joe kent
see gabbard hire signal fail, LOST TRUMP DISTR 2X; FUENTES
~ iran war
proud boy pr
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UP FOR MORE IMP CTR TERROR JOB, COS PLACEHOLDER; COOKED BOOKS ON TREN DE A. 5 25 MSNBC CHrIS H
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DRUCKER ATTACK
Joe Kent is a cautionary tale.
When Kent resigned as director of the National Counterterrorism Center to protest the Iran war, critics of the conflict — especially opponents of President Donald Trump — quickly cast the decorated military combat veteran as a principled dissenter. Superficially, that tracks. And yet those tracks are laid on quicksand.
Kent risked his life for the U.S. for decades: He served in the Army Special Forces in Iraq and as a paramilitary officer for the Central Intelligence Agency. Kent’s first wife, Shannon, also wore the uniform and was killed in Syria by a suicide bomber in 2019. Those experiences led Kent, a Republican, to turn against the war on terrorism and overseas military operations. And like many voters who grew suspicious of projecting American power abroad after years of fighting in the Middle East, Kent found a political champion in Trump.
The 45th and 47th president has staked three White House campaigns, in part, on resisting so-called forever wars and regime-change wars. What better example of the unraveling of the Trump coalition and — from the naysayers’ point of view — the shaky premise of the Iran war than Kent’s defection? A couple of lines from his resignation letter to Trump:
“I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran. Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation,” Kent wrote, adding: “Until 2025, you understood that the wars in the Middle East were a trap that robbed America of the precious lives of our patriots and depleted the wealth and prosperity of our nation.”
Except that Kent, 45, is a conspiracy theorist of such questionable character that he lacks almost all credibility, rendering him useless as an avatar for foes of the Iran war and Trump. This shouldn’t necessarily be a revelation. Kent was twice rejected by the voters of Washington state’s 3rd Congressional District. They chose Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Perez over Kent for the swing seat in 2022 and opted for her again in their 2024 rematch.
Maybe Kent was spurned because he was (and is) an outspoken proponent of Trump’s stolen election conspiracy theories.
Kent echoed claims that former President Joe Biden’s 2020 victory was illegitimate and, as The New York Times reported, referred to the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol as an inside job. Or maybe Kent lost because during one of his congressional campaigns, he played footsie with Nick Fuentes, the antisemitic and racist influencer who recently sat for a friendly interview with Tucker Carlson, and others of that right-wing ilk.
That brings us back to the folly of lionizing Kent as a conscientious objector to Trump and the president’s hawkish foreign policy as of late.
In his resignation letter, Kent also said, “It is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby” and that “high-ranking Israeli officials and influential members of the American media deployed a misinformation campaign that wholly undermined your (Trump’s) America First platform.”
It’s perfectly fine to criticize the Israeli government, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the policies coming out of Jerusalem. I have, and do, frequently. But this sort of conspiratorial blarney that Israel and its paid domestic agents (i.e. lobbyists) are puppeteers of the American president is the mother’s milk of an age-old philosophy best described as antisemitism. (Many political observers who might have lauded Kent have, in fact, rebuked him for this line of thinking and cooled to him as some sort of heroic MAGA defector.)
And of course, where did Kent run to bask in his newfound notoriety? Carlson, a stoker of animosity toward Israel and Jews.
During an appearance on his show last week, Kent hinted that the Jewish state was behind the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. Kent also sought refuge with Candace Owens, a blatantly antisemitic influencer on the far right, and her podcast audience. Kent also appeared at a Washington gala of Catholics for Catholics, where he was celebrated — and where Owens delivered a keynote speech. The group has been dismissed as a fringe organization by mainstream Catholic leaders.
Regardless of opinions on Kent personally, might his resignation signal a crackup of Trump’s Make America Great Again base inside the Republican Party? At the very least, might these voters be on the cusp of abandoning the president because he turned into one of those so-called neocon warmongers he swore he wasn’t? Well — no.
“Beyond MAGA,” a project completed earlier this year by the research initiative More In Common, explored Trump’s unique coalition in depth and identified four types of voters: MAGA Hardliners, Anti-Woke Conservatives, Mainline Republicans and the Reluctant Right. Stephen Hawkins, More in Common’s global director of research, told me about an online community of a “couple of hundred” GOP voters his organization keeps an eye on. In a recent surveying, “MAGA Hardliners” were the most supportive of the Iran war. In fact, Hawkins said none of the voters in this cohort voiced opposition to the war.
“Among American voters, the critics (of the war) seem to be coming from the groups that are already critical of Trump,” Hawkins told me. “The alignment, support and enthusiasm seem to be echoing from the same groups that were already supportive of him, so it’s continuity, not change — as opposed to breaking open a new fissure.” (These findings mirror the other public polling since the Feb. 28 start of the Iran war.)
