Joe Kent Reveals THE TRUTH About Government Infiltration

All right, joining us now is Joe Kent. He is the former director of the National Counterterrorism Center under the Trump administration. He resigned recently because of the Iran war. He was also special forces, did 11 tours, was a paramilitary officer for the CIA. And unfortunately, he lost his first wife, Shannon, in a suicide bombing in Syria as well.

Joe, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much for having me, great to be here.

Yeah, no problem. Thanks for being on. All right, Joe, you said that the Iran war is problematic because they were not an imminent threat to us. And now we have significant costs of that war piling up. We have 13 service members killed, 232 service members wounded,

16 aircraft destroyed, up to $1 billion a day spent on the war, gas price over $1 per gallon higher nationwide, and the list goes on and on. So is this already obviously

a mistake?

Certainly, and unfortunately, it's a mistake without a clear exit because now that we're in it, it's going to be very challenging for us to extricate ourselves. Obviously there's been immense cost in human life. In terms of American service members, we have the situation that we have in the Straits of Hormuz, where now world energy prices are being affected. We're seeing the effects here, the price of the pump.

And unfortunately, in my opinion, the Iranians currently have the upper hand, maybe not militarily, but in terms of them having leverage. And we have this, I'm sure we'll get into it, an off-balance relationship with our, you know, air quotes quotes partner, the Israelis.

The Israelis have completely different strategic objectives than we do at this point. But we are still treating them essentially, most charitable definition would be as a partner, but really they're in the lead of the military operations. So I think we're in a very bad situation right now. I pray that it won't get worse. I pray that the rumors of the

potential for committing ground troops in any way, shape or form, is just a negotiating tactic. But I think we need everyone to be very aware of just how high the stakes are.

So Joe, look, people say I go too far when I say this war is 100% because of Israel, but I really can't find an American objective. So you've said already that they

were not an imminent threat. Obviously they weren't, even if they had enriched uranium, it wasn't enriched enough. Even if it was enriched enough, they had no weapons to

deliver it here. So that's clear, their ballistic missiles can't reach us. Their proxy groups are an issue for Israel, but it's not like Hezbollah

was attacking Santa Fe. So I literally can't find an American interest. So is this 100% Israel's war?

Yes, I mean, look, the Iranians, we've had our issues with them in the past. And I think President Trump in his first term, he addressed them appropriately. When Iranian pro past. And I think President Trump in his first term, he addressed

them appropriately. When Iranian proxies killed Americans, President Trump responded rapidly. He killed Qasem Soleimani, he killed Aboumany Mohandas. But then he stopped and he didn't take the bait of getting us sucked into a regime change war. Because at a very basic level, President Trump has always understood that getting us sucked into the Middle East is just a recipe for disaster. From there, he used diplomacy, he used economic tools to prevent us from sliding into a war, but also to give us a strategic effect that we needed to kind of keep the Iranians at

bay to get them to the negotiating table. When Trump first came in, in January of 2025, the Iranians stopped their proxies from continuing to attack us. Under the Biden administration, they attacked us 100 to 200 times since October 7th. The Iranians understood that President Trump wasn't someone really that was going to take

the same level of attacks as the Biden administration, but also they understood that President Trump did want to get a deal. And now this posed a strategic threat to what the Israelis wanted, and the Israelis wanted regime change in Iran.

And basically the series of events we've seen since then have played right into the Israelis' hands. And look, it's not just you and I saying that this is Israel's war, or we lack a strategic objective. All we continue to hear from the administration, unfortunately, is basically a list of tactical targets that we want to bomb.

And lists of things to bomb, that's not actually a strategic objective. And so now we're trying to negotiate, whereas the Israelis continue to aggressively pursue their objectives, which is regime change. And so again, we're at an impasse with our partner.

And our partner is saying, we want the war to continue. They're continuing to attempt to kill negotiators. We saw reports today that there may have been an Israeli plot to kill Abbas Arachi. We heard President Trump himself say a few days ago that he can't tell us who he's negotiating with

because he's afraid that they'll be killed. And it's pretty obvious who they'd be killed by. So look, at the end of the day, we just have to be honest with ourselves and say that in this war, only the Israelis stand to gain while we pay for it and

while we bleed for it. And while it's going to have massive strategic and economic ramifications on American foreign policy and then all the way back here to the US and to include

our allies in the Gulf and in Europe.

So, Donald Trump when talking to allies said, they asked them, when's the war going to be over? What's our objectives? And he said, I'll know it in my bones.

So I guess we're all waiting for Donald Trump's bones to tell us when the war is over, but that doesn't seem like a military objective. And then three Republicans came out

of a closed door meeting that was classified and said, boy, they were worried that we're going to put in ground troops and that we really had no objectives. So Joe, Israel definitely has

an objective. They would love to put Reza Apolovie as the dictator, Shah or

king of Iran.

And he's already gone to Israel and pledged his allegiance to Israel, so that's

clear.

Trump has said a couple of times, no, we can't do that. He has no popular support in the country. So now I'm reading in the press that they're on to plan B,

which is create a giant civil war in Iran, so that the Iranians are busy fighting each other and they can't fight against Israel and they're defanged and they're defenseless, etc. So I understand Israel's goals and I understand it from

their perspective.

I think it's a terrible heinous thing to do, but at least I understand it. For us, I can't even guess at what our goals are. So is our goal to destroy every

ballistic missile and how would we know? Every boat that Iran has and how would we know? Every boat that Iran has, and how would we know? We say our objective is not regime change.

So if it's not regime change, and we've already incapacitated their entire Air Force, and what looks like almost their entire Navy. And we've taken out their nuclear facilities, and we've taken out

almost all their ballistic missiles, and we took out the top 49 leaders. What else can we do? Do we have a single identifiable

objective for

the United States in this war?

No, we don't. And this is why I would really encourage President Trump to basically take everything that you just listed off and declare victory based on everything that you just

listed off. And then tell the Israelis, we're done funding this. You can go it on your own, but off and declare victory based on everything that you just listed off. And then tell the Israelis, we're done funding this. You can go it on your own, but you need to worry about defending your own country. We're not gonna pay for any more offensive operations, because that would mess up us declaring victory.

Which I think President Trump should declare victory right now. Say, hey, the Iranian Navy's at the bottom of the Persian Gulf. We've taken out X amount of leaders, we've taken out X amount of ballistics, we obliterated their ability to produce a weapon of mass destruction. But in order for any of that to be taken seriously, he has to restrain the Israelis. Step one of any de-escalation or even step one of declaring any kind of victory is restraining the Israelis and just being honest with ourselves and recognizing what you just said that the Israelis have a vastly different strategic objective.

It's either to install completely new leadership or really just to continue to kill whoever rises to the top. And if that results in massive amounts of chaos, like you said, with the Iranians fighting each other or a massive migration crisis, then so be it. The Israelis have a very different look at what, a very different approach to what winning in this scenario looks like.

But I think the time is right right now for President Trump to say, hey, we accomplished all of our goals, restrain the Israelis, declare victory. And now let's start talking about how we can get the oil flowing again out of Iran, out of the Straits of Hormuz, and how we can start rebuilding the Gulf.

I'm going to move on to Israel in a minute and talk about how dug in they are to our structures of power in this country and have an honest conversation about it. But before we do that,

one more thing at least about the war, which is to the point about declaring victory, Joe, if we went to the Iranians now and said, look, here's our new offer. Our old offer, our current offer, by the way, is get rid of all of

your ballistic missiles, something that no country would do. And get rid of all your uranium, even though we're fighting a huge war and you don't want to get rid of the energy program you

have for uranium. And we get to control your foreign policy. And now by the way, Donald Trump has added, he gets to control the Strait of Hormuz.

So that's fantasy land, right? That's never going to happen. They're not even at the negotiating table. And then you put out these ludicrous demands, right?

But if you put that away and we went to them and said, reopen the Strait of Hormuz, cut out the Israelis from the peace deal. If they want to join the peace deal, great, wonderful, we'd love to have it, right? But we're going to do a peace deal

with you, Iran. You reopen up the Strait, you stop bombing the Gulf countries that are our allies, you stop bombing our bases. By the way, we then are no longer

enemies, okay? And then we'll leave. Where's the downside of that?

