Loading...
Loading...

In this explosive episode of Liberty Lockdown, Clint Russell dives deep into Joe Kent's shocking resignation as Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, where he boldly declared that Iran posed no imminent threat to the US and accused the Trump administration of launching the war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby. We expose the hypocrisy from figures like Trump, Ben Shapiro, Tulsi Gabbard, and Mike Johnson, who sandbag Kent—a decorated veteran who lost his wife in a prior Middle East conflict—while openly admitting the conflict defends Israel, not America. This isn't just about one resignation; it's a betrayal of America First promises to end endless wars, with real consequences like economic pain for consumers and risks to US troops. Watch as we break down the truth behind the war drums and why voices like Joe Kent's prove the anti-war message is winning despite the smears. SPONSOR INFO: Get $200 off Cove Pure by using this link. It's a great product. https://covepure.com/liberty Check out my show over on Fountain: https://www.fountain.fm/show/nUTYcMtl4yMuoKHljZWu Become a supporting member of Liberty Lockdown here!: https://libertylockdown.locals.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/LibertyLockPod Pickup LL shirts over at https://erinnwaterdesign.com/collections/liberty-lockdown All links: https://www.libertylockdownpodcast.com/ Linktree: https://linktr.ee/libertylockdown As always, if you leave a five star review on Apple Podcasts with your social media handle I'll read it on next weeks show (audio version only)! Love you long time Liberty Lockdown presents a variety of opinions, sometimes opposing and controversial. They are not representative of the host of the podcast. Guests are encouraged to express their opinions in a safe and equitable environment.
But we are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covet means for expanding its fear of influence on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion, instead of elections, on intimidation, instead of free choice, on guerrillas by night, instead of armies by day, its preparations are concealed, not published.
Its mistakes are buried, not headlined. Its dissent is a silenced, not praised.
Believe it or not, that speech from JFK was given to the American people 65 years ago. And as prescient as it is, it's unfortunate that it was not actually in regards to what we truly face.
It was really demanding censorship amongst the American news media so that we could prevail in the Cold War.
Nonetheless, his words have tremendous gravity, particularly today. Joe Kent, our head or director of counterterrorism, as of about 24 hours ago, he resigned.
And with it, we got a brief glimpse into that secretive cabal that rules over us through covert means. In fact, we are waging yet another war on their behalf.
There was no imminent threat to the United States of America by the Iranians. There was a threat to Israel.
The equate a threat to Israel is the equivalent of an imminent threat to the United States, then we are in uncharted territory.
That is Senator Mark Warner. Once again, acknowledging what Marco Rubio told us that this was a war in defense, not of America, but of Israel.
As I've shown you on prior episodes, just a week ago, we've got Marco Rubio, Senator Warner. There was another Democratic Senator that said the same thing. He said, look, it's for Israel.
Pete Hegs says that Donald Trump said it. I mean, it's like, it's not even a secret at this point. So it's pretty shocking when the director of counterterrorism comes out and he says, I'm resigning.
One, because I lost my wife in the stupid CIA dirty war in Syria when she was unfortunately and tragically killed in 2019, but also because I'm witnessing us making the same mistakes by starting yet another war in the Middle East on behalf of Israel.
So everybody who supports the war, they can say it. It's actually okay to say it because it's the truth. They may try and mask it or walk back from those comments, but they're certainly not going to be forced to resign. They won't be smeared.
They won't try to destroy Marco Rubio. They won't try to destroy Pete Hegseth or Donald Trump because they all support the war.
The people who do say it's for Israel and don't support the war like Joe Kent, well, they get demolished. Does it matter that Joe Kent has like four or five bronze stars?
Does it matter that Joe Kent spent well over a decade, maybe even two fighting in the Middle East against Israel's enemies? Does it matter that he served 11 tours of duty?
Does it matter that his wife, the mother of his children died in one of those wars? Well, it mattered right up until he said, I don't want to fight for Israel anymore.
And then the knives came out.
The letter is deeply, deeply conspiratorial. It states openly that quote, 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.
Now, that is conspiracy trash. It's also kind of strange since President Trump has said that it's conspiracy trash.
