Source: Tom Williams / Getty
At this point, it’s beyond clear that President Donald Trump is not only filling his administration by prioritizing the loyal over the qualified (some might even call it white nationalist DEI) but he is bound and determined to put his loyalists in the exact office they don’t belong in.
It’s why Trump nominated Robert Kennedy Jr., a COVID conspiracy theorist who spreads medical misinformation and advocates for medical racism, for Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary. It’s why Pete Hegseth is now leading the Department of National Defense despite Hegseth having no clear experience in the field, being unable to answer basic questions about U.S. foreign policy, and believing that his top priority as defence secretary should be to de-woke-ify the military.
So, it should surprise absolutely no one that the man Trump has tapped to oversee U.S. intelligence on terrorism threats is a MAGA loyalist who once referred to Jan. 6 terrorists as “political prisoners.”
Meet Joe Kent.
Trump has selected Kent to serve as director of the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), which “oversees U.S. government intelligence on terrorist threats and retains a database of all known and suspected terrorists,” according to NBC News. Now, on paper, Kend appears to be qualified, unlike many of the diversity-averse appointees that the DEI-hating president has selected. He served in Army Special Forces for 20 years, and after that, he worked for the CIA. But Kent doesn’t believe the people who attacked police officers at the U.S. Capitol, stormed the building and threatened legislators, all to upend democracy by overthrowing the government are terrorists. He also reportedly has an affinity for white nationalist groups, but don’t worry, folks, because he rejects “racism and bigotry.”
From NBC:
Joe Kent ran unsuccessfully for Congress twice in Washington state, in 2022 and 2024. Campaign finance documents show that Kent in 2022 made payments for “campaign consulting” to Graham Jorgensen, who was identified as a Proud Boy in a 2018 law enforcement report.
The Proud Boys are viewed as “an extremist group with ties to white nationalism” by the FBI, and authorities say they played a significant role in the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol. The group has denied any connection to racist elements and says it is a fraternal group opposed to political correctness.
A Kent campaign strategist told The Associated Press in 2022 that the Army veteran rejected “racism and bigotry.”
Kent spoke at a “Justice for J6” rally in 2021 in Washington, D.C., saying people convicted for their role in the Jan. 6 attack were “political prisoners” who were being denied their civil rights.
“Our fellow citizens, when their constitutional rights are taken, if we do not speak out against that we are guilty of standing by and watching those rights erode,” Kent said. “Make no mistake: What governments do overseas they will do here, and they’ve already started.”
So, just to recap: The president who inspired a terrorist attack at the U.S. Capitol has selected a man who has vehemently defended those terrorists to lead the department on counterterrorism. That domestic terror-loving counterterrorism expert is also a member of the Proud Boys, the right-wing extremist group the ADL named as a white supremacist group, which Trump famously told to “stand back and stand by.”
Damn, I hate it here.
Here’s the rub, though. Months before Joe Kent called the Jan. 6 terrorists “political prisoners,” he seemed to, at the very least, recognize them as rioters and criminals.
“The second people start throwing bricks through windows, we just have to call that out,” Kent was quoted as saying by Oregon Public Broadcasting. “I feel the exact same way about the guys who acted violently on Jan. 6. You know, like, what they did was absolutely atrocious and they should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”
But, hey, if you want to advance your political career in the MAGA world, you have to do more than show your hypocrisy, white nationalism and love for Trump; you have to abandon any minuscule amount of integrity and moral standing you might have had.
“Joe will help us keep America safe by eradicating all terrorism, from the jihadists around the World, to the cartels in our backyard,” Trump wrote in a statement.
OK, but what about our front yard? Will the white nationalist group member who praises domestic terrorists he even recognizes as domestic terrorists going to “keep America safe” from white supremacist terrorists while he’s “eradicating all terrorism” from the entire world?