Yeah, I would even throw in sanctions relief and helping them reintroduce a lot of their oil to the world market, which would be an economic boom for Iran.

Iran has said that they want us to basically pay back all the damage that's been done. I don't think that's very realistic. I don't think we can even if we wanted to.

But what we can do is we can help them reintroduce their oil to the market. This is gonna be, I think, a great offer for the Iranians. I think it's gonna help bring down oil prices. It would incentivize the Iranians to open up the Straits of Hormuz, and then like you said, we have a separate peace deal with them. I think a key part of the Iranians taking us seriously at this point is going to have to be us restraining the Israelis.

And in restraining the Israelis, I think it's politically going to be hard for us to do, because we're gonna talk about the Israeli influence. But in terms of military capabilities, if we basically say to the Israelis, we're not gonna fund your offense anymore. We will defend you if you're

attacked, but we're not going to find, it's a deal breaker if you guys go back on the offense. And then we're going to have to seriously look at how much military aid we give you.

We hold the leverage in that equation, we don't act like it, and I think we should, but that's going that were actually serious is restraining Israel. Yeah, and of course, the only downside to that is that people would in America, especially

in the media, would cry and cry and cry and say, my God, beloved Israel, we can't do this to them. They started a war and so we have to fight it for them. I find that entirely unpersuasive. Israel's got nothing to do with me. I don't even think they're an ally.

But I wanted to ask one more question about the war itself. Why not use Israeli ground troops? They're the ones who wanted this war, 82% of the population wanted it, their government pushed for

it for decade after decade. Why, and Americans have no objectives there as we just described. Why do we have to use our ground troops?

Israel is now using their ground troops to invade Lebanon and take more land for themselves. I hear about how the IDF is legendary all the time. I mean, I see them murdering

helpless women and children, mainly. But if they're so legendary, why are they going into Iran

instead of us?

I think it's just a simple math problem. I mean, Iran is massive and Israel is tiny. They don't have anywhere near enough ground forces to do anything other than maybe a strategic strike, a quick commando style raid in and out that they specialize in. But in terms of actually committing ground troops, like as you mentioned, they're pretty

tied up right now in Lebanon, Gaza, et cetera. And I think even if they weren't tied up with their neighbors, again, I just don't know if they would be able to actually muster a large enough force to hold anything substantial inside Iran. This is why Israel needs us on board for this war in particular, in order for them to take down the Iranian regime in terms of just even airlift, the ability to dominate the skies,

to conduct a meaningful air campaign, what's taking place in the Persian Gulf. Then ground troops, that's all gotta be us. That's why they've needed us for every single step of this.

Yeah, well, then maybe they shouldn't start wars. If they don't have the troops to fight them, if they say, no, we have to send American troops into a meat grinder for a war we'd like, I got an idea, don't start the war. Okay, so now that turns to why they have so much influence here.

So Joe, our media tells us that Israel has almost no influence in

Washington.

That all the money they spent, $100 million in just the last election cycle. The fact that they've given to 94% of Congress, they've given $337 million to Donald Trump, lifetime number one donor to Joe Biden, Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, Mike Johnson. But we're told all of that money is just for patty cakes.

They actually have no influence at all, this barely has anything to do with this war. And if you say that Israel has influence in Washington, that that's anti semitic. So put aside the ludicrous charges, in your experience, you're the head of National Counterterrorism, does Israel have significant influence in Washington?

Significant, more than I ever would have imagined from reading anything or researching on my own, maybe that's my own ignorance. But I didn't believe it until I saw it with my own eyes from the position that I was in.

The degree of access in which the Israelis have to our elected officials and to our senior defense and diplomatic corps and our intelligence officials, it's second to none, really. And then in terms of how much capture they have of the mainstream media,

and then obviously both houses of the Senate and the Congress, it gives them a pretty unique ability. And I think a lot of this is financial that you laid out and I think is very well documented. But I don't think people understood, or at least I didn't understand

just how long a lot of these relationships go back. And then also there's just a degree of comfort that we have with the Israelis, because the Israelis are very effective at what they do. They have a lot of dual citizens that are in these key locations in their own government

that they use to liaise with our government officials. And when you deal with the Israelis, they're very persuasive. They many times don't feel like they're a foreigner. I mean, cause you'll be talking to somebody who went to school in America and has an American sounding accent.

And the Israelis have done a very good job of saying, hey, we have the exact same strategic objectives. And a lot of times in terms of like very tactical objectives in terms of like taking out a terrorist here or a terrorist there, we do have the same objectives and we can partner with the Israelis. And the Israelis are very good at what they do in terms of their intelligence services, especially in the Middle East.

They're better at the game there than we are. And so it's very easy to forget sometimes when they are sharing intelligence with us or some of their insights that they're giving us this information to influence us as well as to inform us. So this network of both financial co-option from our elected officials, from the media,

that tied in with the official engagement and just the skill of their ability to really insert information into our system unofficially, that gives them a good deal of leverage and a good deal of access, and it really helps them pursue

their objectives.

Yeah, two things that come out of that answer. So as I hear you describing how they speak and look just like us, and they melt in really well and seem to be saying that we have

the same objective. It reminded me of the Americans and the Cold War. The Americans, a TV show, of course, but during the Cold War, that was real.

The Russians tried sending in people who were, look like us and talk like us and didn't have an accent to infiltrate our government. Part of the reason that I bring

that up, Joe, is because a lot of times people make this about religion when it has nothing to do

with religion.

And they make it sound like, my God, the idea that a foreign government will try to infiltrate and influence America is nuts. It's never happened, it's a wild conspiracy theory.

But hasn't it happened many times? The Russians and many others have done this. So if Israel were to do it, would that be like some sort of outrageous thing that is unprecedented or kind of fairly

normal in intelligence?

I think it's pretty normal. I mean, governments always try and influence other governments, but we try and influence other governments. I don't think we're as subtle

about it. I think we're usually a little bit more kind of transparent and we throw our weight around. And so people know what our game is. The Israelis, I mean, it's a small country. And so they have to kind of punch way above their weight

class and they don't do that by being overt. They do it by being really smart and really good at what they do. And obviously, there's the financial components of that, but then also there's just the way that they run the game. And so my issue really isn't at all with necessarily with Israel,

it's our relationship with Israel. It's us not understanding that they have a separate agenda than us that they are aggressively pursuing. And we're allowing them to aggressively pursue their agenda that in some cases might be the same as our agenda, but especially in terms of big strategic picture, it's actually not in line with what we want to do. And as a matter of fact, I mentioned this in my resignation letter, when you take a broader look, the vast majority of the wars we've fought in the 23, almost 25 years now at this point in time, in the Middle East, they've really been driven heavily by the Israeli lobby.

I mean, there's been folks in the United States obviously who have been a part of that as well. But in terms of what Israel, especially the Likud party in Israel wants to accomplish, those foreign policy aims have been a big part that have influenced

the direction that our policies in the Middle East have gone, especially when it comes to who we go to war with.

Yeah, so look, Washington's a funny place. because if you say Big Pharma has enormous influence over politicians, people will generally agree, of course. Big Pharma didn't give all that

money to not influence the politicians. And that's why we can't negotiate drug prices. If you say about Big Oil, well, they're getting $35 billion in

subsidies every year for reasons no one can explain, other than the money that they give to politicians, right? And everybody accepts that and

thinks it's logical.

When you get to Israel, they go, no, you're anti-Semitic. Wait, so Israel is the one lobby that is feckless and useless. They give hundreds of millions of dollars, but they're so unsavvy.

They don't affect any politicians or anyone in intelligence or anyone in our government. That seems preposterous.

It takes more credit because they're really good at what they

do.

Yeah.

But you're right, I mean, because that's what you hear. You automatically hear anti-Semitic. And I think for a very long time, I mean, a lot of people were like,

I don't want to be called that. and they automatically move away from it. I think that that taboo, whatever you wanna call it, is kind of breaking because it's just been so overplayed at this point. I think we're finally in a place where almost both sides are saying like, okay, yeah, fine, but I'm not talking about their religion.

I like to point out that I very rarely even say like, the fact that they're Jewish doesn't really make any difference to me. Like I'm a Christian, it's a big part of my life. It's a big part of who I am. I would have the same view in the Israelis if they were all Christians, if the Christian minority there took over and they won the next election somehow and they converted everybody somehow.

