Chris Hayes Flays Joe Kent Over White Supremacy Ties — as He Savages Trump Over War

MS NOW host Chris Hayes flayed former Director of the National Counterterrorism Center Joe Kent, who resigned his Trump administration post in protest of the Iran war on Tuesday, as he also ripped President Donald Trump over the war in Iran.

Kent quit his post in a scathing letter that refuted the rationale for the war, but was also shot through with anti-Israel sentiment.

“I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran. Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby,” Kent wrote, echoing many of the MAGA personalities who have split with Trump on the war.

Kent was confirmed in July by a straight party-line vote, with every Democrat voting “no” over what many see as extreme and racist views and associations — Hayes included.

On Tuesday night’s edition of MS NOW’s All In with Chris Hayes, the host slammed Kent anew even as he criticized Trump over his response to a fundraising email and his administration’s attempt to reframe Kent’s resignation:

HAYES: There is, of course, as you see there, a real, very real human cost to this war. And too often, I think it gets reduced to an abstraction. I mean, the White House is posting like video game memes as if it’s all just some like joke. And that’s really been the kind of theme from the White House, the sort of utter indifference from the commander-in-chief to the seriousness of what he started to the seriousness of the loss of life.

I mean, last week his PAC sent out a fundraising email. You see that? Look at that. Featuring a photo of Trump at the dignified transfer of U.S. service members killed in Kuwait fundraising off the service members who just died in the war he started all while wearing that branded Trump USA baseball hat which is available for purchase on his website.

When confronted with that email, Trump seemed fine with it.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Mr. President, your PAC put out a fundraising email a couple of days ago and it’s been criticized for using official White House photos at the dignified transfer. And the PAC is also promising access to secret —

TRUMP: Well, I was at the dignified transfer unlike a lot of the other people.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Do you think that’s an appropriate email to send? Your critics are saying you’re fundraising off of —

TRUMP: I didn’t see it. I mean, somebody puts it out. We have a lot of people working for us, but theres nobody that’s better to the military than me. And all you have to do is look at the election.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: I was at the dignified transfer unlike other people. Unlike who else, the presidents of the United States? They should have been there too. Like, you want an award for showing up for the dignified transfer of the U.S. service members coming home in caskets from the war you started?

That fundraising email, by the way, promises to give supporters access to presumably classified defense briefings. Listen, as a National Security Briefing member, you’ll receive my private National Security Briefings, unfiltered updates on the threats facing America. OK.

Also, it should not go without saying there is nothing for Trump to be fundraising for. What’s he fundraising for? He can’t run for president again. There’s no campaign. Where’s that money going to go, the money that you give him when you click the button underneath the photo of him saluting the soldiers who came home having lost their lives?

Notably, apart from the photo and a passing reference to “obliterating terrorists,” the email also doesn’t actually reference the war at all. And that makes sense considering it is currently causing a pretty significant schism among his base and polling underwater.

Today, we got the first senior member of the administration quitting over the war. The director of the National Counterterrorism Center, a — charitably I’ll call him a right-wing crank named Joe Kent, resigned from his position in protest of the war. In his letter, he wrote, “I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran. Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.”

Kent is a veteran who deployed to combat 11 times. He also lost his wife, a military cryptologist, in a suicide attack in Syria. He is a twice-failed congressional candidate with ties to White Nationalists and the Proud Boys. He’s closely aligned with the Tucker Carlson, even the Nick Fuentes wing of the Republican Party, which let’s say is vocally non-interventionist, among some other things. The White House is now bashing Kent as a leaker.

Now, after the fact, they clearly wanted us to believe that Trump wanted him gone the whole time, right? He can’t quit. He was going to be fired. In fact, a senior administration official went to Fox News to say that Trump had already told Kent’s boss, DNI Tulsi Gabbard, to fire him. Something that, by the way, only Trump himself had the authority to do. And for what it’s worth, an administration official told MS NOW, Gabbard was never instructed to fire Kent. So, now Trump is attacking the guy he personally chose to run the counter operate — counterterrorism operations in this country.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: Well, I read his statement. I always thought he was a nice guy, but I always thought he was weak on security. Very weak on security. I didn’t know him well, but I thought he seemed like a pretty nice guy. But when I read a statement, I realized that it’s a good thing that he’s out because he said that Iran was not a threat. Iran was a threat. Every country realized what a threat Iran was.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HAYES: Point of fact. What Kent said was that Iran was not an imminent threat. But I mean, take a step back for a second. This is what the president of United States says he thinks of the man who ran the National Counterterrorism Center until this morning. That he was a nice guy, but bad on security. Like, you know, had some good qualities, nice guy, but also some bad qualities. He wasn’t good on security. Which is why I named him the head of counterterrorism. A man that Trump himself appointed ushered through Senate confirmation.

Watch above via MS NOW’s All In With Chris Hayes.

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