There Were Warnings About Joe Kent

99% of the time when a local politician goes national, turns out to be a squish or a quisling, there were warnings locally. And most of the time people at the national level didn’t pay attention. I remember trying to break through the social media bubble of everyone who enjoyed Chris Christie’s viral video takedowns to get out the message that he was a fraud, that he had actually implemented every liberal policy and was an Islamic apologist. For many people it didn’t sink in until that hurricane photo with Obama. For others it didn’t sink in until he stabbed Trump in the back.

Lloyd Billingsley has an article about National Counterterrorism Director Joe Kent putting out a showy letter of resignation to undermine Trump.

“After much reflection, I have decided to resign from my position as director of the National Counterrorism Center,” Joe Kent, a former registered Democrat who had once voted for Bernie Sanders, announced on Tuesday. “I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran” which “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.”

What made Kent completely reverse his position?

While Kent mentioned his past deceased wife in his combative resignation letter attacking the very policies he had once championed, and claimed to believe in, he failed to mention his current wife, Heather Kaiser, a radical activist who wrote for the anti-American publication, Grayzone, and retweeted attacks on the Trump Administration by its leader Max Blumenthal, a supporter of Islamic terrorism, and the son of Sydney Blumenthal, a top ally of Hillary Clinton.

There were warnings when Kent, an ex-CIA guy, first ran for Congress. He moved from Oregon to Washington to run, and local conservative activists tried to stand up to him, but the national party made its decree, he got backing from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, put on the flannel cosplay, got the endorsement and lost the race.

Then he got the counterterrorism job as some sort of consolation prize for losing elections.

But there were warnings that Joe Kent was not what he seemed to be when he first ran for office. Ex-CIAers who run for office should be treated with extra scrutiny. And Kent scrambled to explain why he was a registered Democrat who had voted for Bernie Sanders. His explanation that he was trying to help Trump win and sabotage Dems was fishy.

Especially since he kept praising Bernie Sanders.

For the past several weeks, 3rd Congressional District candidate Joe Kent has come under fire from fellow Republican Heidi St. John, who has blasted her opponent in advertisements for his support of Bernie Sanders and previously being registered as a Democrat.

At different points in the advertisements, St. John has dubbed Kent “Portland Joe” and a “Bernie Bro” as they both campaign in separate efforts to unseat U.S. Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, R-Battle Ground.

Kent admits he registered as a Democrat and voted for Sanders in the primary, but he said it was “a very tactical thing at the time

“There’s no real Republican Party in Oregon, especially in Multnomah County. Maybe there is, but I’m not aware of it,” Kent said.

It’s one thing to claim there’s no Republican Party in Portland (there is) but to argue there’s no Republican party in the whole state is just dumb.

And his conservative opponent disproved his claims.

“Joe Kent was a registered Democrat in Portland for nearly a decade. This wasn’t some sophisticated scheme to help Trump. It is exactly who he is,” St. John wrote in a response.

Then Kent began talking about what he liked about Bernie Sanders. Anyone who is fond of Bernie is fond of a hard core socialist who wants to dismantle America. And should be looked at with grave suspicion by conservatives.

Kent has occasionally shown acknowledgment or support of some policy points from Sanders and others he says align with the populist left.

“I think there’s a lot of common ground that we have,” Kent said.

He said after Sanders’ 2016 run, “a lot of populist ideas (got) choked out by ‘woke’ ideology.” A lot of those earlier points the Vermont senator touched on were more similar to what Trump had advocated for, he said.

Though he said there was nuance in the details, much of the populist ideas used to be advocated by Sanders heavily. He felt Sanders took the establishment payout following 2016, but Kent said he still occasionally sees the “old Bernie” come out in his political statements, pointing to the senator’s standing with Kellogg’s workers during their 2021 strike as a recent example.

Here’s where the kicker comes in.

“It’s easy to say I’m the America First candidate and I’m just going to regurgitate MAGA at you,” Kent said. He said a reliance on labels of left and right can distract from what he feels the real struggle is: “we the people against this highly corporatized ruling class.”

Anyone talking about an alliance between the Left and the Right, dismissing MAGA and America First, is out to take down America. This is exactly what we used to call RINOs before they got smart and started trying to disguise themselves as MAGA. But in the end, they always out themselves. Kent sure did.

Long before this happened, we should have listened to the local conservatives.