I'd be happy for them as a fellow Christian, but I still wouldn't think that their country should drive my country's foreign policy. But yet we're in this situation. And so they've used that tactic, but I really feel like its effectiveness is wearing out. And the only thing that gives me some hope in this bad situation that we're in is I do think this is going to help both sides, both the side that I come from, the

right, the MAGA side, and then even probably some normal Republicans and Democrats out there, but then also the progressive wing, who's been I think on top of this issue to a certain extent as well. It's going to help us find some common ground, especially with younger voters in the future.

Yeah, 100%. So now, look, I agree with you completely. I understand their actions, game recognizes game, okay? And so, and I understand that

almost any other country would do it if they could do it. Like if you went to the Indonesians and like, would you like to control the largest country in the world? And have them give you hundreds of

billions of dollars and go to war with anyone you like at no cost to you? My guess is they would go, yeah,

okay.

And look, my family's originally from Turkey. If you let the Turks do it, would they do it? Of course they'd do it, of course they would.

Right, right, like Turkey's on false flags in Syria, they tried to bribe Eric Adams in like the most comical, incompetent way you could imagine. So I don't, that's why I've got

massive issues with Israel, but that's not the point of this. The point of this is our guys. So when I turn to that, I think now in the intelligence community, they're giving us intelligence and they're really good at intelligence.

But somehow, they just seem to be consistently passing us faulty intelligence and faulty intelligence that winds up helping them and oftentimes hurting us. So I can't believe that the entire

intelligence community in America is sorry but that dumb that they would be like, golly gee, here comes the Israelis with another gift. I can't wait to use this pager,

right? So what's going on here? Why are we listening to them when we know they're a different country, they have different objectives, and they often pass us

faulty intelligence? So why on God's green earth would we believe their intelligence?

I think a lot of times when it goes from intelligence agency to intelligence agency when it's a formal engagement with the Mossad and the CIA or their defense intelligence service and our

guys and gals in uniform. There's procedures that we follow and there's ways we caveat the reports. And actually, I think that system, it's not perfect and every now and again, bad intelligence gets passed, we miss things. But the Israelis, because of their access, and this is largely what I saw over the course of the last year. Because of their access, the Israelis are able to basically do a shortcut and do an in run around the normal intelligence process. My cat's photobombing us here. And they're able to basically use official engagements

and unofficial engagements with key leaders to basically say, hey, here's some key information. It's not necessarily an intelligence channels yet, and maybe it'll catch up later on. But by then, by the time it hits the intelligence channels or doesn't hit intelligence channels, it's a moot point because it's already gotten to policymakers. And a big problem I think that we've had with the intelligence community lying about things like Russiagate, COVID origins, etc, is that the intelligence community has lost a good deal of credibility.

So when we're having a debate and we actually have all 18 intelligence agencies in the US government in line saying the Iranians are not actually developing a nuclear weapon, none of us agree, all of us agree that that is not happening.

The Israelis are able to plant that seed through official engagements, unofficial engagements with key elected officials and key appointed officials that basically, the intelligence community has already kind of besmirched its name in a way. So it's like, okay, well, I got this directly from the Israelis.

So actually, I believe that more than I believe necessarily the IC. So the IC has some credibility issues, I think, to work on. But again, the Israelis, because of their access, because of how they play the game, because of how we react to them, they are able to do an end run on

that process.

So did you say 18 different intelligence agencies concluded that Iran could not have a nuke?

We concluded they were not, so intent and capability. So the Iranians, under the former Supreme Leader, they had a fatwa, a religious decree that basically said we were not going to make a nuclear weapon. And this was very pragmatic.

And the Iranians' calculus was well known. They knew if they said, hey, we take all of our enrichment, take all of our potential materials for making a nuclear weapon, that they would meet the same fate as Qaddafi in Libya. They knew that if they tried to clandestinely make a nuclear weapon, or they were even tried to bluff that they had a nuclear weapon, they could end up like Saddam. So the Iranian position basically was like, hey, we wanna have the components,

the enrichment capability for a bomb, but we're not actually going to make one. We're gonna have a religious decree that prohibits that. And that was well known. I mean, the DNI Gabbard testified that in 25. She just confirmed it a couple of days, I think last week in her open hearing. So this was a consensus. And even the enriched uranium that they had, they were still months, if not years away from actually being able to make a bomb. And again, they never had the intent to make the nuclear weapon. So basically, this is how the Israelis used their influence network.

They knew that basically because President Trump had said Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon, former Supreme Leader said we don't want a nuclear weapon. That gives them the ability to get to the negotiating table. This was a strategic threat to the Israelis. So they came in, they used their influence network to say, actually, the US policy isn't no nuclear weapon, it's no enrichment. And they took a quote

by Mike Pompeo in 2018, and basically by using multiple engagements over a period of time, and then also having it echoed in the news media that they knew President Trump was consuming, they kind of moved the red line. They moved the red line from no nuclear weapon to no enrichment, which was basically a non-starter for the Iranians. I think there was still a potential for a deal because Steve Whitkoff and others understood this and

they were kind of working out the details of what acceptable enrichment could be. Could there be monitoring these types of details? And that's why you saw the Israelis

both with the 12 day war and this current iteration that we're in sprint towards war and

make us react to it. Yeah, so by the way, the Israeli propaganda goes like this, the Hamas put it in their charter that they're going to destroy Israel and whatever they say, whatever these Muslim fundamentalists say, they mean it.

Well, good news, the Iranian Ayatollah put it in as fatwa, the most important thing you could put it in, that they'll have no nukes. You can't trust them, don't believe anything in their documents, right?

Which one is it? Okay, so that's clear, but I want to go on to something that's more challenging. Look, Joe, as I look at this, I think it's hard to believe that everyone in the government is saying the threat is not imminent, and their intelligence is crap, and they're trying to deceive us. But somehow, the only thing that gets to Trump is, the Israelis are gods, they're awesome,

and we should do everything they say. So why doesn't the head of the CIA, why doesn't the head of DNI, why doesn't anybody go to the president and go, sir, I don't know if you know this, but the Israelis lie to us all the time

and that you shouldn't just take their word for it. Is there no patriots left in the CIA or anywhere in our intelligence?

I think especially in terms of how this last iteration post Midnight Hammer up till when this war started, the decisions around Iran were made by a very, very, very small group. And dissenting voices were pushed out from those decisions that were made. In the lead up to the 12-day war and Midnight Hammer, there was a really robust debate that took place throughout the

course of about a month, probably even more than that, where we kind of looked at all options, how do we prevent this? And so then the battle lines were kind of drawn internally of who supported this, who was incredibly skeptical of the Israelis, who was very sympathetic to the Israelis. And then once Midnight Hammer happened, those discussions got narrower and narrower and the dissenting voices, the skeptics

were really kept from being able to voice their concerns to the president. Which I think did a disservice to the president because the president wasn't getting a broad swath of

opinions. And especially the courses of action on how bad things could get if we continue to escalate, and if we let the Israelis take the driver's seat.

So look, Joe, you resigned and you did something very, very difficult and you're being viciously attacked for it. So in that sense, I trust you and you've proven that you are

a patriot.

I'm going to go much further than you. I don't know that there is a single other patriot in the CIA. I mean, so you were in the paramilitary

officer in the CIA. I don't know that they even care about America. So I know that's super harsh, but whenever we need them, they're nowhere to be found.

They're hiding in a bunker, scared of the Israelis. Even if they're Americans, which I'm skeptical of. I'm not saying all the CIA's Israelis are foreign agents. But I'm saying some of them at the top might be because what you

couldn't find a way to object to the Iraq war when you knew that we had faulty intelligence. You couldn't find a way to object

to the Iran war.

Are there assets of foreign governments in the CIA, let alone the fact that I don't know, are there even any Americans in the CIA?

