Today I did an interview with Joe Kent, the former Director of the National Counter-Terrorism Center, who you might recall made a big splash when he resigned from the Trump Administration on March 17, in opposition to the Iran War.
This is one of your strongest interviews to date—not because Kent was weak, but because you pushed him into clarity he couldn’t maintain.
What stood out was your refusal to let him fall back on the standard excuse: that Trump’s Iran/Israel policy comes from deception or outside pressure. You kept returning to the record—first term actions, donor history, cabinet choices, rhetoric—and each time the “he was misled” argument started to give way.
Kent’s problem is structural. He’s trying to hold three positions at once:
Trump has agency,
Trump chose his advisers and took the money,
Trump isn’t responsible for the outcome.
Those don’t fit together. Once you made him sit with all three, the tension was obvious.
The Tulsi point landed hard. You showed that the escalation path she warned about years ago is exactly what played out. That cuts directly against the idea that this is some late break from Trump’s original posture. It follows the same trajectory.
Same with Israel policy. There was nothing hidden here. From the start:
Jerusalem embassy
Golan recognition
Kushner’s regional framework
maximal rhetoric
repeated claims of being the most pro-Israel president
This wasn’t subtle. It defined the first term. The idea that Trump was quietly something else all along, only to be changed later, requires ignoring a long list of public facts.
And this is where Kent—and especially people like Tucker Carlson—deserve more scrutiny.
They didn’t just misread Trump. They promoted him.
In 2024 they presented him to their audiences as an anti-war corrective, even though his record pointed in the other direction for years. The evidence was all there:
Adelson-aligned funding across multiple cycles
repeated selection of hawkish advisers
a first term aligned tightly with Israeli priorities
None of this required insider access.
What you’re seeing now—the shift toward blaming Netanyahu, “the lobby,” or advisers—looks like an effort to protect earlier judgments. That move doesn’t hold up. The record didn’t change.
The Musk example makes the point even clearer. Trump removed the largest donor in modern politics within months. That tells you he’s willing to cut ties when he wants to. If alignment continues elsewhere, it reflects agreement.
The “bad advisers” argument runs into the same issue:
Trump picked them
Trump elevated them
Trump kept picking similar people
That pattern speaks for itself.
What comes through in Kent’s answers is a reluctance to follow his own concessions all the way. He acknowledges the facts—choices, funding, decisions—and then pulls back into the idea that there’s still a different “real” Trump underneath it all.
To be fair, some of his points are solid. Bureaucratic inertia is real. Tactical success doesn’t equal strategic success. If Israel is going to be restrained, it would require material pressure, not messaging. Those are useful observations.
But they sit alongside a broader framework that doesn’t fully account for who is making the decisions.
What made the interview work is that you didn’t let him settle into that ambiguity. You kept returning to the same underlying issue from different angles:
At what point does this stop being something that happened to Trump, and start being something Trump chose?
He never resolved that. And that’s what made the exchange effective.
One follow-up your interview points toward, but doesn’t state bluntly enough:
Joe Kent’s “anti-war” posture doesn’t pass a basic smell test.
When did this transformation supposedly happen?
This isn’t some conscript who did a short stint and came back disillusioned. This is someone who built an entire adult life inside war:
roughly a dozen deployments,
years in special operations,
followed by work in the CIA orbit.
That’s not accidental exposure. That’s deep, sustained participation at the sharpest end of U.S. power projection.
At a certain point, you have to be honest about what that entails. Special operations isn’t abstract strategy—it’s direct action. Killing is the job. And doing it repeatedly, over years, at an elite level, requires not just tolerance but a certain affinity for that world.
So when someone with that background suddenly adopts the language of restraint and “anti-war” politics—without a clear, detailed break from their prior worldview—it reads less like a moral reckoning and more like a rebrand.
And you can see the tension in how he talks.
He says:
no more regime-change wars,
diplomacy should lead,
But in the same breath:
targeted killings are “always appropriate,”
coercion is central,
outcomes hinge on displays of strength and “respect.”
That’s not anti-war. That’s a refined version of the same framework.
More tellingly, there’s no real accounting. No serious attempt to grapple with:
what he got wrong,
what those deployments actually produced,
or why his previous judgments should be reconsidered.
Instead, the pattern is the same one you exposed in his Trump analysis:
the original belief stays intact,
contradictions are absorbed,
responsibility gets shifted outward.
Israel. Advisers. The “echo chamber.”
It’s the same move.
And that’s why the “anti-war” label feels opportunistic. It aligns neatly with a political lane that opened up over the last few years—one where being against “forever wars” has real currency—but it doesn’t come with the kind of intellectual or moral break you’d expect from someone with that résumé.
