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: Next election’s coming up.

JOE KENT: Yep.

SHAWN RYAN: MAGA split.

JOE KENT: Yep.

SHAWN RYAN: CNN just put out a poll that said 100% of MAGA supports the Iran war. I don’t think they’re wrong. I just think a lot of people have left MAGA. A lot of people have left with that.

JOE KENT: And I think our political opponents would love us to believe that this very unpopular thing we’re doing is popular, to convince us to keep doing it. I mean, I’d be very wary, obviously, of CNN. I don’t know why we’re even listening to CNN. It’s insane.

SHAWN RYAN: That came from somebody on the staff here.

JOE KENT: No, but I saw that too.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah. But I actually don’t watch any mainstream media. Not Fox, not MSNBC, not any of it. It’s all garbage.

JOE KENT: It is.

SHAWN RYAN: But what does this mean? I mean, what are you seeing?

The MAGA Coalition, Political Aspirations, and Foreign Influence

JOE KENT: So I think the conventional wisdom would tell you, and I think the president was told this, I think the president was told that wartime presidents are always popular. If you look at Bush’s approval rating after both the launch in Afghanistan and Iraq, it was his highest ratings yet. So that’s the conventional wisdom. The conventional wisdom also says that most Americans, they don’t really care about foreign policy, but what they do care about is they care about the price of the pump.

And look at what this conflict has already done at the price of the pump. Look what it’s already done to cost of living. We already had an inflation crisis and Trump was working on getting us out of it. But look at the effect that the war, especially what’s happening in the straits, is going to have on all these everyday issues that your average really hardworking person who’s busting their butt to stay above water. They might not say that’s because of the Iran war and dig deeply into the policy, but they’re going to be like, oh, the party that’s in power right now screwed this up. I’m going to vote for the other guy. And then you have the MAGA issue.

SHAWN RYAN: It’s not even just this country. We’re talking about a global economic depression here.

JOE KENT: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: Staring us f*ing global economic depression.

JOE KENT: Yeah. Potential famine. Because the fertilizer, I mean, it’s just the magnetism. Are you good at famines, America? I don’t think we will. But the amount of fertilizer that needs those petrochemicals that come out of the Gulf, that rely on the straits of Hormuz flowing freely, I mean, that’s a major problem. It’s going to be a major problem.

I think first for Europe, I think for Africa, for Asia. I think America, we can insulate ourselves to a certain extent. We’re definitely going to feel it in terms of the inflation. We’re already feeling it. The gas prices are back up. Like we’re back in the Biden era again, unfortunately.

So I think that’s going to factor heavily on voters and then the MAGA issue, man. The people that were hardcore, who were small dollar donors to President Trump and to candidates like me when I was running with his endorsement, them not coming out or them being disenfranchised. He endorsed this war. He endorsed me twice.

SHAWN RYAN: Trump endorsed you?

JOE KENT: Yeah, twice.

SHAWN RYAN: On a speech day. Made it sound like he just felt sorry for you because your wife died in combat. And he just like handed you a job, which, honestly I was listening to that. I’m like, if that’s how you hand jobs out to your administration, no wonder we’re in the place we’re at.

JOE KENT: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: You just handed out pity jobs. Here you go.

JOE KENT: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: I mean, maybe look at their background and, you know, this is how we wind up with people like Sebastian Gorka.

JOE KENT: I think Trump just got into a position where he needed to say something about Manny. I think he’s frustrated because I’m doing these media appearances. So he’s going to fire back. For me, I don’t take it personally. I want him to just focus on what we’re talking about, focus on getting us out of this crisis.

And then also, like you said, for the midterms, you’re going to need a lot of hardcore MAGA people to come out to knock on doors, to do that hardcore work. Because working elections, it’s not easy, it’s not fun, it’s not glamorous. The MAGA base, Trump’s base, they’re hardworking people. And they got him across the finish line in 2026. A lot of them now, it’s debatable how much, but a good chunk of them are going to have a really hard time doing that because of the way this last year has gone.

SHAWN RYAN: Don’t come banging on my fing door. I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want to hear more of those fing lies.

JOE KENT: I hear that from a lot of people. From a lot of people.

The MAHA Movement, Glyphosate, and Broken Promises

SHAWN RYAN: It’s everything, Joe. It’s everything. Did you see the glyphosate stuff?