Look, there's still a lot of good patriots in the entire intelligence community. I just think the people at the very top levels, not necessarily even of the agencies, because a lot of the agencies, they're kind of minding the day-to-day business. If the senior leaders in our government aren't going to listen to all of the intelligence and aren't going to have a skeptical eye and kind of do their own due diligence

and always ask themselves, what's in America's best interest? We're gonna continue to end up in situations like this. I think there are people that are still trying to do the right thing. They're trying to work from the inside. I found it very relieving to come out and to do what I'm doing, but I understand why a

lot of people are uncomfortable with it. I understand why they're attacking me, that's fine. But look, like you said, I mean, the intelligence that led up to the Iraq War and all these different disasters that we've been a part of, I think we need more people, especially from my generation of guys who have fought and bled for this country. Repeatedly, we need to start saying no, we're going to push back on these narratives that have done so much damage to our nation.

Yeah, I mean, I'm told by the same echo chamber that you talk about, and we're gonna move on to them next. But last thing here, I'm told by that echo chamber that it's anti-Semitic and crazy and conspiratorial to think that there might be assets of a foreign government inside our country.

After Jonathan Pollard already betrayed us in the worst act of betrayal that we've had since maybe Benedict Arnold, except for, I should add Robert Maxwell in the middle there because Robert Maxwell stole our

nuclear secrets and gave them to Israel. So since we know that Israel has done this many times in the past, in fact, I'll do part one here, which is, has any enemy of

the United States spied on us as effectively and stolen our secrets as effectively as stolen our secrets as effectively as Israel has? And why on God's green earth would we not worry about Israeli assets

in our government just like they've done before today? That there might be Israeli assets in our government as we speak, maybe even all over our government.

The interesting thing is that I think most people who are kind of doing the bidding of Israel consistently, they probably don't even view it that they're doing what Jonathan Poehler did, or they're spying on our country, or they're an agent or any of those types of things. I think they've just become so, the idea that the Israelis have the same objectives as we do, and that they, the Israelis, are doing us a great service by kind of like being our battleship in the Middle East. I think most of them just don't even realize what they're doing. I mean, because

if you kind of grew up deeply steeped in the culture that we're in, especially working a lot in the Middle East and in the war on terror, you kind of think, hey, the Israelis are our friends and the Israelis take advantage of this. They really do. I'm sure they have more Jonathan Pollards. That wouldn't surprise me at all.

But I think the people that are actually more effective than the Pollards, because the Pollards, it's one guy and you have to get them to actually steal the secrets. But in terms of just their ability to influence because of the access that we've given them and the lack of frank conversations that we have prevented ourselves from having about what the Israeli strategic goals are and how they are vastly different than our own, that's kind of created the amount of influence that they have. Which to me, if I had to choose between having a couple of really well-placed spies that were giving me clandestine information,

or having a vast influence network, I'll take the vast influence network any day. And the Israelis have done a very, very effective job of spreading that throughout our government.

Yeah, so, well, along those lines of the assets that are on the less powerful side, which is actually the workers inside our government. Although from time to time they do massive damage. So along those lines,

in your experience, let's say that Pollard and Maxwell are in the past, my God, the Israelis would never spy on anyone again. Has that been your experience that when you were in intelligence,

everybody was like, the Israelis have never been dishonest with us? Where they're always just so giving and have been so honest every time we've interacted with them.

Is that the experience of

intelligence in America?

No, this is where their influence network is very effective at bypassing the intelligence community. because a lot of guys you get that have ground level experience of working with the Israelis, they'll basically say what I say behind closed doors. They'll be like, hey man,

the Israelis are pretty good at what they do, but they're always running game on us. And they have an objective, they use us as force multipliers. And I think initially when you're first exposed to them, like maybe Masaad will whiz bang you on how they killed Mogdenir or something like that. You're like, wow, these guys are pretty good. But most experienced folks, and I had a mentor of mine years ago when I didn't know as much about the world, say to me, you got to watch these guys. They're always running game. They always have an agenda. They sound great. And so you're gonna put your guard down, but you gotta have your guard up around them.

And I think that's fairly well known by most professionals in the intelligence community, especially if you work a lot in the Middle East. But again, this is where they in run the game. I mean, they can insert what they wanna insert into the intelligence channels

if they know it's actually good intelligence. But then when they come to drive their agenda, they do it through their influence agents, they do it through their direct access by having basically both sides of the aisle on speed dial.

And both sides of the aisle have their guy or their person that they're used to working with. And that's how they can short circuit the low level skeptics that might be in the actual intelligence

community itself.

So in your experience, do other governments just view us if their allies is like buddies and friends, or are they looking to get something for their own government from our government?

So I ask that because our very, very gullible press, if they are in fact gullible, if that's really why they don't get anything apparently, say that, no, there are friends and allies and buddies, we should just trust them. they don't get anything apparently. Say that, no, they're our friends

and allies and buddies. We should just trust them. Or do you think that Israel is basically treating us as suckers? Why would we fight Iran when we can get America to fight Iran?

And as you pointed out earlier, Israel doesn't have enough ground troops to fight Iran. So of course you get the suckers in America to fight it for you. We spent $8 trillion on what they call the global war on terror, but I checked the map, it wasn't global at all.

It was only against Israel's neighbors. And if you can get us to spend the 8 trillion, if you can get us to give you $330 billion, is that really a friend or do they just think we're a piggy bank and a bit of a sucker for giving them all these things?

It's hard to argue with the logic, honestly. I mean, I wish I could tell you it was different, but I mean, the Israelis run effective game on us.

This is yet another war that they've gotten us sucked into. I mean, I spent a lot of time in Iraq, lost my late wife in Syria. The Israelis have been very effective at dragging us into these wars that benefit them, that benefit their interests. And this is just yet another chapter. So at some point, I think we need to have that honest discussion with ourselves and say, what do we actually get

out of this relationship? And are we being played here? And I think the more you look at it objectively and not emotionally and separate how we may feel about the place of Israel and the concept of Israel, etc. I think any sober analysis will say that the Israelis are taking us for a ride, they're playing us, they're getting way more out

of the relationship than we are. I literally have no idea what we're getting out of the relationship than we are.

I literally have no idea what we're getting out of the relationship. All they've ever done is betray us. If I'm being just factual, right? Pollard, Maxwell, Iran war, Iraq war, we've spent trillions, they've stolen from us.

What kind of allies is with allies like this? You don't need enemies. So now that brings us to the echo chamber. The echo chamber is outraged by that kind of talk.

How dare you bow your head to beloved Israel? I don't know why they're beloved. I don't know why we have to love

them.

So let's talk about

the echo chamber. So it's inside the government and outside the government. So tell us first about the echo chamber inside the government. What is that? I mean, it's mostly the official

engagements that senior ranking Israelis will have. And again, because their air quotes are close ally, they do have a good deal of just

access.

They have consistent engagements with our intelligence services, our military, our diplomats, our senior government officials. Basically from both sides of the aisle. I can just tell you what I saw within the Trump administration.

They had good access there. Bibi was at the White House seven plus times in the lead up to this, I believe, is the count. Not to mention all of Bibi's deputies and other surrogates that engaged. So that takes place on official channels, unofficial channels, cuz a lot of these guys have long time relationships with the Israelis. But then usually what we would see is there would be a message,

there'd be a theme. For instance, I use the moving of the red line. It's not Iran can never have a nuclear bomb, it's Iran can never enrich. And you would hear this consistently, they would all get on the same sheet of music. And they would echo this and all their different engagements. And then it would pop right up

in the media as well. You'd see it on Fox, you'd see it in the New York Post. You would see it, especially because President Trump's the president right now, and I'm sure this is the same on the Democrat side. You would see basically the same talking points being echoed. And so they would kind of move in unison to get across whatever point they wanted to get across. I mean, to observe it from the inside, but being able to take a step back and look at it, again, it's rather impressive,

but it's not the sneakiest thing. You would see these things take place. And then a handful of us would say, hey, is this really happening? Like, we can see what they're doing here. And again, usually,

it would not be reflected inside of intelligence channels. The facts that we would go to fact check what they were saying, it just wouldn't match up. But again, because of the amount of

influence that these guys have and the ability for them to get a message out into the media, official engagements being echoed

in the House, being echoed in the Senate. It's very effective. So Joe, there's one thing that I've seen you say in interviews that I don't agree with, and I've got to ask you about it. So if I'm the president and somebody moved the goalpost from no nuclear weapons to no enriched uranium, I would notice. And so you keep saying Donald Trump is smart. I've seen absolutely no evidence

of that.

So how come he can't notice the simplest things?