So apparently Trump is so deeply, deeply enthralled to those strange powerful American lobbies.
We're not going to say it. We're not going to say it. We're not going to say it. We're not going to say it.
That he apparently has been so bamboozled by them that he's still under the impression that he's his own man.
But here's the thing. President Trump is his own man. He makes his own decisions.
And as for our usual arrangement, Trump's critics are cowards who are simply unwilling to acknowledge that Trump is the one making the call.
That's right. Ben Shapiro just called Joe Kent the coward.
Joe Kent, Joe fucking Kent is the coward.
But Ben Shapiro is that heroic soldier, I guess?
And look, I'm not saying that Trump isn't making these calls. Trump is standing by these calls.
He's saying that this is what he wanted to do. I hold him just as responsible as anybody else.
But it doesn't change the fact that ultimately the motives for this totally ridiculous absurd dangerous war is fought to the benefit of a country that is not our own.
It doesn't matter that Donald Trump stands by the decision. That doesn't mean that the decision is correct.
In fact, it's deeply, deeply wrong.
If your director of national counterterrorism, Joe Kent, he just resigned today. He said he can't support your conflict with Iran. What's your reaction to that?
Well, I read his statement. I always thought he was a nice guy, but I always thought he was weak on security, very weak on security.
I didn't know him well, but I thought he seemed like a pretty nice guy.
But when I read a statement, I realized that it's a good thing that he's out because he said that Iran was not a threat.
So as Ben Shapiro argued, because it was Trump's decision, it must be good and proper, right?
Oh, but there's Donald Trump saying that his director of counterterrorism, effective two hours before he gave that press conference, was always, always weak on security.
The guy who Donald Trump appointed to be the head of the director of counterterrorism was weak on security, always weak on security, according to the president Donald Trump.
Okay. So I guess Donald Trump can make mistakes, right? Because he just totally sandbag Joe Kent.
Look what happened in the last two weeks. They weren't supposed to go after all these other countries in the Middle East.
Those missiles were set to go after them. So they hit Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait. Nobody expected that. We were shocked.
And there's Trump, our genius supreme leader, acknowledging that we were shocked that Iran fought back. Yeah, wow. I can't believe it.
Sovereign nation decided that if you take out their top 50 leadership and bomb the hell at them, they might fight back, shocking.
Shocking that they would bomb Qatar and all these other nations near them, given that America has bases in those countries and America was actively bombing them.
It's totally shocking that Iran would fight back. That's the guy that I have to just out how to.
I mean, it's so ridiculous. Here's what Tulsi Gabbard had to say because Donald Trump was also shocked about the straighter hormones getting shut down.
I don't know if you heard about that. So this is what Tulsi Gabbard had to say testifying in front of Congress just a few hours ago.
The president continues to say as well that he had no idea it was shocked that the Iranians had moved to take over the straighter hormones.
Did you provide any intelligence that would say that it was not likely that the Iranians would try to move on the straight?
I'm not aware of those remarks. And I think those of us here at the table can point to the fact that historically the Iranians have always threatened to leverage their control.
Why would the president say he was amazed?
I'm not aware of those remarks.
Tulsi Gabbard, Trump's DNI saying that, yeah, of course, of course we knew that Iran would shut down the straighter hormones if we had a major war with them.
They had threatened that historically forever because that's really their only lynch pin by which they can really damage us like really.
But did Tulsi Gabbard stand by her appointee and friend Joe Kent? Not really.
He posted some meandering speech on X yesterday where she essentially says Trump is I'm standing by Trump is basically the summation of it's very lengthy.
And it's like it's as fine a dancing on the edge of a knife you'll ever find where she's not she's just saying ultimately, you know, Donald Trump made this decision.
She's giving a pass to Israel's influence in this decision making process.
So she's not standing by Joe Kent despite the fact that this is Tulsi Gabbard in 2019.
President Trump promised us during his campaign to get the United States out of stupid wars.
Obviously the war in Iraq was a big fat mistake.
We should have never been in Iraq. We have destabilized the Middle East.
We will stop racing to topple foreign regimes that we know nothing about.
But he's on the brink of launching a very stupid and costly war with Iran.