Given Kent’s quackery and his lack of a constituency other than some very loud podcasters sympathetic to his worldview, it might be worth asking Trump why Kent was hired for such a plum position. The president now claims he knew Kent was essentially unqualified for the job. Indeed, it might be worth asking Republican senators why they confirmed Kent, rather than demanding the administration nominate more equipped personnel.
LIKE PULTE? ONLY CRITERIA IS LOYALTY
David M. Drucker is a columnist covering politics and policy. He is also a senior writer for The Dispatch and the author of “In Trump’s Shadow: The Battle for 2024 and the Future of the GOP.”
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Trump is arguing that higher gas prices are a small price to pay for the Iranian government not having a nuclear weapon. The Islamist regime in Tehran, Trump claims, would have developed a nuclear weapon had he not launched a series of airstrikes against that country in late February.
But MAGA Republican Joe Kent, former director of the National Counterterrorism Center, is pushing back against that claim.
In a Thursday, May 7 post on X, formerly Twitter, Kent posted, "One of the many tragedies of this war is that before the war began the U.S. Intel Community, including CIA, was in agreement that Iran wasn't developing a nuclear weapon [and] that Iran would target U.S. bases in the region [and] shut down the Strait of Hormuz if they were attacked by Israel [and] the U.S. The IC also properly assessed that targeting the Iranian leadership would strengthen the regime and embolden the hardliners."
Kent added, "Despite the professionalism [and] accuracy of the IC, the narrative [and] agenda spun by a foreign government- Israel, won the argument [and] forced us into this war. We need to understand exactly how this happened to ensure we are never put in this position again."
On March 17, Kent voiced his opposition to the Iran war by announcing his resignation as National Counterterrorism Center director. Some MAGA Republicans, including former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, applauded his stand — while others attacked him for not sticking by Trump during the Iran operation.
Kent, in his resignation letter, posted, "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."
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MMA
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Fox News is the bus Trump is driving over Joe Kent | Media Matters for America
an 3 26
President Donald Trump is denouncing Joe Kent, his former director of the National Counterterrorism Center, for resigning in protest over his invasion of Iran. Now a respected columnist is warning Trump’s critics that although Kent may be correct in opposing the Iran war, that does not mean he is on the side of anti-Trumpers.
It just means that “it’s getting crowded under” the bus under which Trump keeps throwing people.
“How does media ― legitimate media ― cover a story in which a bad person does the right thing?” wrote Bill Goodykoontz of the Arizona Republic. “File under: A stopped watch is right twice a day. And more chaos from the Donald Trump era, and how that has affected media coverage.”
Goodykoontz then praised CNN anchor Dana Bash for explaining when covering the news that “Kent is not a typical intelligence official. He is a Trump appointee known for his ties to White nationalists, Nazi sympathizers and an embrace of the Jan. 6 conspiracy theories that we have seen so much (of) on the far right."
Goodykoontz said that “that is the perfect way to place Kent into context, and it should be repeated every time the story is updated. Good for Bash. (All the cable news networks covered the resignation, but Bash's was the most clear and efficient that I saw.)”
As for Kent’s fate, Goodykoontz expressed a rather blase attitude.
“Who gets thrown under the Trump bus next, and how will the media cover it?” Goodykoontz said. “It's hard to say, but it's getting crowded under there.”
Trump’s invasion of Iran is also harshly criticized by many of his fellow conservatives. Contributing to the conservative publication The Bulwark on Tuesday, commentator Jonathan V. Last wrote that Trump’s behavior is “stupid,” citing as one example that “mining the Strait of Hormuz is the single biggest danger America faced heading into any conflict with Iran. How did our commander-in-chief plan to deal with it?”
He added, “Six months ago the Navy decommissioned its four Avenger-class minesweepers that had been stationed in Bahrain precisely to deal with Iranian mines.”
Joe Rogan, a popular right-wing podcaster who openly supported Trump in the 2024 presidential election, admitted earlier in March that some Trump supporters felt “betrayed” by his invasion of Iran.
“Well, it just seems so insane, based on what he ran on. I mean, this is why a lot of people feel betrayed, right?” Rogan said in an episode of his podcast “The Joe Rogan Experience.” “He ran on, ‘No more wars,’ ‘End these stupid, senseless wars,’ and then we have one that we can’t even really clearly define why we did it.”
Another former Trump supporter, ex-Rep. Joe Walsh (R-Ill.), argued in February that Trump supporters who still back him despite his warmongering prove they are in a “cult.”
“I thought you wanted him to end wars all over the world,” Walsh said. “You said you wanted him to end American entanglement in conflicts and wars around the world. America shouldn’t be involved in these wars, you said. That’s why you’re voting for Trump, you said.” He then mentioned Trump’s invasions of Venezuela and Iran.
“And you don’t like when people call you a cult, Trump voters?” Walsh said. “What else are people to think when you voted for Trump to get us the hell out of wars around the world, and instead he gets us involved in wars around the world and starts new wars, and you still sing his praises and support him? What are we to think, MAGA, but that you are a cult?