It's a good question, and

I wish I knew the answer to it. Because if I did know the answer to it, maybe I wouldn't have had to resign. Maybe I could have gotten through

to him.

I don't know exactly how he reached the conclusion that he reached. I just saw the echo chamber. I saw how his closest advisors kind of created a bubble around him and took away any of the dissenting voices. I view President Trump, especially the foreign policy he campaigned on, the foreign policy that he enacted in his first term, as being very pragmatic and a true America first foreign policy that he enacted in his first term as being very pragmatic and a true America

first foreign policy. And so what he's done here in the last couple months to me has been very, very out of character. And so I still want to give President Trump the benefit of the doubt. And I'm hoping through what I'm doing here in the media and what other people are trying to do internally is that he takes a step back and he looks at the current state of play in the Middle East. And he sees that this is going horribly wrong, and he listens to his instincts.

And his instincts about wars in the Middle East have always been correct. So look, I don't know exactly how he arrived at this conclusion, other than seeing the echo chamber take place. I am praying that he has some clarity and I'm praying that the restraint in realism that he once applied to our foreign policy

returns very quickly.

Yeah, less likely in my opinion. Okay, so in the military, there's a thing called the OODA

loop.

I don't know if you're familiar

with it.

Yeah, so I imagine, right? So for the folks who don't know, what it means is basically the environment of the person you're targeting, right? To get into their decision making

loop and surround them with information that you want them to have, right? So it seems like they have Trump's OODA loop covered, right? So now some of that we can see with

our own eyes. We see Mark Levin yelling and screaming about it on Fox News. We see Sean Hannity saying the same thing and they bring on politicians like Lindsey Graham, Mike Pompeo, Ted Cruz. So the Israeli assets in Congress, the Israeli assets in the media are obvious, whether they're technically assets literally being paid by Israel or

blackmailed or whatever, or just simply the campaign contributions, which are gigantic,

right?

Which are basically legalized bribes, we can see with our own eyes who works for Israel, right? So that part is clear. But they also, in order to get to finish off his OODA loop,

they also have to have his advisors inside the White House. So this is obviously a tough question for you, but do you know who's advising him inside the White House to support Israel's wars?

If you're directly supporting Israel, I don't know. I wasn't primary cabinet, so I just didn't have that level of access. So anything I'd say about this

person or that person would be pure speculation. I just saw the outcome of it. And again, I think the most important thing that I can do by kind of bringing all this to the public's attention is hopefully let President Trump know that people are noticing this,

people notice this, especially folks in his base. And for him again, to step back and to say, how do I get out of this situation? And to stop listening to whoever those advisors are that have gotten him into this predicament that he's

in right now, but he has all of us in actually.

Yeah, so look, just real quick for me, Marco Rubio is taking an enormous amount of money from Israel both directly and through his super PACs. Hegseth wrote weirdly in his book about how the IDF should be in the streets of America, a mental position.

I don't even understand what that

means.

But there's also folks that pretended to be anti-war like JD Vance that reporting shows said go big in the beginning instead of a limited strike. And then there's Tulsi Gabbard who

you worked for, who was your direct boss. I heard a lot of talk about how she was anti-war. I don't see any of that. Do you see any anti-war coming out of JD Vance, Tulsi Gabbard, or

literally anyone in the White

House?

All I can really say is that there are dissenting voices who feel that they can make more of a difference on the inside and provide the President Council in private. Yeah, look, I felt that the most effective thing I could do is the path that I took. There are other people who I think share our skepticism

of the Israeli objectives and who are working diligently from the inside right now to try and

get us to a better place. Yeah, yeah, so that's another place where we diverge. If they have these dissenting voices and they're airing them out, well, then they're incredibly ineffective. That's a guarantee, you can't disagree with that. So their strategy of, I'll stay internally and kiss Trump's ass and kiss Israel's ass really hasn't worked at all and doesn't look like it's ever going to work.

So if they're anti-war, now would be the time to speak up, by the way, just like you did. Okay, so now let's go to domestic things that you've talked about. You have questioned what happened with a couple of shootings. So first, let's talk about the shooting of Donald Trump in Butler, the assassination attempt. So that got cleaned up awfully quick by the FBI.

And you said that there were some outstanding questions and that, again, well, we'll get to some of the other instances in a minute. But in that case, that folks were told not to ask so many questions.

But again, I don't want to put words in your mouth, you tell me what actually happened. So what happened there? Did people ask to do further investigation and

were they shut down?

Yeah, with Butler, there was obviously initially we were just told, hey, Crooks lone gunman, he was killed. And then Crooks was kind of an enigma and we just didn't hear much more about him. There was literally nothing about the guy.

Two days prior to Crooks taking the shot in Butler, there was a guy named Asif Mirshant who was hired by the Iranians to come here and assassinate President Trump in retaliation for killing Qasem Soleimani, which is well known. The Iranians made that very public that they felt like because Trump killed Soleimani that he was free

to game.

When Murshid came over here, obviously our guy, the FBI was all over him. This is all in the public court release after that, now that Murshid has been taken away to

jail and found guilty. The FBI had a confidential human source that was befriended Murshad, not the smartest guy, and basically volunteered to plan a sniper attack against the president. They arrest him two days later, a sniper almost kills President Trump and Butler. My basic question was, hey, have we done our due diligence to make sure that there was no linkage between the two events?

Because Crooks was kind of an enigma initially, there just wasn't a lot to go on there. We were told, hey, we looked, but nothing here. Fast forward a couple of months and Tucker Carlson's investigative journalist finds a lot of online presence from Thomas Crooks,

digs up a lot more than it appears the FBI dug up. And so I wanted to go back and make sure that we checked all that through intelligence channels and really researched into what we had learned through Tucker's

investigative journalism about Crooks' online persona. Again, just to check to see if there was foreign ties and to check to see if there's any linkage between their Marchant

plot, because maybe we didn't wrap all of it up. And what took place there in Butler, the FBI did not tolerate this at all. They basically said, hey, there's nothing else to see here, and stopped us from investigating

any of those potentials, to my knowledge.

See, that is incredibly strange. Because Merchant is theoretically working with the Iranians, that would help the talking point about, my God, the Iranians tried to murder the president,

you got to strike back. In fact, we know from reporting now that Netanyahu used that in his closing argument for the war to Trump. My God, they tried to kill you,

you got to strike back and kill them. So why wouldn't we want to investigate further if he's connected to Iran? And every once in a while people

will throw that out there. By the way, just, Joe, my sense of it from having read what I've read that's public, is that I'd be surprised if he was connected to Iran.

It sounds like you're saying that he definitely was, but they say that someone reached out to him from the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. But as you pointed out, Mershad is not close to

the brightest bulb there is. How do we know it was the Iranian Revolutionary Guard that

reached out to him?

Or is that what they wanted to make sure you didn't investigate?

I don't know, everything I read, Mershad was linked to the Iranians from everything I read. And again, like you said, that was kind of my theory was that are not my theory, but my argument

was, hey, let's make sure that this wasn't a broader Iranian plot. Why wouldn't we look into everything and then we were stopped?

That is intensely strange from an administration that is obviously opposed to Iran, so opposed we went to war. Iran tries to take a shot at the president. That guy is arrested a day later that somebody does take a shot at the president and they

say don't look at the link. And then our media, the echo chamber says that's not strange. No, that is strange, that's intensely strange. So do we know all we need to know about Thomas Crooks and the shooting in Butler? Has all that information been released to the public? Or is our government weirdly also siloing

that? I mean, to my knowledge, Tucker found more than our government did. And once Tucker found that, we weren't able to follow up on that through official channels and to do a proper investigation. That's my issue with what happened with Butler and with Crooks. First, it was like, hey, this guy is basically an enigma.

He doesn't have much of a persona, no one knows much about him. That's odd, but okay. But then when an investigative journalist actually digs up, this guy had a pretty active online profile.

There's a lot we can do with people who are active online. There's obviously a lot of ties we can run down. It's a great pool for leads for any investigation.

And again, to my knowledge,

that wasn't done when we offered to do some of those, we were stopped. Okay, so when I hear that, Joe, I think there's assets inside the FBI, because that's not echo chamber. Did Mark Levin get the FBI to stop that investigation?