JOE KENT: I did. I did.

SHAWN RYAN: The Make America Healthy Again movement. Immunity. Immunity.

JOE KENT: Yep.

SHAWN RYAN: Because of what?

JOE KENT: What?

SHAWN RYAN: A national security issue. Do you know how many people died of cancer last year? 618,000. That’s not a national security concern. You know where the highest concentration of glyphosate is? It’s in Iowa. Do you know where the highest concentration of cancer is?

JOE KENT: Iowa.

SHAWN RYAN: It’s in Iowa.

JOE KENT: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: And he just gave him immunity.

JOE KENT: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: We’re calling the fentanyl crisis a national security concern. That’s a hundred thousand people. Cancer is 618,000 people in one year. And he just gave him immunity.

JOE KENT: Yeah. I think your frustration, your anger is felt by a lot of people who voted, who campaigned, who really believed the Epstein files. Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: Is that right? Are you serious right now? We’re just going to let people that are raping and killing and exploiting kids sexually just run free? But we’re going to sit the FBI on Joe Kent.

JOE KENT: It’s insanity, and it’s going to have a ramification. I know he’s probably not being told this at the White House, but it’s going to have a ramification on the election. It just will.

I mean, the coalition that we had was something, I think, very, very special in the sense that you had a lot of people who probably don’t consistently vote, who had gotten mobilized with our message. President Trump’s economic populism, his desire, at least stated desire, to go after the deep state, no new wars, the Make America Healthy Again movement — all of those coalescing into what became the MAGA movement in 2024, giving them the Electoral College and the popular vote.

I think over the course of the last year, that coalition has been very, very fractured. And people will say I’m fracturing the coalition right now. I’m not fracturing the coalition. The coalition is very fractured because of our actions. I want to preserve the coalition. I want the coalition to last. Because I think that formula — what President Trump and Vice President Vance ran on in 2024 — is the right message. It is the right formula for America and for our country. But we’ve got to be serious. If we promised to deliver and we didn’t deliver, we’ve got to be serious about that, and we’ve got to show people that we’re going to correct that.

SHAWN RYAN: I don’t think there’s any coalition left.

JOE KENT: I don’t disagree with you. I don’t disagree with you. The formula they made in 2024, though, shows that it can be done.

SHAWN RYAN: And going after the deep state — we haven’t seen one indictment. We haven’t seen anything. Nothing. We’ve seen look the other way. Are we still talking about Jeffrey Epstein? That’s what we see.

JOE KENT: No. The CIA, the FBI, all these powerful institutions are still very much intact, and they’re still very much calling the shots. And that’s a huge problem for the freedom and security of our country. So there’s a lot of things this administration needs to get serious about if we’re going to fix things. Obviously, this war being the most pressing, but I think this last year of us attempting to govern is going to have a major ramification in the midterms and then definitely in 2028 if we don’t get serious about turning it around, for sure.

What’s Next for Joe Kent

SHAWN RYAN: What are your aspirations now? What’s next for you the next week or two?

JOE KENT: I really want to push as hard as I can to attempt to reach the president. And I know that puts me in the line of fire and in the news cycle and people sniping at me online, but that’s the only plan I truly had leaving this.

The way I look at it is I already kind of got to do my shell to dream, like in our old line of work. I got to do that, and everything else is kind of gravy. I want to be able to serve my country. I care deeply about the future of this country. I care deeply about the future that we leave for our kids. So whatever capacity I end up working or serving at, as long as I feel like I can influence, to make sure I’m using my life experiences and what I’ve been through to affect a better outcome for our country — and I think national security is probably the best place that I can do that — then I’m happy.

I didn’t take resigning lightly. But once I made the decision, I felt clarity that I don’t think I felt ever in my life that this is the right thing to do.

SHAWN RYAN: So you’re the first of many that make a statement like that.

JOE KENT: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: Are you worried for your safety?

JOE KENT: No, I’m not. I’m worried for my family. But as a father, you know, you’re always worried. You’re always worried for your family. I have a strong family, strong extended family, strong friend network — like we were just talking about at the break and when I got here. The outpouring of support from veterans, from people I served with, from people that are part of whatever movement this is, it’s been amazing. So obviously the security worries are always there in the back of my head, but I think God’s on our side, and I think we’ll be okay.