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mma
loomer unleashed loomer.com
March 24, 2026, edition of Loomer Unleashed streamed on Rumble
LAURA LOOMER (HOST): It's time for President Trump and the Trump administration to, you know, put the moral clarity hammer down and reassert, as you said, who's the boss. And sometimes when you have to reassert who's the boss, people get fired. And I personally think it's a moral abomination that Tulsi Gabbard has not issued a statement condemning Joe Kent leaking to Max Blumenthal, leaking to Tucker Carlson, leaking to Candace Owens.
And it's an abomination that Tulsi Gabbard, who had the audacity to speak at Charlie Kirk's memorial, has not condemned Joe Kent, her interim chief of staff, saying that he will testify to aid the assassin of Charlie Kirk. So, I don't even think President Trump should give her the dignity of a resignation. I think that Tulsi Gabbard should be fired. And that's my position tonight, through this interview. I'll say it live on air, I think that President Trump should fire Tulsi Gabbard. She has not shown that she has moral clarity. She is not fit to be producing intelligence reports for the President of the United States.
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03/06/26 11:10 AM EST
- ### Laura Loomer lashes out at Megyn Kelly over Iran: “Shut up, you stupid bitch. ... You're not MAGA.”
03/04/26 2:28 PM EST
02/05/26
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RWW
03/17/2026
by
- Julian E. Barnes, Robert Draper, and Luke Broadwater @ The New York Times: Joe Kent, a Top U.S. Counterterrorism Official, Resigns Over the Iran War
Mr. Kent is the highest-ranking Trump administration official to quit in opposition to the conflict. He is also known for his support of conspiracy theories.
- Erkki Forster @ The Daily Beast: Power-Hungry Trump Thirsts Over ‘Taking’ Another Country
“Whether I free it, take it—I can do anything I want with it,” the president said.
- Jeff Brumley @ Baptist Press: Sean Feucht partners with Trump admin for ‘Roots of Revival’ tour
Christian nationalist revival leader and Trump loyalist Sean Feucht announced he is partnering with the federal government on a worship tour that will coincide with the nation’s 250th anniversary. The “Roots of Revival” tour will include 20 stops from March to September in locations ranging from Sante Fe, N.M., and Washington, D.C., to Gettysburg, Penn., to Nashville, Tenn.
- Susan Svrluga @ The Washington Post: College Republicans group disbanded after students allegedly give Nazi salute
The University of Florida’s chapter accused the Florida Federation of College Republicans of lying “to silence christian conservative groups on campus.”
- Jay Michaelson @ Forward: Antisemitism is exploding on the right but the Jewish establishment is focused on the left
Obsessed with Israel, the anti-antisemitism industry is failing to confront the threat of right-wing nationalism — and, in some cases, making it worse.
- Will Sommer @ The Bulwark: Laura Loomer Gets Roasted on Trip to India
FAR-RIGHT ACTIVIST AND DONALD TRUMP ADVISER Laura Loomer has hit the global stage. Over the weekend, she traveled to New Delhi with her new fiancé to relay a message from Trump to India’s 1.43 billion people. “I love India! Please let them know I love India,” Loomer said on stage at the India Today Conclave, reading a message she said the president had given to her. Unfortunately, many of those in attendance did not seem to reciprocate the sentiment—at least not toward Loomer. That’s because they have access to the internet, and could easily look up the speaker’s many attacks on their country and its people, like the time she said Kamala Harris would make the White House smell like curry.
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mojo dc 4 25
When Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, went looking for someone to head the National Counterterrorism Center, she landed on Joe Kent, a former Green Beret, past CIA officer, and twice-failed MAGA congressional candidate in Washington state, who, as the Associated Press reported, “stands out for the breadth of his ties to a deep-seated extremist fringe.” During his first campaign in 2022, Kent consulted with white nationalist Nick Fuentes on social-media strategy. He also had a member of the Proud Boys on his campaign staff, and he embraced as a supporter and ally Joey Gibson, the leader of Patriot Prayer, a Christian nationalist group.
But his associations with far-right extremists began prior to his attempt to win a congressional seat. In 2020, Kent helped boost the organizing message of a new right-wing paramilitary outfit that called itself the 1st Amendment Praetorian.
On September 20, 2020, Robert Patrick Lewis, a former Green Beret and QAnon supporter, posted a long thread on Twitter (now X) that announced the formation of the group. Lewis declared that a band of “military, law enforcement & intel community veterans” had come together to protect the First Amendment rights of conservatives. He presented a harsh, conspiratorial, and paranoid view, claiming, “There are Marxist & leftist politicians aiming to lock down total control over our populace.” He asserted, “Their tyrannical, Marxist subversive groups such as ANTIFA & BLM demand total subservience to and adulation of their specific view of the world.” And he maintained the “corrupted Main Stream Media does their best to tarnish the reputation and destroy the lives of any public or private citizen who dares step up to them or fight back against their narrative.”
Lewis called on “military, law enforcement or intelligence community” veterans to join 1AP and fight back. In an apparent sign of support, Kent reposted this thread.