We have to stop President Trump from starting a war with Iran.
The president is listening to his national security adviser John Bolton and other war hawks in his administration who have championed the war with Iraq in the past.
And who've been pushing for war with Iran for years.
So did that courageous anti war or anti regime change Maven Tulsi Gabbard stand up and back up Joe Kent when he resigned yesterday?
Nope. Nope. She didn't.
Did she testify in front of Congress saying, look, we warned President Trump about the retaliatory response that would come from Iran if they were to proceed with this.
And he proceeded anyways.
Nope. She just says, I'm not aware of his comments.
Sure. You're not aware of his comments when he said he was shocked that they fought back.
Okay. I don't believe you.
And I can't believe you about anything moving forward.
And the reason I was such a fan of Joe Kent was because this is what Joe Kent had to say before he got put in as the director of counterterrorism.
We left our troops in these vulnerable locations like on the Jordanian Syrian and Iraqi border.
Our troops have been attacked. We think at least 150 times since the October 7th incident began.
And so we've seen this coming. This was an inevitable conclusion.
So by leaving our troops in these locations, undefended essentially, we left them there as bait because so many people in Washington, D.C. want to go to war with Iran.
There's no other logical conclusion other than the fact that we have left them there as bait to be killed by Iranians at the time and place of their choosing so that we can continue to escalate towards a conflict with Iran and us baiting a trap for ourselves to get our troops killed to encourage and then really to justify a further war against Iran.
That's Joe Kent, January of 2024. Telling you the truth, not because he spent too much time on X as Argon Sargon, whatever her name is, had to say yesterday.
On the anti-Semitism question, look, the guy blamed Israel for his wife's tragic death by ISIS in 2019, okay?
Yeah. How do you even get there? I don't throw around the anti-Semitism thing just because I think people are sick of hearing this accusation.
I wouldn't even bring it to bear here. That stuff gets you a lot of attention online because the internet is available globally. If the internet was only available in America, they would not be getting these numbers because Americans cannot stand anti-Semitism.
So what happens is, as you see this again and again, you saw this with Marjorie Taylor Green, for example, when somebody starts spending more time on Twitter than they're spending in the dive bar and talking to their neighbors, they become convinced that there is an American appetite.
For this anti-Israel anti-Trump crap. You may have seen this. Utah and Florida recently banned Florida and their water. Now, ask yourself, why are they doing a U-turn on a chemical that has been pumped into our drinking water for 80 years?
Maybe it's because they finally realized what we've known all along. It's so authoritarian. It claimed it was for healthy teeth, which sounds kind of like nanny state nonsense to me.
You don't need bureaucrats medicating your water. You need the freedom to choose pure water. That's why I use cove pure.
A countertop water purifier used to get rid of 99.9% of impurity. Certified that includes fluoride, including other garbage like PFAs, fertilizer run offs, pharmaceuticals, you name it.
The first thing I noticed with cove pure was the taste. I was like, this is what water is obviously supposed to taste like. Clean, pure, no aftertaste. It's super easy. You just fill it and plug it in.
The best part is you can choose any temperature with just one tap, hot cold, just tap it in it goes. If you like fluoride, that's fine. Use toothpaste with it. Okay, feel free.
But the government has no business forcing it into your water supply. So don't wait for the government to sort out pure water. Do it yourself. Head to cove pure dot com slash liberty. And for a limited time, get $200 off. That's cove pure dot com slash liberty. So you see Joe, Joe can't became an anti-Semite because he spent too much time on X or listening to podcast because those podcasts are available globally or because X is available globally.
It couldn't be that those wars are deeply unpopular. It couldn't be that Donald Trump actually got elected on promising to stop these endless wars in the Middle East.
It couldn't. It couldn't be that because I mean, then it would be impossible for Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens to be the two most popular right wing podcast. That would be impossible in America. Right. It has to be impossible. It couldn't. It couldn't be that peace is popular.
War has to be popular, particularly wars in the Middle East for Israel have to be popular. They have to be. You'd have to be a bigoted anti-Semite to believe otherwise. It's impossible. That is just really unpopular.
I cannot in good conscious support the ongoing war in Iran. Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation. And it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.