SHAWN RYAN: Are we going to see you in a midterm? Your name pop up in any midterm elections?

JOE KENT: Not in a midterm, man. I got the running for Congress out of my system. I’m living in Virginia right now, and I don’t think there’s much of a prayer where I live for a Republican of my politics to get elected. So no, definitely not in the midterms. I don’t really have a desire to run for office again. It was a good experience. I’m glad I did it. I’m also glad it didn’t work out because I’ve kind of had to interact enough now with Congress in my last job that — man, that does not look enjoyable at all.

But I want to serve in this capacity. If we’re able to get someone into the White House who wants to put this country first, they’re going to need people that understand the national security apparatus and how to tackle it and reorient it towards American priorities. So I’d be happy to serve in that capacity.

SHAWN RYAN: What about 2028?

JOE KENT: Same thing. I think I could help craft good policies and come up with attack plans.

SHAWN RYAN: I mean, about a run, run.

JOE KENT: I have no plans to run for president in 2028. Running for Congress is challenging enough. I can’t imagine doing it in 2028. A problem with our politics in general is the amount of fundraising that you need to do. And I hated doing that. And I really have zero desire ever again to go ask people to cut me a check. But you have to. You’ve got to be a relentless fundraiser to make it in politics today.

And it’s tough because there’s so much money out there, and this is literally how our politicians end up getting bought. If they don’t take the check, then the other guy, their competitor, is going to take the check. And so that’s what a lot of it comes down to. And I’d much rather stay in the national security realm where I think I can contribute more anyways, than ever have to go beg donors for money ever again.

The AIPAC Problem and Foreign Influence in Politics

SHAWN RYAN: How do we solve the AIPAC problem?

JOE KENT: I think we need heavy legislation and regulation on the ability for foreign governments to come in, even using cutouts, because AIPAC will say, “No, no, no, this isn’t affiliated with Israel. These are Americans who support Israel.” And that I think by and large is true. But they’re advocating for policies that just support a foreign government. So there’s got to be some regulation on foreign agents. There’s got to be some regulation on having political fundraising packs and mechanisms that just support the agenda of a foreign country. What that is, I don’t exactly know. I mean, there’s —

SHAWN RYAN: What does that change if they register there as a foreign agent? Because Saudi’s got a huge lobbying for —

JOE KENT: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: So what does that change?

Joe Kent’s Combat Loadout & Closing Questions

JOE KENT: I don’t think it changes much. I think you just are aware. It’s more of an upfront — to my knowledge. Someone can fact check me on this. I’m not a foreign agent registry expert by any means, but I think once someone is registered under FARA, they can’t get a government contract.

SHAWN RYAN: Okay.

JOE KENT: I think they can resign from the position they’re in where they had to register under FARA, and then I think they can slide back in. And it’s not like a forever thing by any means.

The problem with the money side is that the Supreme Court basically ruled that money is speech. And just like they can’t tell you what you can and can’t say, the government can’t tell you how you can spend your money. So if you want to put your money into a super PAC, you can put an unlimited amount in there. And I think that’s basically been the death of our political system ever since. That makes it very possible for elections to be bought because money is fungible. I think it’s hard to actually create a firewall around that.

Hot Question: Combat Loadout

SHAWN RYAN: All right, Joe, we’re wrapping up the interview here. Got a hot question for you. Totally different change of pace here, so try to lighten it up a little bit. Joe, the last time you were on the show, we aired a clip called “Inside the Military’s Most Secretive Unit.” That thing did 2.8 million views on YouTube. This time around, we actually had Claude the AI scrape the data on your YouTube performance, dig through sources across the Internet and help us build this question.

JOE KENT: Oh man.

SHAWN RYAN: What came back was very interesting. When you were operating in that secretive unit, doing those missions most people will never hear about, what was your go-to combat loadout and why?

JOE KENT: Oh, it’s a great question. So it depends on obviously where I was working. I would say a consistent factor for me, because I was predominantly in the Middle East in dangerous places, was either a Glock 19 or a Glock 43 for an EDC.

SHAWN RYAN: Glock 43.

JOE KENT: Yeah. Little guy.

SHAWN RYAN: You’re running around with a Glock 43?