Lewis noted that 1AP would be providing security services for right-wing rallies and marches, including those “with a large number of high-profile, conservative VIPs speaking & attending.” For one event, he said he needed veterans to provide “physical security, intelligence/surveillance and to serve as team leaders for small security & intelligence and intelligence cells.” He promised, “we will keep your names confidential and our personnel records & communications will be encrypted.” He added, “This group was formed to protect attendees at President Trump’s campaign rallies.”
Soon after forming 1Ap, Lewis presented it not only as a security service for the right but as an intelligence operation. He told Fox News, “Our intelligence shows that no matter who wins the election, they [Antifa] are planning a massive ‘Antifa Tet Offensive,’ bent on destroying the global order they are not beholden to any one party. Their sole purpose is to create havoc, fear, and intimidation.” (No such uprising occurred.) After the election, 1AP claimed it was collecting evidence of fraud. On January 6, as the riot began at the Capitol, Lewis tweeted, “Today is the day the true battles begin.” (He later said he was at the Willard Hotel, not Capitol Hill, that day.)
Lewis’ 1AP did provide security at various events featuring far-right extremists. According to the final report of the House January 6 committee, during a December 12, 2020, rally of pro-Trump election deniers in Washington, DC, Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the Oath Keepers, a right-wing, anti-government militia, “coordinated” with 1AP “to guard VIPs, including retired Lieutenant General Michael Flynn and Patrick Byrne.” (Both Flynn and Byrne were prominent promoters of the crackpot conspiracy theory holding that the 2020 election was stolen form Trump.) Months later, Lewis and 1AP provided security at a QAnon conference in Dallas, where Flynn essentially called for a military coup in the United States.
On social media, Kent has often boosted posts from Lewis. At one point each complimented the other for a podcast appearance. When Kent ran for Congress, Lewis expressed his support for him on social media. Ina 2022 Telegram post, Lewis said that he knew Kent “personally” and “wish I could personally vote for him.” In January, 1AP posted on Telegram that there were “mumblings” that Kent could be appointed to lead the National Counterterrorism Center and that this “would be a very good thing. I could not support this more strongly.”
Mother Jones sent Kent, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the National Counterterrorism Center a list of questions about Kent’s support for 1AP and his relationship with Lewis. Neither Kent nor the agencies responded.
Kent has an established record as an extremist and promoter of conspiracy theories. During his 2022 run, he called for charging Dr. Anthony Fauci with murder to hold him “accountable” for the “scam that is Covid.” He promoted Trump’s Big Lie that the 2020 election was rigged against him. He backed the idea the January 6 riot was orchestrated by the Deep State to discredit Trump and his supporters. He referred to the J6 rioters as “political prisoners.” He pushed the notion that billionaire Bill Gates was seeking to “control the food supply” and “control housing” to force people to “live in the pod eat the bugs.”
Like Gabbard, Kent has no experience in leading a large intelligence organization. (After serving in the Army, he was a field operative for the CIA for a short time.) Both Kent and Gabbard were on the infamous Signalgate chat. As head of the NCTC, Kent will have the responsibility for monitoring and preventing both foreign and domestic terrorism. But his past as a conspiracy theorist and his association with far-right extremists raise questions about his analytical abilities and his capacity to assess threats of domestic terrorism that arise from the right. His association with 1AP and Lewis is just one more reason to wonder about his judgment.
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an 11 24 badash
donald Trump over the past few weeks has occasionally been discarding his iconic blue suit, red tie, and red “Make America Great Again” baseball cap, and instead wearing a black suit, gold tie, and black and gold MAGA hat. Black and gold are the colors of the far-right group the Proud Boys, who “instigated critical breaches of the Capitol” during the January 6, 2021 insurrection. Former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio was handed a sentence last year of “22 years in prison for orchestrating a failed plot to keep Donald Trump in power after the Republican lost the 2020 election.”
Months before the insurrection trump had infamously signaled, “Proud Boys, stand back and stand by.”
“The Proud Boys are back in the news today,” wrote Rolling Stone senior writer Tim Dickinson. “Trump is not only bat signaling to the fight club with a black and gold MAGA hat — he’s campaigning for a far-right congressional candidate who had a Proud Boy on payroll.”
READ MORE: ‘Dire Implications’: Trump’s Possible Vaccine Ban Could Spark US, Global Health Crisis
Dickinson pointed to his reporting on Republican Joe Kent, a “far-right candidate for the House, with connections to white nationalists,” who has “extremist views and affiliations, including reportedly paying a Proud Boy as a consultant.”
Attorney Tristan Snell, who helped lead New York’s successful $25 million prosecution in the Trump University case, warns: “MAGA’s colors have always been red and white. Yet Trump is suddenly wearing black and gold MAGA hats — and even wore a black suit and gold tie the other day, rather than his habitual blue suit and red tie. The Proud Boys colors are black and gold. THIS IS NOT A COINCIDENCE.”