Your interview worked because you kept pulling him back to agency and responsibility. But this piece sits just beneath that:
If someone spent a career executing war at the highest level, and now presents himself as a critic of it, the burden is on him to show the break.
Problem with all these folks obsessed with Israel- seems like they have deluded themselves into seeing that country as not an ally but an enemy which decided to launch attacks against all of its neighbors out of the blue one day. Its delusional, but when all same people talk to each other every day on every Pod and reinforce the same propaganda, it becomes true in their minds..
The scary part is "former MAGA" people who appear to be waking up to the MAGA cult are diving headfirst to Tucker/Bret Weinstein's cult! They didn't wise up, they just changed cults! 😆
Sharp comments on this interview, and Joe's logical inconsistencies. I'll just note that, as the NYT reported, there was a wide decision making apparatus for starting this war. Tulsi & Co. simply weren't members. Joe's already had two failed runs for Congress - is he to be shafted again? He is ambitious, not content to sit on his hands, has seen some uncontested policy space, and is ready to be a thorn in everyone's side. It's a tactic - and good luck to him I guess.
Superb interview. Thanks both! Michael Tracey's expert knowledge and perception is steadily improving. Looking forward for the Matt Taibbi rhythm section in future interviews.
Majority of the Iranian people are begging for us to destroy the IRGC. I’ve seen hundreds of literal Iranians in Iran filming bombs dropping and filming destroyed buildings and praising it for working to destroy their oppressive regime.
Exceptionally good interview. Amazing the rationalizations Kent is willing to go through to avoid holding Trump accountable for his own decisions: at every juncture he’s being duped by the Israelis or by people within his own administration. I mean, he’s surely right that Trump has no real vision or principles of his own, and is just buffeted by whichever persona last had his ear. But how to square that with Kent’s with that Trump is a steely negotiator? (Here’s hoping Taibbi’s wi-fi issues persist - he is an utter jackass!) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a597e6Wv_xg&t=239s
There’s nothing more dangerous than a high functioning retard. How does an intelligence agency not see that? People need to start seeing these people the same way we view scientologists! They are in a cult!
Michael—
This is one of your strongest interviews to date—not because Kent was weak, but because you pushed him into clarity he couldn’t maintain.
What stood out was your refusal to let him fall back on the standard excuse: that Trump’s Iran/Israel policy comes from deception or outside pressure. You kept returning to the record—first term actions, donor history, cabinet choices, rhetoric—and each time the “he was misled” argument started to give way.
Kent’s problem is structural. He’s trying to hold three positions at once:
Trump has agency,
Trump chose his advisers and took the money,
Trump isn’t responsible for the outcome.
Those don’t fit together. Once you made him sit with all three, the tension was obvious.
The Tulsi point landed hard. You showed that the escalation path she warned about years ago is exactly what played out. That cuts directly against the idea that this is some late break from Trump’s original posture. It follows the same trajectory.
Same with Israel policy. There was nothing hidden here. From the start:
Jerusalem embassy
Golan recognition
Kushner’s regional framework
maximal rhetoric
repeated claims of being the most pro-Israel president
This wasn’t subtle. It defined the first term. The idea that Trump was quietly something else all along, only to be changed later, requires ignoring a long list of public facts.
And this is where Kent—and especially people like Tucker Carlson—deserve more scrutiny.
They didn’t just misread Trump. They promoted him.
In 2024 they presented him to their audiences as an anti-war corrective, even though his record pointed in the other direction for years. The evidence was all there:
Adelson-aligned funding across multiple cycles
repeated selection of hawkish advisers
a first term aligned tightly with Israeli priorities
None of this required insider access.
What you’re seeing now—the shift toward blaming Netanyahu, “the lobby,” or advisers—looks like an effort to protect earlier judgments. That move doesn’t hold up. The record didn’t change.
The Musk example makes the point even clearer. Trump removed the largest donor in modern politics within months. That tells you he’s willing to cut ties when he wants to. If alignment continues elsewhere, it reflects agreement.
The “bad advisers” argument runs into the same issue:
Trump picked them
Trump elevated them
Trump kept picking similar people
That pattern speaks for itself.
What comes through in Kent’s answers is a reluctance to follow his own concessions all the way. He acknowledges the facts—choices, funding, decisions—and then pulls back into the idea that there’s still a different “real” Trump underneath it all.
To be fair, some of his points are solid. Bureaucratic inertia is real. Tactical success doesn’t equal strategic success. If Israel is going to be restrained, it would require material pressure, not messaging. Those are useful observations.
But they sit alongside a broader framework that doesn’t fully account for who is making the decisions.
What made the interview work is that you didn’t let him settle into that ambiguity. You kept returning to the same underlying issue from different angles:
At what point does this stop being something that happened to Trump, and start being something Trump chose?