JOE KENT: Depends on what I was wearing and where I was. There’s also — what was it? The 26 as well? The 26? I think it’s the little fatter double stack version. But usually a Glock 19. I like the Glock 19 because it’s a good — you can conceal it, but it’s still a full size pistol. You got the 15 plus 1.

I carried cameras heavily as well, just for the type of work that we did.

SHAWN RYAN: What kind of cameras?

JOE KENT: Small digital camera. Like a small pocket size. Some of our guys would use bigger ones depending on what mission they would do. But I did a lot of human intelligence. So a huge part of my EDC was a pen and a paper and probably about a thousand dollars of cash on me. Because no pen, no paper, no intel. And if you don’t pay them, they don’t come back.

SHAWN RYAN: Damn.

JOE KENT: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: Did you carry a bolt bag or —

JOE KENT: Anything like a go bag? Yeah, I did. I had a little beat up North Face courier bag that I still have somewhere that I got around ’05. And it was like almost a superstition that I had to take on every deployment with me, and that would be like my little bug out of the vehicle bag.

SHAWN RYAN: Never a long gun?

JOE KENT: No, definitely long gun. Yeah, for sure.

SHAWN RYAN: What long gun?

JOE KENT: For sure. So we had 416s for a little bit and then just standard AR. No MP7 — I rolled an MP7 a couple times, but it’s just a little thing. The bullet, I was always a little skeptical on. I know some guys — I’d heard people say they shot folks with it and it was fine, it did the job. It always just seemed really little to me. There’s pictures of me with it. With an Uzi — I used an Uzi for a trip as like a lap gun in a car.

SHAWN RYAN: Used an Uzi.

JOE KENT: Yeah.

SHAWN RYAN: That’s awesome.

JOE KENT: Yeah, because it had the support — I mean, it had a great suppressor on it. At the time we didn’t have — we had MP5s, but we didn’t have suppressed ones. And the suppressor on the Uzi was sweet. So I used that as kind of my lap gun in the car. Big fan of the UMP .45s too.

SHAWN RYAN: Oh, you guys had those?

JOE KENT: We had those, yeah. And running around Baghdad, I thought that was great because everything was so close quarters in Baghdad and you just needed the stopping power, especially working in a car.

Shawn Presents Joe with a Gift

SHAWN RYAN: Damn. Well, I got you a present. You want to see it?

JOE KENT: Absolutely.

SHAWN RYAN: It’s a long gun.

JOE KENT: It’s a long gun. Are you serious?

SHAWN RYAN: I’m serious.

JOE KENT: I thought it was going to be gummy bears.

SHAWN RYAN: You’re in luck.

JOE KENT: My kids will be happy. This is what they care about.

SHAWN RYAN: I’ll give you another one.

JOE KENT: Have you seen these? Holy. Yeah, dude.

SHAWN RYAN: You know, with the FBI investigation, I don’t know if you’re going to get cleared for this thing, but yeah, this is a SIG — the SIG Spear chambered in 6.8, brand new optic. And SIG wanted me to give this to you.

JOE KENT: Wow, that’s incredible, man. Thank you so much.

SHAWN RYAN: And then Silencer Shop jumped in too. So they put this suppressor on here. And the good thing about Silencer Shop is once you sign up with them and you get everything done, that makes the process go a lot smoother, a lot easier getting suppressors, the Class 3 item stuff. So anyways, this is incredible, man.

JOE KENT: Thank you so much. What a beautiful gun.

SHAWN RYAN: You want to rip a couple off out back?

JOE KENT: Yeah, of course. Definitely, man. This is beautiful. Wow. Thank you.

SHAWN RYAN: You’re welcome.

JOE KENT: Thank you, man.

SHAWN RYAN: Well, I just happen to have some 6.8 out there, so yeah, when we wrap this up, we’ll go.

JOE KENT: This is amazing.

SHAWN RYAN: Go blow some up. I really like that thing.

JOE KENT: That’s nice. Yeah, I haven’t shot this before.

SHAWN RYAN: It feels really good. I think you’re going to like it.

JOE KENT: I think so too.

Modern Combat Loadout

SHAWN RYAN: There’s a follow-on question.

JOE KENT: Beautiful.

SHAWN RYAN: If you’re going to go back into combat tomorrow — if they institute the draft and we all have to go back to Iran or the Middle East —

JOE KENT: Jokes on you smart asses.