Calling it “a harbinger of potential chaos,” The New York Times on Monday reports: “Groups backing former President Donald J. Trump recently sent messages to organize poll watchers to be ready to dispute votes in Democratic areas. Some posted images of armed men standing up for their rights to recruit for their cause. Others spread conspiracy theories that anything less than a Trump victory on Tuesday would be a miscarriage of justice worthy of revolt.”
READ MORE: ‘She Kills People’: Trump Amps Up Attack on Cheney After Violent ‘Nine Barrels’ Rhetoric
One post, “from an Ohio chapter of the Proud Boys, the far-right organization that was instrumental in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol,” read: “The day is fast approaching when fence sitting will no longer be possible.”
“You will either stand with the resistance or take a knee and willingly accept the yoke of tyranny and oppression.”
Pointing to “the growth and increased sophistication of the election denialism movement,” The Times reports its “analysis of more than one million messages across nearly 50 Telegram channels with over 500,000 members found a sprawling and interconnected movement intended to question the credibility of the presidential election, interfere with the voting process and potentially dispute the outcome.”
Posts from groups like the Proud Boys, “questioned why states might not be able to fully tally election results on election night and repeated misleading claims about voter registration numbers in Michigan. In one video, a truck with a Confederate flag chased after immigrant children, with a caption reading: ‘1/20/25: Trump is sworn in as President. 1/21/25: Me and the Proud Boys begin the deportation.’”
Watch the videos above or at this link.
mma 12 22
Joe Kent was an election-denying candidate for Washington's third congressional district in 2022, and ended up losing his race. Kent embraced far-right politics in the race, appearing frequently on Infowars, Steve Bannon's podcast, and even a QAnon show. He's made multiple appearances on Carlson's Fox News show.
[vid]
GABBARD (HOST): Is it true before you got into journalism you were thinking about joining the CIA?
TUCKER CARLSON (GUEST): Yes.
...
CARLSON: I wanted an interesting life, that's the main thing that I wanted out of life. I never was interested in money,I had the privilege of not being interested in money because I didn't grow up in a family where we were worried about moneyso I just never thought about money.
...
CARLSON: I didn't think the CIA was a sinister force, it never occurred to me the CIA might be playing a role in domestic politics, like that was insane. First of all, it's illegal. Now, the CIA is all over domestic politics – they clearly took out Joe Kent in Washington state I think. And a lot of other ways they are tampering with our democracy.
On Friday, right-wing Washington Examiner political correspondent Byron York took to Twitter to warn that former President Donald Trump's increasingly open fraternization with white nationalists like Nick Fuentes is a crisis for the Republican Party.
"Trump, Kanye, Nick Fuentes — No longer a disaster waiting to happen," wrote York. "Now just a disaster.
This comes after Fuentes reportedly traveled to Trump's Mar-a-Lago country club residence in Palm Beach, Florida for a meeting — after which pro-Trump rapper Kanye West claimed that Trump was "really impressed" with the far-right activist.
Fuentes first gained prominence after his participation in the 2017 white supremacist "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, which resulted in the murder of a counterprotester. He leads a movement known as the "Groyper Army," an association of extremist internet trolls whose mission is to inject white nationalist ideology into the mainstream of political debate. Fuentes was active in politics during the 2022 midterms as well, with failed Washington Congressional candidate Joe Kent seeking his endorsement.
Kanye West himself, who also goes by the mononym Ye, has come under heavy fire in recent weeks for promoting anti-Semitic beliefs, including a social media rant in which he said he was going to go "death con 3" on Jewish people.
All of this comes as Trump is preparing for his third consecutive run for president in 2024, which has conservative forces unsure whether to fall in with the base or back him once more.
yells at kanye b/c might run against him? also milo
an 11 22
adl
WASHINGTON STATE: Joe Kent will be the Republican nominee for the U.S. House seat representing Washington State's 3rd District. One day after his win was announced, Kent appeared on Steve Bannon's podcast, where he said, "We are at war [with the left]," adding, "We have to go after these people." Kent has ties to and has praised the putatively religious far-right group Patriot Prayer and its leader, Joey Gibson, who spoke at a Kent fundraising event in June 2021.
Gibson and Patriot Prayer often appear alongside other right-wing extremist groups in the Pacific Northwest, including the Proud Boys and Washington State Three Percenters. Kent attended and spoke at the March 5, 2022 “GRIT” (Government Resistance Impedes Tyranny) event at the Washington State Capitol and posted about his participation on Twitter. The rally was hosted by anti-government extremist group Washington State Three Percenters.
https://apnews.com/article/2022-midterm-elections-donald-trump-campaigns-race-and-ethnicity-be616cae0967ca6ee9c78ac1efee8e31
wASHINGTON (AP) — A congressional candidate whose compelling personal story of military valor
and unfathomable loss helped him win former President Donald Trump’s support has connections
to right-wing extremists, including a campaign consultant who was a member of the Proud Boys.