And it's about Iran, so it makes no sense at all. If it was about Israel, then I'd say, okay, maybe echo chamber, maybe this or what. But what's going on here? Why the hell would the FBI stop

that investigation, especially if it's about Iran?

I had the exact same question, and I don't have a good answer.

All right, yeah, there's something incredibly strange at the FBI. So yes, guys, for the audience out there, many governments try to infiltrate

our government. That happens all the time. But our press says no, none of them ever worked, ever. And if it's an ally, they would never. If the Canadians infiltrated us and

stole our nuclear weapons, our nuclear secrets, I'd be deeply skeptical

of the Canadians.

But anyways, okay, now let's go to Tyler Robinson. Recently, you went as far as saying that you might even testify at his trial if the defense calls you. So tell us why you're also

skeptical about that case, if you're skeptical.

To be clear, I don't have any reason to doubt Tyler Robinson. As I was attempting to look into foreign ties to the Charlie Kirk assassination, the FBI would come and say, hey, if you look into these foreign ties, or if you really look into

anything pertaining to the case, you could be called to testify. And so I always said, okay, like I wanna complete the investigation. And if that means that I could be called to testify, then that's fine. I wanna make sure the investigation is done properly. So there were some headlines that my words were taken out of context. And a lot of times the FBI, in order to get you to back off of something, they would say,

hey, you guys don't wanna be subpoenaed by the defense. And to me, that never really, I understood what they were trying to do, but it was never meaningful to me because I said, hey, I want to do a complete investigation. If somebody wants to subpoena me later to check in on my work or to see what I found, that's fine.

I think we should be open to that. My issue with the Charlie Kirk investigation is that, look, there's Tyler Robinson, his fingerprints are on the gun. It appears that there's a solid case against him. However, there was people posting online before Charlie was even killed that Charlie was gonna be killed that day at that location.

So there's obviously people who had prior knowledge. There's the guy who jumped up in the crowd and immediately said, I'm the one who took the shot. And then later on, he said he was doing that to create a diversion. So I've always said, hey, we have a lot of investigatory work to do here. Charlie Kirk was a national figure, he was an international figure. There's a lot of links that we need to look at.

And then very similar to what had taken place in Butler, was told to stop, don't investigate further. Now the FBI has come back out and said, hey, you didn't have the authority to do that. That's why you weren't included in the investigation. NCTC does look at foreign ties to domestic acts of terrorism to include assassinations. So we did have purview, and we can have the turf fight all day long. Is that the FBI? Is that NCTCs? But at the end of the day, there's potential foreign ties that I really

can't get into that I don't believe believe from my vantage point that we're not completely ran down in terms of an investigation. Now, does that mean there's something there? Does that mean that there's evidence of a foreign government or foreign person? No, that's not what I'm saying at all. I'm saying that the investigation from where I was at NCTC

was incomplete. Okay, so to me, the National Counterterrorism Director looking into foreign ties of a shooting of a well-known figure in America is the most logical thing I've ever heard. Okay, fine, let's say that there's a turf war, do we know of anyone

investigated the people who posted online about knowing about Charlie Kirk's assassination before it happened?

That I don't know, and I think

because the online posting, there would be subpoenas of the about Charlie Kirk's assassination before it happened? That I don't know. And I think because the online posting there would be subpoenas of like the internet platforms and on most of those I think are based in the states.

So that would be the FBI. If they had any international ties though, we would support the investigation and in some cases lead the investigation on

that.

And again, I don't believe that was done and there's other just because of Charlie's profile because of the crowd that day. There was other potential foreign ties that I'm aware of that to my

knowledge were not looked into. Again, the FBI and the DOJ are going to come back out and say he doesn't know what he's talking about. We looked at everything.

I from my vantage point again, I don't believe that to be the case.

So again, awfully strange. So help me understand this. The FBI says, hey, don't look into other leads because if you do it might jeopardize a Tyler Robinson case.

You might get called by the defense. You might have to testify, there might be a subpoena. Is that standard policy that once we think we have someone that might have done it, that we just stop investigating everything else?

I'm not sure if that's always been the case, but that was what I was told. That's why my answer was always like, okay, if you're saying that in order to continue an investigation and to do my job and to potentially get and hopefully get to the truth, that I might have to go to court and testify and talk about what we did, I was always okay with that. And so that's not me volunteering for the defense or even the prosecution really, that's just me saying like, if there's a legal procedure that's gonna

take place here or there's something I need to do in court in order to continue the investigation, let's do that, let's just make

sure the investigation continues. Okay, so let me follow up on that, Joe. So wouldn't it help the defense more if they could say, hey, did you know the FBI refused to

investigate other leads?

Not a defense attorney, maybe. refused to investigate other leads?

Not a defense attorney, maybe. In my mind from the evidence I saw against Tyler Robinson, which is the same as all that you all have seen because it's only in the public sphere. I don't believe there's anything I

can say that's going to get

the kid off.

But I think there's more to the investigation we need to do to see who else knew of it or who else potentially could be

involved. In that case, it isn't about what you said, right? It's about the defense will get to have the records, right? And they get to subpoena things, etc, right? So if they find out, the FBI did

a thorough investigation and they eliminated everyone else and it turns out it's Tyler Robinson, that presumably helps the prosecution and hurts the defense. If they find out the FBI decided or Utah police or whoever's in charge

decided we're not going to investigate foreign connections, we're not going to investigate this, we're not going to investigate that, that attitude from the FBI, that policy from the FBI would hurt

the prosecution far, far more. In my way of looking at it, I mean, a former lawyer, I was a lawyer for a brief period of time. But it seems like we're not you,

but the FBI's actions are helping Tyler Robinson get off if he really was guilty.

Yeah, I understand what you're saying, that makes sense to me. Again, I think all that most people want is a complete investigation and to get justice for Charlie Kirk, and that's what I

want.

So you also mentioned, Joe, that you were worried about some folks have gotten too close to Donald Trump. I think you talked about a law enforcement office probably

meant well, but walked right up to Trump. There were certainly gigantic lapses by the Secret Service in Butler, Pennsylvania when he nearly got killed.

So what's going on here? So again, as an outsider, I look at that. I got nothing invested in the system. So I think, well, maybe the Secret

Service is falling apart at the seams, incompetent, or they're just rusty, and those are terrible mistakes, and they really got to tighten up and get better.

Or is there some asset inside

the Secret Service that we have to be concerned about?

There's been multiple breaches of

the President's security perimeter, like we saw. There was two different assassination attempts. There was the escalator stoppage at the UN.

There was the Code Pink protesters who basically somehow got a table right next to the President and

his staff.

There was the police officer who came up armed and shook the President's hand. So I think all of those things, the assassination attempts, when Charlie was killed, in the midst of the debate about whether or not we're going to go to war if Iran. All of those could

put a lot of, even if they're not linked, they could put a lot of pressure on the president potentially in my opinion.

Okay, so now we've established that many different governments do try to of course infiltrate our government, which makes sense. That's what intelligence does in a lot of ways. Some are enemies, some are allies, and certainly the ally of Israel

has done it many, many times to disastrous effect. So people in the echo chamber can deny that, but they would literally be lying in that case. So then of course, Joe, the question becomes, how do we And Echo Chamber can deny that, but they would literally be lying in that case.

So then, of course, Joe, the question becomes, how do we know how infiltrated we are? How do we know who's at the FBI, who's at the CIA, who's at the Secret Service?

Is there any way of knowing?

I don't really know if there's any way of knowing. I just think the way that the Israeli Echo chamber has been able to force us into this war with Iran, which the president basically ran against doing, tells us a lot of what we need to know. That it's much deeper than at least me and my mind. Maybe I was looking at it too simplistically before.

But there's a lot more there that we should be aware of. And again, I think this is a key issue that whatever you wanna call the left and the right, whatever that means nowadays, I'm not even really sure, that we can unite on and attempt to root out by being very, very judicious on who we elect

and who they appoint and looking at all their ties and looking at their relationships, and especially looking at all their ties and looking at the relationships, especially looking at who's donating to different political candidates. I think that's important.

So I think really having the people be more engaged and more active and more vocal about the fact that we're watching and we don't want our government controlled by a foreign government.

I think that's truly the only

check on this.