SHAWN RYAN: What would your loadout look like today with all the new tech and weapon systems the military has developed since you were on the ground last?

JOE KENT: I would need to get spun up on the drones and the counter-drones.

SHAWN RYAN: That’s what I was going to say.

JOE KENT: I mean, I can talk about long guns and pistols all day long, but the fight nowadays, man, with those FPV drones and that technology, I would get hot on that as fast as I possibly could. And then how to defend — I think, how do you defend any kind of small formation that you have? What system can you carry around to at least have a fighting chance against those things? That’d be my first task.

SHAWN RYAN: I think I’d get really good at 3D printing.

JOE KENT: Yeah, exactly. The technology coming off the battlefield in Ukraine — just incredible.

Audience Questions

SHAWN RYAN: All right, last thing. This is live on my Patreon right now. So we took some questions as we were doing the interview. So let’s crank through some of these.

This is from Ava Evans: “Thank you so much, Mr. Kent, for your bravery and honesty. What is your advice to the younger generations who may have to serve humanity in the midst of this chaos, but also do not agree with the objective and agenda of this current administration?”

JOE KENT: To serve humanity.

SHAWN RYAN: Yeah, I think she’s saying, you know, join the military — with Iran. Yeah, that’s what she’s alluding to.

JOE KENT: Look, I hope we can be effective and walk this back and get us out of it. I think a key part of that — and especially for the people that are — you have a huge audience. I think for people who feel like they can’t do anything, I think them calling their senators, calling their congressmen, going to the president’s websites and social medias and just saying politely that they are against this — I think that’s probably one of the most effective things we can do to get out of this.

I think for people that find themselves in the military or have to be in the military, I think your first obligation really is to the man and woman on your left and right. Make sure they come home. You got a job to do. That’s why we’re trying to sort out the policy from our end. But before you join, take a good hard look at what’s going on right now. And only you can make the decision if this is something that you’re willing to support with your life, and don’t rush that decision.

Again, my goal is to make it so that we can send people back into the military knowing their leaders will only deploy them against a vital national security interest. But right now, all voices need to be heard to say that we are against what’s taking place. Let our elected leaders know that.

SHAWN RYAN: Well said, man. Well said.

This is from Leela Restivel: “What criteria should be met before deploying US troops into conflict? How can we ensure accountability from leadership when wars do not have clear objectives or protection of outcomes?”

JOE KENT: It’s a great question, and they basically give the answer in there. I think our leaders need to say, before they deploy people into harm’s way, “This is why I’m sending you to this country. I’m sending you to this country to accomplish this military objective,” and then quickly be able to articulate why that objective is in our vital national security interest — in America’s vital national security interest. Why, if we don’t take out this threat, it’s going to harm America. That has to be very, very clear up front, and it has to come from the Commander in Chief.

I understand there’s the War Powers Act and there’s certain things that Congress should be able to do, but as fast as things move, this largely rests at the executive branch, unfortunately — unless the Congress is willing, unless we elect enough people in Congress that are willing to withhold funding from the military or for operations, unless there’s actually a war powers declaration.

SHAWN RYAN: Roger. This is from Zach: “Since you know all that we can do, which changes would you like to see at NCTC that would be most beneficial to citizens that we protect?”

JOE KENT: Hmm, that’s a tough one. It’s a very good question. I think in terms of screening and vetting — it’s a big part of what NCTC does — to make sure when people come into the country they don’t have ties to a terrorist organization. There’s a lot of different agencies that touch screening and vetting in America, in the US Government. It’s a very complicated bureaucracy.

I think there basically needs to be one central clearinghouse for screening and vetting to decide if someone has ties to a terrorist organization or not, and whether or not they should be allowed in. The problem is there’s a bunch of different ways, and there’s a bunch of people who have equities and are able to say whether or not folks are let in. I think there needs to be one agency for that, and that should be NCTC.

SHAWN RYAN: This is from Declan: “Iran is known to harbor many terrorists who are actively training and planning to attack the US home front through sleeper cells. Former CIA targeter Sarah Adams has proved this through open intelligence channels. All this considered, why is Iran not a threat to the United States?”

