Megyn Kelly is joined by Joe Kent, former Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, to discuss his resignation over the war in Iran. “I think a lot of those key decision-makers were also heavily influenced-not necessarily by the intelligence coming out of the 18 U.S. intelligence agencies-but by a lot of these Israeli officials who were coming directly to them,” Kent said. “And I think because they wanted to so tightly compartmentalize the president’s circle, he didn’t get a chance to hear any dissenting voices.” “If you look at what’s publicly available, if you just look at the night that the operation launched, you look at who was in the White House Situation Room and then who was down in Mar-a-Lago with the president-they had an entire small group that was down there just with the president, while you had the DNI, the vice president, other key members of the cabinet, the intelligence community, who were far away from those decisions that were being made.”

MEGYN KELLY: Now, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, in dismissing your criticisms is saying basically Joe Kent didn’t know anything. He wasn’t involved in the president’s daily brief, which did jump out at me as the head of the National Counterterrorism Center. You should have been involved in the information going into the presidential daily brief, which is about intel threats, I think. And she said you were never in any of the meetings leading up to the decision on whether to attack Iran. It sounds like, certainly on that latter point, you agree and you think it’s part of the problem-but is it true that you’d been frozen out of participating in the PDB? JOE KENT: So, there are some details here that are important. The National Counterterrorism Center can put essentially articles-papers-into the PDB, and then there’s a process to decide what actually goes in front of the president. The president can request whatever information that he wants. But again, his daily briefs are usually with a smaller group, and I just physically did not work over at the White House. There were times when I would go over to the White House and be in those meetings with the president, or more frequently it would be at the deputies level. What I would say is, in the lead-up to the 12-day war, there was a good deal of deputies meetings about what we were going to do, the potential contingencies given the president’s options. There was a huge National Security Council process that was taking place, and there was a lot-again, there was a lot of dissenting voices. There was a lot of what I viewed as very healthy and productive conversations to give the president a realistic look at what his options are and what the ramifications for those options would be. Post–Midnight Hammer, that process played out completely differently. Now, obviously, they can say that I was cut out of the meetings-and maybe I was-but I just didn’t see a robust debate taking place at that deputies level, at that National Security Council level. I think you really just had a lot of key policymakers at the cabinet level that were around President Trump, and that’s the president’s prerogative if that’s what he truly wanted. However, I think a lot of those key decision-makers were also heavily influenced-not necessarily by the intelligence coming out of the 18 U.S. intelligence agencies-but by a lot of these Israeli officials who were coming directly to them. And I think because they wanted to so tightly compartmentalize the president’s circle, he didn’t get a chance to hear any dissenting voices. And I understand-I like Karoline, I think she’s very good at her job-so she’s got to come in and say this and refute what I’m saying. But I think if you look at what’s publicly available, if you just look at the night that the operation launched, you look at who was in the White House Situation Room and then who was down in Mar-a-Lago with the president-they had an entire small group that was down there just with the president, while you had the DNI, the vice president, other key members of the cabinet, the intelligence community, who were far away from those decisions that were being made. And again, look, I know a lot of folks are going to come back out and say, No, you don’t know what you’re talking about, that they were separated for tactical or strategic reasons. But I think the imagery that came out of that night kind of showed you what the president’s tight circle was versus some other folks who may have had the ability to offer the president a different perspective. MEGYN KELLY: Well, I mean, it’s not a mystery to anybody that Tulsi is against starting new Middle East wars. She’s said that repeatedly, mostly prior to becoming DNI, but that’s no mystery. And JD Vance is definitely more representative of the more isolationist, non-interventionist wing of the Republican Party, but so far has been supportive of his boss, the president of the United States. He’s been backing, yes, imminent threat. And Tulsi, at her testimony this week, said, Only the president can determine whether there