Republican Joe Kent, who is challenging U.S. Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler of Washington state in the Aug. 2 primary, has also courted prominent white nationalists and posed recently for a photograph with a media personality who has previously described Adolf Hitler as a “complicated historical figure” who “many people misunderstand.”
An Associated Press review of internet postings, court records and campaign finance disclosures depict a candidate with a more complicated biography than the compelling personal story that turned the 42-year-old Kent into a favorite of conservative media.
Square-jawed with wavy black hair and sleeve tattoos, the former Green Beret served 11 combat deployments before retiring from Special Forces to join the CIA. He also endured unspeakable tragedy: His wife, Shannon, a Navy cryptologist, was killed by a suicide bomber in 2019 while fighting the Islamic State group in Syria, leaving him to raise their two young sons alone.
wapo no lnx
Military
Building on anti-mask activism, far-right groups pivot from mandates to midterms
Energized by their fight against government coronavirus restrictions, far-right activists are rallying supporters to engage in politics and show up to vote.
Image without a caption
By Hannah Allam
March 19, 2022
A person holds a sign advocating for the recall of Washington Gov. Jay Inslee during a protest against coronavirus vaccine mandates and other issues, on March 5, 2022, at the Capitol in Olympia, Wash. (Ted S. Warren/AP)
OLYMPIA, Wash. — Melanie Gabriel became the teen idol of Washington state’s anti-masking movement last fall when she showed up to school and, claiming a medical exemption, marched barefaced to class.
As Gabriel’s protest continued and she was barred from campus, she drew support from self-styled militia groups and other far-right extremists who saw the anti-mandate movement as a chance to rally conservatives toward more-militant stances. Members of the Proud Boys offered to escort Gabriel to class, prompting a security lockdown of three schools.
Now, with the lifting of most mask and vaccine requirements, Gabriel and her far-right backers are mobilizing the networks they’ve built over the past two years toward a new goal: November’s midterm elections.
Gabriel spoke this month at a gathering that was emblematic of the increasingly blurry lines on the right — it was organized by the far-right Washington Three Percent and sponsored by a conservative student group, Turning Point USA. With the state Capitol dome in the background, speaker after speaker told supporters not to get complacent with mandates gone.
“Just because they’re lifted doesn’t mean they’re going to stay that way, and that’s why we’re all here,” said Gabriel, a striking figure in a bright crimson bob, cat-eye makeup, and a T-shirt with the anti-Biden slogan “Let’s Go Brandon.” Her bullhorn was decorated with stickers that read “Say No To Critical Hate Theory” and “Allergic to socialism.”
A man in the audience yelled that Gabriel should run for governor.
“I will!” Gabriel replied. “I will run for governor. And I’ll run for president. And I’ll run for everything!” She waited a beat before adding: “Once I’m of legal age.”
That’s the kind of youthful energy far-right movements are working to harness across the country as they teach the pandemic’s newly minted activists how to get out the vote.
A school board race in Washington state shows how far-right groups are thinking locally
Extremism trackers say the past two years of fighting pandemic restrictions have given far-right groups a new generation of recruits and a blueprint for taking the lead in conservative organizing. The midterm season, they warn, brings a heightened risk of political violence, as armed groups build on those gains to push deeper into the mainstream.
“In Olympia today, we saw paramilitary groups and a range of other anti-democracy activists aggressively working to recruit young people and making pledges of unity against what they see as their common enemies,” Eric K. Ward, executive director of Western States Center, a regional extremism watchdog, said in a statement after the event where Gabriel spoke.
Anti-mandate activists galvanized a broad cross section of political conservatives by melding disparate agendas into one fuzzy call to “fight tyranny.” By now, most of their big demonstrations look like a right-wing soup, featuring Trump and MAGA logos, self-styled militia insignia, Confederate flags, references to the debunked QAnon movement, and Christian nationalist prayers.
Researchers say connections forged early in the pandemic allowed once-fringe groups to take on more visible roles in other kinds of organizing, such as the “Stop the Steal” effort to overturn the 2020 election results, or the campaign to whitewash U.S. history by attacking the teaching of racism and its impact.
New laws on teaching about race have teachers scared, confused and self-censoring
The nonstop focus on grievances, researchers say, has created a tinderbox of disenchanted Americans who view themselves as foot soldiers in a struggle against mandates and other perceived attacks on personal liberties. Many right-wing politicians and media personalities are stoking the outrage in pursuit of a “red wave” in November.
“The grievances are there as a reservoir for mobilization, but they still have to be triggered.They have to be activated towards specific action,” said Robert Pape, a University of Chicago professor leading an in-depth study of the rioters who violently breached the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. “And it rarely happens spontaneously.”
The event where Gabriel spoke was called GRIT, for Government Resistance Impedes Tyranny. Several hundred people participated, along with a convoy of big rigs, part of the U.S. version of the Canadian trucker demonstrations that united a variety of conspiracy-minded protesters.