Okay, well, so we got two challenges there. One is the media, one is how you do it. I'm going to come back to how you do it in a second, because that's probably the most challenging.

But in terms of the media, every time you talk about things like this, the supposedly reporters are supposed to challenge the government. Are they really telling the truth,

right?

Instead, what the reporters seem to do is the government's telling the truth and anyone who disputes that is a conspiracy theorist, and they try to smear people, etc. So with Lindsey Graham's of the world and Ted Cruz's and Fetterman and Richie Torres on the left,

Hakeem Jeffries, Chuck Schumer, if you ask me, all those guys. Their motivation is clear, they are getting paid millions and millions of dollars in campaign contributions.

Our press again goes, they claim that they're super stupid and think that millions of dollars don't affect politicians. That the politicians are the most honorable people in the country.

And that's why they take millions and stuff it into their mouths and pockets, and doesn't affect them. They just coincidentally happen to love Israel, right? So we don't have to talk about

whether those guys are good faith actors or bad faith actors. They're definitely bad faith actors, okay? So in my opinion, now when you turn on the media though, and I know this

is outside your expertise, but it is within your experience. You experience the media when you're inside the government. You've experienced it now that you've come out as basically experienced the media when you're inside the government. You've experienced it now that

you've come out as basically a conscientious objector to this war, saying that it's not right and not an American interest. And so are they all super naive? They've never heard of a foreign

government trying to infiltrate any government, they've never heard of it, it's never happened before. Or they're super naive that even though Israel has stolen our nuclear secrets,

done Jonathan Pollard, well, they were born yesterday and they think, no, no, no, that's all in the past and Israel's golden hearted and would never do it.

And no, I can't see where the money's coming from, I'm blind. I'm just the worst reporter in the world. They're all Mr. Magoo. Or are they playing us too?

I mean, media, especially the mainstream media, I think is definitely playing us. And again, I think there's probably a good deal of money in there if people run down the financial interests to the mainstream media. I think there's probably a lot of Israeli backing or at least pro-Israel Americans behind a lot of that. Again, I think the good news is that platforms like yours, Tucker, just the new media environment,

we're actually allowed to ask these questions. And I think a lot of younger people are asking the questions, doing the research themselves and becoming more aware of this. But if it was up to the traditional reporters from Fox or from MSNBC, CNN, etc., New York Times, we would never hear any of this. It's taboo. I mean, I've had these discussions before with New York Times reporters, Washington Post reporters. And until I came out

and resigned publicly and kind of put it in writing, they really didn't even want to talk about it. A lot of them would express interest and say, yeah, I'm aware of this. But then when it came time to Polish, they just weren't

interested in doing it. So, yeah, I think the new media is letting us actually ask the question and start the conversation. And I think another reason why we're seeing the Israelis move so

aggressively right now is because they know that their time is up. They know that the amount of influence they have in America right now is waning. And again, I think going into the next political cycle, I think pushing back aggressively on Israeli influence is going to be a key issue in both sides of the aisles, primary and I hope in the general election as well.

Yeah, my opinion is that if you vote for somebody taking money from the Israeli lobby, they've literally raised their hand and said I'm going to work for

the Israelis.

I took like 6.5 million, 5.5 million, Meeks, another Democrat, 2.2 million. We discussed it today on the show. Or you could be as dumb as a mainstream media reporter and go, no, no, I bet millions and millions never affect the beautiful

honorable politicians we have. It makes me wonder, yeah,

I mean, what is that?

Well, that's not, that's definitely not journalism. It's not close to journalism. It's saying do not question the government. And anyone who does,

we will character assassinate on behalf of the government. Which then brings me to the next question, which is, so of course, they've done that to you. And we are all as a country, to be honest, and you know this,

assessing your credibility, right? Because you're saying really important, really interesting things that we should all consider. So now they've said that you talked to Nick Fuentes at some point,

and you had somebody from the Proud Boys as part of your campaign when you ran for office. I've seen character assassination after character assassination. So that's why I'm not going to

assume anything I'm going to ask you, so did that stuff happen? And should that affect the way that we see your credibility?

In terms of Fuentes, I mean, that's pretty well documented. I spoke with Fuentes once, I think in 21, when I really didn't know who he was. And then he did what Fuentes does. He comes out and says some crazy, basically makes people say, hey, I don't want anything to do with that guy, which I did.

Kind of same story that happened with MTG and Rep Gosar and some others. So yeah, that's the saga of me and Nick Fuentes. The Proud Boy thing, like I had people who worked on my campaign when I was running for Congress like as door knockers, etc. And there was an accusation that one of them was a Proud Boy. I never saw any like actual substance to it whatsoever. So I mean, that's for those two. I was also accused of being a Bernie Sanders supporter as well. So depending on who you're running

against and what you're saying, you either get called a crazy leftist or a crazy rightist. I think there was an ad I have somewhere where I'm called a Bernie bro and a Nick Fuentes

supporter all in the same ad.

And it makes sense because when the establishment comes for you, they don't really care if you're on the left or the right. They despise all outsiders. So and I've had them smear me 200

times.

So you're kind of getting off light here for a second. So look, Fuentes hates you now. So that part is clear. So I want people to know that and so he does not speak kindly

of you.

So that's a bit of a badge of

honor.

And I mean, when you come out like this, you should be all right, anyway, I don't track his show, but that's what I know from last time that I looked into that topic. But as far as the Proud Boys guys,

so you never had a conversation hey, how do we help the Proud Boys and secretly get the Proud Boys in the government? You didn't even know that that guy

was a Proud Boy?

No, and I don't even know if he was. He had, if I'm remembering correctly, he had an ex-girlfriend that accused him of being a Proud Boy and it made its way

into a police report, but he was never charged. It was like, I don't know, terms of just a standard campaign attack ad. Yeah, and so for people who are not

familiar with the lies of mainstream media, the New York Times, for example, said that I was anti-Muslim and never mentioned that I grew up Muslim. So they also said that I brought on

David Duke and agreed with him that he was not racist when in fact, in the interview I called him racist and anti-Semitic and bigoted and dumb several times. So yes, sometimes people in the New York Times flat out lie, and they almost never do it to someone in power.

They almost always do it to people outside of power. If they're challenging the powerful, they have a super curious way of doing it. We can't see it with our bare eyes. So now we get to the final part here, Joe, which is maybe the most difficult. So let's say that again,

it could be any other country, Chinese, Russians, Norwegians, had infiltrated our government and we were worried. We're not sure, but we're worried. Hey, are they at the agriculture

department? We're not sure, but we're worried. Hey, are they at the Agriculture Department? Are they in the Secret Service? Are they in the FBI? How in the world would we find out? And how in the world would we take them out of our government?

I think pattern recognition, honestly, I mean, maybe I'm speaking from my own personal experience, what worked for me. Pattern recognition, if we just see consistently that

our government is acting on behest of whoever and it benefits them, that country more than benefits our own country, especially in something where the stakes are as high as war and peace, then I think we just have to be honest with ourselves. And like, look, for me,

a guy who fought in the G-WAT extensively, if you would have told me 20 years ago that, hey, you're in Iraq right now, heavily because of the Israeli lobby, I would have said, no, I don't think so. I think we thought there was weapons of mass destruction here or something.

But again, when you look at it on a broader timeline, you look at who has benefited from it, you come to an inevitable conclusion. I think there's a preponderance of data that supports what we're talking about here, that Israel has undue influence on our foreign policy, on who we go to war with in the Middle East. And again, rooting it out, I think it's transparency is the best sunlight. And then I think we need more people from the inside to come out and speak out.

And I don't expect everyone to do what I did, but there are other ways to come out and speak out. And just to say that we're not gonna go along with this and to be skeptical of the amount of influence that Israel has or the agendas that they're trying to push. But again, having, I think, new media really highlight a lot of this and then have people be engaged as we go into the election season to say, I'm not gonna support candidates

who are taking money from Israel. And as a matter of fact, a litmus test. And again, this is where I'm hopeful that there's gonna be some kind of unity on the left and right, especially when you talk about the executive branch,

because at the end of the day, I think a lot of times presidents get frustrated with how little power they have to affect things domestically and they focus on foreign policy. So honestly, I'm moving personally towards a place where I could kind of care less about a lot of the president's other policies, but I really want to hear about their foreign policy and how they're influenced by foreign countries and whether or not they're going

to be susceptible to marching us off to another regime change war. I think that's going to be critical. We've got to get people engaged. And I think because of what's taken place here in the last year, but then there's just the preponderance of new media and attention that's being called to the Israeli influence. I think we're moving to a place where they're not going to be able to simply outshout us by calling us anti-Semites or just run nonstop Fox News, MSNBC coverage to snuff us out. I think this issue is going to have to be dealt with by both political

parties, and I don't think

the status quo is going to hold. Yeah, so look, last thing here in terms of how to do it, right? So look, in the media, it's clear who supports Israel. Above all, it's not even close.