I know this is this is so damaging. But this is so irresponsible. You might as well just say that, you know, I read the protocols of the Older Zazaya and you know the Jews control the world. They basically said that. He basically said that Jews control the United States of America.
Come on. This is so irresponsible. There's no evidence of this.
So he has just taken and this was my problem and I said this yesterday. I've said this every day since the war started. I don't need more opinions. I need more facts. I'm tired of opinions. I want facts. If this is true, back it up with facts. Show me how this happened.
I don't want to get involved in anybody else's when you're dividing us this hard on something this dark.
Produce the damn evidence, Joe.
So there's Glenn Beck, a man who cries often when he talks about his love and loyalty to Israel.
But yeah, it's just it's just a people trying to be provocative. We're just trying to get clicks. It couldn't be that we're just trying to save this country. We're trying to stop the death and destruction. It has to it has to be click driven or it could be that we actually have won this argument in the public open debate of ideas that we have handedly won this argument and you can't defeat us on the merit.
And therefore you have to degrade our motives. You have to pretend as if we are just being provocative for the sake of financial interest or something.
Joe can't can't actually mean what he has to say when he believes that his wife was killed on behalf of Israel. He can't mean that because that would deflate your entire world view.
It would destroy your entire world view. And you got to think about this too. It's very interesting. Jim Jordan, a congressman who used to be seemingly cool, not anymore was he just posted out randomly yesterday stand with the troops, you know, love America or whatever.
It's like that he stand up when Joe Kent said that hey, I'm resigning because President Trump is being let around by his ear by Israel. No, he didn't have any words of defense in Joe Kent for Joe Kent.
So they'll stand with the troops as long as you're willing to fight and die in these completely unnecessary wars that aren't to the benefit of America or Americans.
They will completely pretend as if they love you. You can fight for decades. You can give up your friends or your wife or your own life. And they will pretend as if they love you.
They might even show up when they bring your casket home wrapped in that American flag. But as soon literally the second you could spend decades doing that, but literally the second you say, hey, I have a lot of information because I was over there in the desert for two decades because I came back and I was the head, the director of counter terrorism.
So I had access. I had top secret clearance. I could see everything. And I've come to the conclusion that the wars that we fought for 20 plus years in the Middle East have not been to our benefit. And there's no one that Donald Trump just started is a catastrophe already and in the making. And I cannot in good conscience proceed in this role.
And then they will immediately immediately pretend as if you're a traitor to your country because you finally told the truth because you finally had the courage to say, I'm not interested in holding on to power anymore.
I'm just going to get out all the kittens good. And then people like Glenn Beck, who will just give you these lengthy soliloquies in defense of our troops and patriotism and the Constitution.
And he'll give you lengthy beautiful sermons about peace and prosperity too from time to time. But as soon as you say, I won't fight your wars anymore. And I'm not fighting for Israel for another fucking day.
They will pretend as if they never knew you. They will wish ill upon you and your family and your progeny. They will try and destroy you.
And they'll look around at enlistment numbers and they'll say, why don't we have enough troops? Why won't these young kids sign up?
It must be a testosterone crisis must be a social media crisis. They're being propagandized by the CCP, right?
Or it could just be that the truth has a way of getting out that the kids aren't asleep anymore.
But they've realized that what we're saying, what Joe Kent is saying, a man with accolades and a record that you could never fucking approach, not even close.
Just told them exactly what they already knew that they are not going to go fight and die for Israel anymore.
And you'll try and destroy him, but you can't stop the signal. The kids know and I'm glad they're listening.
The U.S. economy is fundamentally sound and that if it were to be extended, it wouldn't really disrupt the U.S. economy very much at all.
It would hurt consumers and we'd have to think about if that continued what we would have to do about that.
But that's really the last of our concerns right now.
That's Kevin Hassett, one of Trump's top economic advisors saying that the war on Iran is going to hurt consumers, but really that's our last concern right now.
Okay, America first, consumer concerns over the war are the last of your concerns right now.
I love it when they tell the truth, I love it.
They never do it on purpose, but as they've grown increasingly detached from us, their constituents, they just continuously get more and more detached and more and more confident in just letting the truth out accidentally as it may be.