Unlike at previous far-right gatherings in Olympia, no leftist counter protesters showed up, and the event was peaceful.Journalists were encouraged to refer to it as a “freedom festival,” not a rally. On the damp statehouse grounds, leather-clad bikers chatted about gas prices with khakis-wearing politicians. Gun rights activists told college students that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is an example of why they consider the Second Amendment untouchable. A voter registration table sat next to a self-styled militia’s information booth, a reminder that, in this milieu, there are two paths to making change.
Organizer Matt Marshall, founder of the Washington Three Percent and a member of his local school board,called the rally “a networking event” to connect pandemic-era upstarts with more established groups and reliable donors. A dozen or so Republican candidates for congressional and local races worked the crowd, urging constituents to serve on precinct committees as a first step into politics.
Some had clear-cut ties to extremism, with documented support for and interactions with parts of the anti-government movement. Take, for example, a former police chief named Loren Culp, a failed gubernatorial candidate now running to unseat U.S. Rep. Dan Newhouse, one of 10 members of the House GOP who voted to impeach President Trump after the Capitol riot. Culp has close ties to a far-right sheriff’s organization that believes local authorities have the power to decide whether state and federal laws are constitutional; in 2018, he pledged he wouldn’t enforce a statewide gun-control law.
Many other candidates, however, fall into a gray area. They espouse views or cultivate relationships that only a few years ago would have put them on the far-right fringe, but which are now broadly shared, or at least tolerated, by Republican leaders. Extremism researchers say it’s startling how quickly it became socially acceptable for relatively mainstream groups like Turning Point USA to provide funding and speakers to an event led by the anti-government Washington Three Percent.
“This kind of meshing of people is typical of the landscape we’re seeing right now — the blurring of the line with an extremist host and mainstream sponsor,” said Carla Hill, associate director of the Anti-Defamation League Center on Extremism, which is tracking more than 100 political candidates who have documented ties to extremist groups or conspiratorial movements.
Black, brown and extremist: Across the far-right spectrum, people of color play a more visible role
Rachel Anderson, 29, head of Lewis County Young Republicans in the western part of the state, told the crowd how in the space of a year she went from being politically unaware to joining other nascent activists in “taking over” the county party. She said she has helped four Young Republicans get elected and contributed to a threefold increase in local GOP fundraising — work she calls vital to electoral success next fall.
“We can’t be complacent anymore,” Anderson told the crowd, to cheers. “We have to go out there. We have to canvass our voting rolls, make sure that every single vote counts and we elect proper, conservative patriots into office.”
As they stump for votes, some Republican hopefuls are encountering a problem of their party’s own making. After two solid years of being fed lies about a stolen election, a bloc of Republicans no longer see the point in voting and refuse to participate in what they regard as a corrupt system.
“We still get a lot of people who say, ‘Nah, I just don’t believe it matters,’” said Joe Kent, a former Green Beret trying to oust Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler (R), whose vote to impeach President Donald Trump after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot made her a pariah within much of the GOP. “And there’s where we’ve got to come back, to tell people we’re taking real stands.”
When asked whether he had qualms about appearing at an event alongside groups like the Washington Three Percent, Kent looked puzzled and said he didn’t know the organizers.
“All I know is that there’s a bunch of people with flags,” he said.
[How the Jan. 6 Capitol riot happened: A Washington Post investigation
Within days of the event, Kent was under scrutiny again for another far-right link: a phone call with white nationalist Nick Fuentes in which the two discussed working together on social media strategy for Kent’s campaign. In an interview, Kent told Oregon Public Broadcasting that he had no association with Fuentes beyond the conversation last spring.
Federal authorities are careful to say they don’t police protected views, including the racist or anti-government stances often articulated at anti-mandate events, and don’t want to overhype a fringe threat. The problem is, violent messaging is now laced throughout the planning for big gatherings, making it difficult to separate “keyboard warriors” from real-life provocateurs.
John Cohen, the top Homeland Security counterterrorism official, said in public remarks last month that the current threat environment is “more volatile and even more dynamic than it was even back in December.” A recent report from the global nonprofit conflict-monitoring group known as ACLED said current trends in guns and violence at U.S. protests “raises the specter of further escalation in armed demonstration activity going into the upcoming midterm elections.”
At the Olympia gathering, guns were concealed, in accordance with a recently changed law that bans open-carry near protests and the state Capitol grounds. The event was legally permitted, and organizers had asked participants not to display hateful imagery. Three Percenter logos, a few Confederate flags and a Proud Boys shirt were visible, but most of the participants wore generic MAGA, anti-Biden, or red, white and blue attire. Families brought their dogs. Children blew soap bubbles on the lawn.
Speakers repeatedly invoked civil rights language to refer to their perceived persecution, a common theme throughout the anti-mandate movement. Online and at rallies, protesters regularly compare themselves to enslaved Africans, dispossessed Native Americans, Jewish victims of the Holocaust, the Founding Fathers, Martin Luther King, Jr., Gandhi and Jesus.