We know exactly who they are. And there's nothing to do there. It's a free country, they can say anything they like. They can keep telling us forever and ever how we have to kneel to Israel.

Otherwise, we're all, hey, Jews or what insane thing that they've come up with and they could just try to browbeat us and fire us and all that stuff. But at least they're outside

the government and we see them and they're allowed to again, they're allowed to say whatever they want, they're Americans, right? We think, but still they're allowed whether they're Americans or not. Inside the government is a different question, right? We cannot allow people inside

our government to represent any other foreign country. That is deeply problematic and anyone can tell that unless of course they're a mainstream media reporter in which case they can't

tell anything. And so, but if we elect someone else that also has their top lifetime donor being AIPAC, which has been the case for many, many presidents Biden, Trump.

And I didn't do the math on Clinton and the rest, but they have all taken tremendous money from the Israeli lobby, right? Okay, so those guys you can't trust, period, that's obvious.

And by the way, guys, again, it doesn't really have anything to do, definitely has absolutely nothing to do with religion, but also really irrespective of the government, right?

If the Bulgarians had an incredible pact that gave hundreds of millions of dollars to our politicians, and then somebody took tons of money from the Bulgarian pack, I'd be concerned that they were going to

serve Bulgaria. It's the most obvious logical thing

in the world.

Okay, so then, Joe, we assume that there's going to, let's say we finally elect an honest, clean president that's actually an American and wants to represent Americans. that there's going to, let's say we finally elect an honest, clean president that's actually an American and wants to represent Americans.

What would he do? So as I imagine it, but I'm a layman and I'm on the outside, right? So the Secret Service, you mentioned we're a little worried about their lapses. Do we know that there's anyone who's doing anything wrong in the Secret Service? I don't know, you said you don't know, right? But couldn't you find out?

Couldn't you ask, hey, what happened in Butler, Pennsylvania? And maybe they're gonna have an answer for you, Joe, that says, no, it was Bob and Suzy and they went for a coffee break and it turns out they were having a relationship and that's why they blew it and we fired them, right? Okay, yeah, logical explanation, right? Or, yeah, we just didn't check that

building, and that building happened to be the one without the cameras, and had a clear line of sight. But whatever, dude, we didn't check it. Then I go, okay,

I'm worried about that guy, right? So is that kind of how we would go?

Yeah, and look, I think we're going to have to be, we, whoever it is that wants to be an honest broker and actually clean up our government and get control of the government for we the people. They're going to be very aggressive

because the bureaucracies are deeply entrenched. And a lot of the people who are influenced by this or have just become accustomed to a certain way of doing business. And they've been promoted based on not asking questions.

They've been promoted of going along with the status quo. Those people need to aggressively be rooted out. And again, that's another core thing that President Trump ran on, was draining the swamp, taking out the deep state and really going to battle with them. And that's much deeper than going after who the perpetrators of Russiagate were. That's having a healthy skepticism of everything that comes out of all of our institutions,

looking in the dark, uncomfortable places, and trying to figure out exactly why key events like we've talked about here tonight actually happen. And not being satisfied with the simple answers that just don't pass basic common sense. I think that's absolutely key. Otherwise, just the sheer volume of day-to-day grind in the government will just kind of beat you down. And that's kind of how the machine operates.

And so you're gonna have to have somebody who is willing to spend a significant amount of time and hire the right people and go in and aggressively pursue the truth. And we can probably sit here for the rest of the night and list off all the things we think the government has been dishonest with,

all the different ways that the government has abused its powers. And we need to start getting at least the truth out about a lot of those key events. There's a lot that needs to be done in terms of declassification.

There's a lot that just needs to be done in terms of oversight. So that needs to be the focus of the next actual administration that's dead serious about getting to the heart of what the deep state

of the apparatus, whatever you want to call it is.

Yeah, so very last thing is that look, some of this stuff is easy, you can see with your own eyes. Some of it's very hard, how do you find the assets that they're hiding?

But the last one is about foreign policy, and that's another one that people say is super hard, but actually seems pretty easy to me. So let me run this by you. So they say, well, Marco Rubio said and so did Mike Johnson, by the way, and Caroline Leavitt and so many others. The Israelis were going to attack,

so we didn't have a choice, right, to protect our troops by attacking

with them.

So the Israelis forced us into this war is the obvious implication. Isn't it easy to say, no, you will not attack, and if you do, you will lose all of your funding? Why is that not the simplest thing in the world?

I 100% agree with you. And I think that's what we should have said. I think after June, that's 100% what we should have said. We should have said if you guys want us to continue to provide your

defense, you will not go on the offensive unless we tell you to because we are paying for it. That's this relationship. Any country that we're paying for it. That's this relationship. Any country that we're paying that much money to, I don't think we should be paying. I just think financially, I don't think our country is in a

position where we should be paying any country that much money. But if we're going to, we need to be the benefactors. We're calling the shots. They then at that point in time, when they're taking that much money from us and relying on us for their defense, they are our protector, they are our proxy. That's the way this works. If they don't like that relationship, then they'll take the money. And so I think we very simply should have said to them, frankly, you just will not do

these following actions or you will lose support from us. But the Israelis know that basically there's not much that we're going to do to cut off the amount of money and resources that we give them. And they also know that if they get attacked, then we have to defend them. They also know that if they go on the offense, that they can basically force our hand.

And that's what's taken place here over the course of the last month. So again, I agree with you 100%. That has to be the way that we reassert ourselves in this relationship. And kind of circling back to what we began with, if President Trump is going to get us out of the situation that we're in right now, step one before any kind of negotiations, he has to restrain the Israelis. He has to say to them, you will not take any more offensive actions. I am working towards a negotiation. If you do without our permission, it will change our relationship and you will lose support from us.

I personally think, and I know we probably disagree here, I think President Trump has the type of personality where he could flip the table in a very Trumpian manner on the Israelis and reassert our dominance and take us on a whole new course that actually puts us in a much better place. That's what I'm praying for right now. And that's what has to happen if we're going to regain essentially our sovereignty and pull us back

from the brink of this disaster we're tumbling towards in

the Middle East.

Yeah, so I think that 99% of the country understands, yeah, we give them, we've literally given them over $330 billion inflation adjusted money, let alone the 8 trillion spent on

the wars for them. Yeah, you could use that as leverage. It's not a complicated question. The only 1% that doesn't seem to understand is our politicians and

our media, gee, I wonder why. And then in terms of Trump, no, I think he could do it. I don't want you to mistake what I'm saying. I don't think he's smart at all. I think he doesn't understand how Israel played him in 800 different ways.

And he's bungling and inept, that's my opinion. But he is a wild character. He's not a normal corporate robot, right? The corporate robots will do exactly as they're programmed. Whereas Trump is a wild man, and I think that's why Israel is

actually slightly concerned about

him.

So it would be great if he found his bearings and remembered that he was supposed to be anti-war and America first. And by the way, as much as I can't stand him on other things,

if he got rid of Israel's influence in America, he would deserve a tremendous amount of credit for that. And honestly, I think people, whoever it is, Trump, the next Democratic president, the next Republican president, whoever it is, would have statues of them built all across America. So that's my opinion.

Joe Kent, former director of National Counterterrorism Center, and I'll say it, American hero, who actually opposed the war. And unlike others in the administration, meant it, and said it, and tried to prevent it,

and is trying to prevent it as

we speak.

We appreciate your patriotism, and thank you for joining us, Joe.

Thank you so much for having me. It's been great. I really appreciate it.

Appreciate you, brother. Appreciate you, brother. We need more patriots like Joe Kent.