The Draft, Domestic Threats, and Closing Thoughts

JOE KENT: So the question was, is Iran an imminent threat? And based on what Secretary Rubio said and what we’ve talked about here today, the only imminent threat was Israel attacking Iran. Is Iran a threat to America? Iran has been a threat to America and there’s other countries that are threats to America as well. The question is how do you deal with those threats?

My issue is us being part of the Israelis agenda but then also using a massive conventional attack on Iran as the way of dealing with the threat that Iran poses, I think is wrong. I think we’d be much better off doing targeted CT operations against Iranian proxies or Iranian leaders, not doing a massive regime change that results in the straits of Hormuz being closed and then also a rally around the flag that reinforces the hardliners inside of Iran.

SHAWN RYAN: Do you think they would institute a draft if they had to for this war?

JOE KENT: If they do that, then the war is going to fail really quickly because I just don’t think the American people are willing to saddle up their sons and daughters for the draft. If they could get away with it, I think they’d be tempted to do it because it’d be like, all options on the table, right? If we get so far sucked into this thing, kind of like we did in the Iraq war, where it’s like we can only win by applying a massive amount of ground troops. Iran is so big, we can’t do it with the standing military that we have right now. As big as it is, we would have to do a draft.

Now I think a downside to the all volunteer force we’ve had is that it’s been very easy to deploy us and most Americans don’t really know or care that we’ve been deployed because we volunteered for it. We have professional soldiers. I think a draft is actually a good check on that. I think compulsory service. I think if there were more people right now who had to go do two years in the military and they were like, “Oh crap, my two years are going to involve this Iran deployment,” I think a lot more people in America would feel that. And if that was felt by the entire American population, that every able bodied man and woman was eligible for a two year period to go serve, wars like this wouldn’t happen in my opinion.

SHAWN RYAN: That is a very interesting point of view that I have not thought about.

JOE KENT: Yeah. As much as I don’t like the idea of conscripting people or having mandatory service because I liked the professional warrior class that we were a part of. I like serving with volunteers. Problem with volunteers is, man, we’ll just keep going back and you’ll create a professional warrior class and then we’ll, like I did, we’ll intermarry and we’ll live in our tight communities. Everybody I know is a veteran. And so we have an insular community and we’re the only ones that experience the war, experience the loss, and we keep going back over and over again.

Whereas if you spread out that burden to the entire country, it makes it almost impossible to keep us at war for a prolonged period. The only reason the Vietnam War ended is because the people basically revolted against it because of the draft. And that’s a big reason why I think after Vietnam they were like, “We can’t draft people anymore. Let’s create a professional military.”

SHAWN RYAN: Damn. I have not thought about it like that. That makes a lot of sense. This is from Donnie. If Iran was not an immediate threat, then what threats are there that we should be the most concerned about?

JOE KENT: If Iran was not an immediate threat —

SHAWN RYAN: If Iran was not an immediate threat, he wants to know what are the threats that we should be most concerned about?

JOE KENT: I think we should be worried about the fact that we had open borders in this country for four plus years, like we talked about, and the sheer volume of potential known suspected terrorists that are here. Our main focus should be getting our homeland straight first and foremost.

There’s other threats from Al Qaeda in Yemen, Al Qaeda in Syria. There’s a lot that we don’t know that’s taking place in Afghanistan that Sarah’s talked about ad nauseum on your show. So there still are CT threats out there. I mean there still are people that we do need to hunt down and kill because they seek to do us harm again. That’s another reason why this conflict in Iran concerns me so much, because all of our resources are going to be sucked up there and Al Qaeda and ISIS and all of our adversaries are going to take this time to rebuild and probably attack.

SHAWN RYAN: China.

JOE KENT: And China, man, they’re raking in the cash right now. I mean this is working out in their favor. For people who are very, very worried about Russia, same thing. Their energy surplus is going to be reintroduced to the market at a greater value, man.

SHAWN RYAN: Well, Joe, that pretty much concludes the interview. But once again, man, I am serious. Thank you. Thank you for what you did. I know that was a tough decision. And like I said, I know that took a lot of courage, but what an example you are, man. Thanks, brother.

JOE KENT: I appreciate it. Thank you.

SHAWN RYAN: What it means to be an American. Thank you.

JOE KENT: Appreciate it.

SHAWN RYAN: Awesome what you’re doing. God bless, brother. God bless.

JOE KENT: Thank you.

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