But yeah, they're not fighting this war for you, you're fighting this war for them and by them, I don't mean America.
And here's what Speaker Mike Johnson had to say about Joe Kent's resignation letter.
The Commander-in-Chief and his administration had a very difficult decision to make.
I don't know where Joe Kent is getting his information, but he wasn't in those briefings clearly because the Secretary of State, the Secretary of War and everyone, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Cain, they had exquisite intelligence that we understood that this was a great deal.
That this was a serious moment for us. Had the President waited, I am personally convinced that we would have mass casualties of Americans.
So there are Speaker Johnson doubling down on the fact that Iran was an imminent threat. Were they an imminent threat if Israel didn't attack them?
No, they were not going to just randomly, preemptively attack us, just a complete obvious reality, like they were not going to do that.
So that means that we are definitionally subservient. That means that we don't wear the pants.
You know, there are pit bull in the Middle East and that we ultimately dictate the terms of all of these wars, but when it came down to this one, it's never been more clear.
There's other examples in the past where it's been quite obvious. I mean, obviously Iraq and Afghanistan and Libya and Syria and all these examples are very clear as to why we fought in those locations.
This one's particularly unique in that we have our own politicians coming out and saying, look, Iran was a threat to Israel.
Israel was going to attack Iran. In response, they allege that Iran was going to attack American troops abroad, not domestically.
And therefore we had to essentially preempt the counter strike, but the counter strike was to Israel's actions.
So who dictated the terms of this war? Who was the impetus for it? It's irrefutable. Our own politicians are telling you the truth for once that Israel started this war.
We are their pit bull. Where are their aircraft carrier in the Pacific?
What's really interesting is there's no evidence that anybody inside the administration was pushing for this war.
Except maybe Kushner in Whitcoff, which of course would support our argument, right?
But there's no evidence that advance was pushing for it, that even Rubio was pushing for it.
He was too busy worrying about colonizing Latin America.
In fact, General Cain warned him that there was no military option.
The National Intelligence Council said in effect this is not going to work.
So there was real resistance coming from inside the administration and no real proponents that I can say.
But who were the proponents inside the United States? All you had to do was read the Wall Street Journal, which was a cheerleader for the war.
Brett Stevens, who was a cheerleader for the war, Lindsey Graham, who was not only a cheerleader for the war, but was working carefully with Netanyahu.
And then Netanyahu himself. This man has been deeply committed to getting us involved in a war against Iran for decades.
The evidence here is just overwhelming.
That's John Mirsheimer with Max Blumenthal talking about who were the motivating orbiters around Trump that actually catalyzed this?
It seems quite clear to me that in fact most of his closest cabinet members in terms of prestige were not the ones that were beating these war drums.
As surprising as that would be to some, I mean Marco Rubio is a long time neocon. I'm not fond of him at all.
But I think it's true that Marco Rubio even was very upset that this happened.
Not necessarily because he opposes it, but rather he recognizes as a shrewd, calculating political creature
that this is very detrimental for his presidential chances in 2028.
JD Vance is the same way.
So all of the young presidential hopefuls in Trump's cabinet oppose this.
All of the old neocon dead enders were the ones that really were dragging Trump forward on this, along with Netanyahu, who spent
seven contrips in a year period to see the President of the United States to make this happen.
And there's another really interesting angle to Joe Kent's resignation that has kind of gone under the radar.
In October of 2025, so about six months ago, Joe Kent got into a spat with Kashpatel, the head of the FBI,
because Joe Kent was trying to look into foreign governmental involvement in Charlie Kirk's assassination.
And guess what? Kashpatel cut him down.
He shut down Joe Kent.
He didn't want him looking into foreign government involvement in the assassination of allegedly Kashpatel's good friend, Charlie Kirk.
And you have to ask yourself why that is?
Why would Kashpatel not want the director of counterterrorism?
I mean, given that this very easily could be argued that what happened to Charlie Kirk was in fact terrorism using political violence to get political change, right?
I mean, that's kind of definitional terrorism.
Whether or not it was perpetrated by foreigners or domestic entities, it still would fall under counterterrorism purview.
