Donald Trump said he’s glad that his top counterterrorism official resigned over the war with Iran.
In an extraordinary and unprecedented move for this administration, National Counterterrorism Center Director Joe Kent announced he was stepping down over his objections to the US launching joint strikes with Israel.
‘When I read his 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,’ the President insisted.
He said there would have been a ‘nuclear holocaust’ if the US did not take the step at the end of last month to strike Iran.
‘When somebody is working with us that says they didn’t think Iran is a threat – we don’t want those people,’ Trump added.
And Trump allies piled on, claiming that Kent was already in the firing line to lose his job before his resignation.
Kent said in a post to X on Tuesday that he could not ‘in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran’ through his role under Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.
‘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,’ he wrote.
It marks the first major and voluntary departure of a senior Trump administration official since he retook office last year. And it represents a significant condemnation of the ongoing war with Iran from a person with direct intelligence on the threat level posed by the regime.
President Donald Trump says he’s glad his top counterterrorism official resigned amid claiming Iran did not pose a threat to the US
National Counterterrorism Center Director Joe Kent announced Tuesday, March 17, 2026 that he was resigning over his objection to the US conflict with Iran
Kent in his resignation letter accused the President of going back on the non-interventionist principles he campaigned on in 2024.
Alongside Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin, Trump defended his decision to engage with Iran.
‘I read his statement. I always thought he was a nice guy, but I always thought he was weak on security,’ Trump said of Kent, adding that military scholars agree Iran needed to be ‘taken out… because they wanted a nuclear weapon.’
Kent, who deployed to combat 11 times and lost his wife Shannon in what he calls a war manufactured by Israel, is closely aligned with the populist ‘America First’ wing of the Trump administration.
‘Until June of 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,’ the former Army Special Forces soldier wrote in his resignation letter.
‘The time for bold action is now,’ he urged. ‘You can reverse course and chart a new path for our nation, or you can allow us to slip further toward decline and chaos. You hold the cards.’
Former Trump deputy Chief of Staff Taylor Budowich suggested that Kent was already on track to be fired and called him a ‘crazed egomaniac’ responsible for ‘national security leaks’ out of his agency.
‘He spent all of his time working to subvert the chain of command and undermine the President of the United States,’ Budowich wrote on X upon news of his departure. ‘This isn’t some principled resignation—he just wanted to make a splash before getting canned. What a loser.’