He never resolved that. And that’s what made the exchange effective.
Excellent work.
Michael—
One follow-up your interview points toward, but doesn’t state bluntly enough:
Joe Kent’s “anti-war” posture doesn’t pass a basic smell test.
When did this transformation supposedly happen?
This isn’t some conscript who did a short stint and came back disillusioned. This is someone who built an entire adult life inside war:
roughly a dozen deployments,
years in special operations,
followed by work in the CIA orbit.
That’s not accidental exposure. That’s deep, sustained participation at the sharpest end of U.S. power projection.
At a certain point, you have to be honest about what that entails. Special operations isn’t abstract strategy—it’s direct action. Killing is the job. And doing it repeatedly, over years, at an elite level, requires not just tolerance but a certain affinity for that world.
So when someone with that background suddenly adopts the language of restraint and “anti-war” politics—without a clear, detailed break from their prior worldview—it reads less like a moral reckoning and more like a rebrand.
And you can see the tension in how he talks.
He says:
no more regime-change wars,
diplomacy should lead,
But in the same breath:
targeted killings are “always appropriate,”
coercion is central,
outcomes hinge on displays of strength and “respect.”
That’s not anti-war. That’s a refined version of the same framework.
More tellingly, there’s no real accounting. No serious attempt to grapple with:
what he got wrong,
what those deployments actually produced,
or why his previous judgments should be reconsidered.
Instead, the pattern is the same one you exposed in his Trump analysis:
the original belief stays intact,
contradictions are absorbed,
responsibility gets shifted outward.
Israel. Advisers. The “echo chamber.”
It’s the same move.
And that’s why the “anti-war” label feels opportunistic. It aligns neatly with a political lane that opened up over the last few years—one where being against “forever wars” has real currency—but it doesn’t come with the kind of intellectual or moral break you’d expect from someone with that résumé.
Your interview worked because you kept pulling him back to agency and responsibility. But this piece sits just beneath that:
If someone spent a career executing war at the highest level, and now presents himself as a critic of it, the burden is on him to show the break.
Not just say it.
And he didn’t.
Problem with all these folks obsessed with Israel- seems like they have deluded themselves into seeing that country as not an ally but an enemy which decided to launch attacks against all of its neighbors out of the blue one day. Its delusional, but when all same people talk to each other every day on every Pod and reinforce the same propaganda, it becomes true in their minds..
The kid gloves these people use with Trump is just astounding, it seems like outright deceit.
It's always that Trump got bad advice, or he was misled, or Israel manipulated the narrative. He can never fail, only be failed.
The infallibility of leaders is a definitional feature of cults.
The scary part is "former MAGA" people who appear to be waking up to the MAGA cult are diving headfirst to Tucker/Bret Weinstein's cult! They didn't wise up, they just changed cults! 😆
Sharp comments on this interview, and Joe's logical inconsistencies. I'll just note that, as the NYT reported, there was a wide decision making apparatus for starting this war. Tulsi & Co. simply weren't members. Joe's already had two failed runs for Congress - is he to be shafted again? He is ambitious, not content to sit on his hands, has seen some uncontested policy space, and is ready to be a thorn in everyone's side. It's a tactic - and good luck to him I guess.
34:36 Kent's dodge on that follow up question was weak af
Superb interview. Thanks both! Michael Tracey's expert knowledge and perception is steadily improving. Looking forward for the Matt Taibbi rhythm section in future interviews.
Majority of the Iranian people are begging for us to destroy the IRGC. I’ve seen hundreds of literal Iranians in Iran filming bombs dropping and filming destroyed buildings and praising it for working to destroy their oppressive regime.
Exceptionally good interview. Amazing the rationalizations Kent is willing to go through to avoid holding Trump accountable for his own decisions: at every juncture he’s being duped by the Israelis or by people within his own administration. I mean, he’s surely right that Trump has no real vision or principles of his own, and is just buffeted by whichever persona last had his ear. But how to square that with Kent’s with that Trump is a steely negotiator? (Here’s hoping Taibbi’s wi-fi issues persist - he is an utter jackass!) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a597e6Wv_xg&t=239s
Kent's a sleazy prostrate Trump worshipper. Good job, Michael.
This guy is a fucking pos human
There’s nothing more dangerous than a high functioning retard. How does an intelligence agency not see that? People need to start seeing these people the same way we view scientologists! They are in a cult!
Matt, did you try to set up a Wifi hotspot with your phone? Might have at least got enough bandwidth for audio…
Well done, Michael. Good conversation.
Gotta learn to challenge a bit Michael.
Wow Michael, you just let him lay out the narrative with no challenge to the data, whether it was authentic or even relevant.