So you would think that it would be an all hands on deck moment that you would want to get to the bottom of who did it.
That is, unless you already knew who did it, unless you were actually already working for them.
In which case, you'd probably want someone who's honorable and sincerely interested in justice and the truth to be shut the fuck down, which is exactly what happened.
So I think the clock began ticking on Joe Kent's career in the Trump administration about six months ago.
Unfortunately, he was courageous enough to do the right thing once he realized that look, why should I participate in this?
Why should I give this the veneer of any sort of legitimacy by sitting side by side with Tulsi Gabbard and a bunch of other anti-war figures as Donald Trump betrays his base, betrays the American people and betrays the entirety of his campaign promises.
And I think he came to the right conclusion that I'm not going to and God, God bless him for that.
What I found most calling about that little spiel from Mike Johnson is that he goes, I don't know what intel Joe Kent was looking at that drew him to the conclusion that we were fighting this war for Israel.
It's like Joe Kent had, he was the director of counterterrorism.
He had access to the highest level intel you could possibly have.
How could he, you can't have your director of counterterrorism being shielded from any intel, right?
He has to be privy of all of it. Otherwise, he can't do his fucking job.
So for the speaker of the house to say, I don't know where he was getting his intel.
It's like, you know exactly where he was getting his intel.
He had the same intel as you.
He just wasn't willing to lie about it because he's honorable.
Unlike you and everybody else in DC, he actually told the truth.
So you're going to sandbag him and try and destroy him.
How predictable.
And if you're wondering where they get their marching orders on how to and why and when to destroy someone who tells the truth,
let's listen to Jonathan Greenblatt, the ADL.
In the days after the U.S. and Israel launched the military operations against Iran, the blame,
as it so often does, was placed at the feet of who else, the Jews.
For some, they pointed fingers at the Israelis who they claimed whispered a few too many times in President Trump's ear.
For the senior senator from Maryland, blamed APAC, which he slandered as an American.
Then there's the U.S. congressman who stated that he stands against the quote, neo-conservatives,
who led the U.S. into the current war.
So there you have it.
According to Greenblatt, if you even try to utter the word neo-con, you're already a bigot.
If you say, if you just notice that there are about a dozen different Jewish advisers to Donald Trump in his orbit that might be whispering a little too loudly in his ear, you're a bigot.
If you talk about APAC's influence on the GOP or the political system more broadly or Donald Trump, if you mentioned Miriam Adelson in her hundreds of millions that she gave to Donald Trump to get him into power, you're a bigot.
If you mentioned the fact that Netanyahu has spent 30 plus years trying to get us into a war with Iran undoubtedly, you're a bigot.
How could you possibly listen to him for three decades and come to the conclusion that when we finally break down
and decide to fight this war in Iran, which he's tried for 30 fucking years, more than 30 years to get us to fight for him, that when we do it, maybe we did it because of him, you're a bigot.
In fact, if you oppose war in the Middle East at all, it's because you're an anti, that might.
I guess the only choice you have is to just support endless wars and the bankrupting of your country and death and destruction.
Worldwide, you have no alternative because the alternative is to be called a name that isn't even really applicable to you.
I know it's quite a barrier to entry.
You actually have to have just 1% of courage.
You just have to have 1% of morality.
And suddenly, that entire power structure comes crumbling down because you've recognized that in order to be moral, you're going to be called a bunch of things that don't actually apply to you.
Because at my core, there was nothing hateful about what I'm doing right now.
To the contrary, this is a love-based enterprise.
I love humanity, I love peace, I love prosperity, I love this country, I love my country men and I want these fucking wars to end.
And anybody getting in my way to that goal can call me whatever they want because they already are my enemy.
And that's the truth.
Subscribe, hit the like button, leave a comment down below if I got anything wrong and don't be afraid to be like this lady.
If you could say something to President Trump and he was going to hear you right now, what would it be?
You're a worthless pile of s**t.
And you voted for him how many times?
Three times. That was my bad. Apparently, I'm an idiot.
Subscribe to Liberty Lockdown, great podcast, Clintus Tite.

Liberty Lockdown

Liberty Lockdown

Liberty Lockdown