“It’s about trying to give themselves some historical cache, and it’s remarkable how they do this,” said terrorism analyst Juliette Kayyem, a former Homeland Security official now at Harvard’s Kennedy School. “It’s not like, ‘We’re just upset about vaccines.’ It’s ‘This is the arc of history, and we’re on it with all of these other quote-unquote freedom fighters.’”
The idea of historical significance resonated with Don and Carol Moody, a married couple in their 60s who were eating smoked-pork sandwiches in side-by-side lawn chairs at the Olympia event. Speaking over loud honking as another trucker convoy arrived, Don said that this was a moment, “to make a stand with what you believe in your heart.”
The couple said they’re confused and frightened by the bloodshed in Ukraine; the right-wing news outlets they watch tell them it’s a precursor to World War III. They worry about whether their unvaccinated grandkids will be cleared to play sports. They said they’ve heard that the government might introduce a “vaccine passport.”
They still plan to vote in the midterms — it’s worth a try, they said — but they firmly believe lies about the “stolen” 2020 election and suspect the Biden administration is already cooking up new ways to disenfranchise the right.
“Everything they do seems to be poking us to be more angry,” Don said.
Carol said that’s why she’s suspicious of the lifting of mandates. In her conspiratorial world, it’s not the time to celebrate.
“They’re thinking up something next,” Carol said. “And that’s what scares me.”
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"trump’s REVENGE as Ultra MAGA Candidates DOMINATE Primaries,” exulted far-right Christian nationalist Steve Turley in his Wednesday newsletter. Indeed, Tuesday’s primary elections in several states gave major wins to Big Lie-promoting allies of former President Donald Trump, though there were exceptions to the Trumpist wave.
In a major defeat for anti-abortion activists, Kansas voters overwhelmingly rejected a referendum to remove abortion rights from the state constitution, which would have given legislators the ability to pass the kind of outright ban anti-abortion forces have put into place in other states. The huge margin of victory and massive voter turnout suggest that the Supreme Court’s recent decision overturning Roe v. Wade could be a powerful motivator for pro-choice voters this fall. Pundit Todd Starnes called the Kansas vote a “crushing defeat” for anti-abortion forces. Anti-choice activist Lila Rose called it a “tragic setback.”
Here are some highlights:
Arizona was a blowout win for Trumpism,extremism, and threats to elections. Election conspiracy theorist and Oath Keeper Mark Finchem won GOP primary for secretary of state. Blake Masters, backed by anti-democracy billionaire Peter Thiel, won the Senate primary and will have unlimited funds to attack incumbent Mark Kelly.
In very close race for governor nomination, Trump’s candidate Kari Lake pulled ahead of Mike Pence-backed developer and former member of the Arizona board of regents Karrin Taylor Robson. Lake has claimed victory even though news organizations have said the race is too close to call. Like Finchem, Lake is a hard-core promoter of lies about election fraud and says as gov she will refuse to “take orders” from the “illegitimate” Biden; she has said if she wins she will direct the attorney general to seize election equipment from 2020. “We have God on our side,” she declared.
Rep. Paul Gosar and state Sen. Wendy Rogers, associates of white nationalist Nick Fuentes, won their primaries.
House Speaker Rusty Bowers, who testified before the Jan 6 committee about the abuse he faced for resisting Trumpists’ demands to try to overturn the election, was defeated in his bid for state senate. Former state AG Tom Horne has won the primary for state superintendent of education, an office he has held previously and used to push hard-right agenda such as a ban on ethnic studies; he has pledged to ban bilingual education and create a hotline for reporting suspected teaching of critical race theory.
In the U.S. senate primary in Missouri, scandal plagued Eric Greitens and Rep. Vicky Hartzler were defeated by Erick Schmitt, who ran on “America First” themes; as state attorney general he had led the state into legal challenges of the 2020 presidential election results. Schmitt has pledged not to support McConnell for Majority Leader.
In Michigan, Trump and his allied successfully targeted Rep. Peter Meijer, who had backed Trump’s impeachment;Meijer was defeated by former Trump official John Gibbs. Winning the gubernatorial nomination was Tudor Dixon, who had been backed by the DeVos family and endorsed late in the race by Donald Trump. During the campaign, Dixon vowed to sign legislation “that creates severe criminal penalties for adults who involve children in drag shows.” A “no exceptions” supporter of abortion bans, she made a national media splash when she insisted that a 14-year-old raped by her uncle should be forced to carry the child to term. Kristina Karamo, who hopes to become the GOP nominee for secretary of state, is among the Big Lie promoters hoping to be in positions to run elections in 2024.
In Washington state, Trumpists did not fare so well. They targeted two incumbent Republicans who had voted for Trump’s impeachment, Jaime Herrera Beutler [lost] in 3rd CD and Dan Newhouse in the 4th. Their races have not been called, but both incumbents appear set to make the runoff in WA’s top-two all-party primary, while their Trumpist challengers Joe Kent and Loren Culp are currently trailing.
Tags: Anti-Abortion Anti-Choice Donald Trump Election 2022 MAGA