was an imminent threat, but then of course went on to say we assessed Iran was not rebuilding its nuclear enrichment capabilities following the June attack-that they’d been obliterated. So I know that you, before you resigned, met with Tulsi-and you used to work for Tulsi. You kind of worked for her in a way because she’s DNI, but you used to-I think you were her chief of staff for a time. Am I wrong? JOE KENT: I was, yeah. While I was waiting for confirmation from the Senate, I was her chief of staff. MEGYN KELLY: Okay. So you worked for Tulsi, and my understanding is you and she went in and you met with Vice President Vance prior to your resignation that you submitted to Trump directly. I know you spoke to the president too, but can you tell us anything about that? I don’t want you to violate confidences, but can you tell us anything about that meeting with Tulsi and JD? JOE KENT: I think it’s better if I don’t get into details. I view both of them as very strong leaders. And before I submitted my resignation-with Tulsi, as a Senate-confirmed presidential appointee, you have to resign and you technically report directly to the president-but I kind of had a dual track. The National Counterterrorism Center falls under ODNI, so Tulsi was my boss day to day. So obviously, her and I discussed my resignation ahead of time. I didn’t want her to be blindsided. And then the vice president as well, who’s been a personal friend prior to him being the vice president. Once he became vice president, obviously our relationship changed, but I felt it was proper to at least say to my chain of command, Hey, if you’ll give me the opportunity, I will deliver this letter directly to the president of the United States. And so the vice president said, Hey, let’s sit down and let’s chat, and you can deliver the letter to me. And then I got a phone call from the president later on that evening before I resigned. But I don’t want to get too much into the details of what we discussed. MEGYN KELLY: Do you think they’ve been put in a tough spot by all this? JOE KENT: Yes. They’ve been put in a tough spot, and I know that I put them in a tough spot. And again, that’s why I wanted to give them a heads up and just say, Hey, I’m resigning. I do plan on making it public. I want to attempt to reach President Trump from the outside to let him know that he still has options and that there is a pathway for him to get us off of this trajectory. And then also just to thank them for the opportunity to serve once again. But yeah, they’re in a hard spot. They’re doing everything they can, I think, to serve our country and to put it on a good trajectory and to support the president of the United States. I was just in a different role, and I didn’t feel that I could do that any longer, so I offered my resignation. MEGYN KELLY: Of course, we’re all looking forward a bit to 2028 already, because that’s what we do in this country-we have three-year presidential elections now. But do you think if JD were to run, and if Tulsi were to run-you know, she ran for president the last time-do you think we would be surprised that they’ve had some big shift in their foreign policy views? JOE KENT: Yeah, I can’t speak for either one of them. Just out of respect, you should probably ask them. I look forward, hopefully, to either one of them running for president. I think they’re both very strong leaders. So that’s all I can say without saying too much that violates the confidentiality that I have. MEGYN KELLY: There’s a lot of people who are wondering whether we’re going to see a Joe Kent on a ticket. Is that a possibility? JOE KENT: I’ve unsuccessfully run for Congress twice, so just to level set there. I think I’m where I need to be. I think working in the national security realm is kind of where I belong. I have no desire to ever run for office again. It was a good experience-I’m glad I went through it-but it’s not one I have any desire to do again. MEGYN KELLY: Right now, again, I want to tell you that it was 2017 when a man named JD Vance said exactly that same thing to me. So never say never. I could see you potentially winding up on somebody’s ticket in some way, or at least in an administration that is more in line with your sensibilities. We’ll see down the line-that’s for down the line. So you did go then and speak with the president directly, to your credit, and it sounds like he was really nice about it, right? I mean, how did the meeting go? JOE KENT: Yeah, President Trump was nice enough to give me a phone call later on that evening, and I think we talked for 10 or 15 minutes. Look, it’s President Trump-you’ve talked with him. He’s always very respectful, very gracious. He sounded a little bit surprised and a little disappointed that I was tendering my resignation, but he gave me an opportunity to explain what I thought. And he said, Hey, I disagree with you. But it was a very respectful conversation. I think it was a good conversation at the end. So again, I feel like we departed on good terms here.

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