{"id":129178,"date":"2026-03-30T17:05:00","date_gmt":"2026-03-30T15:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=129178"},"modified":"2026-03-27T07:39:13","modified_gmt":"2026-03-27T05:39:13","slug":"27-05-119","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=129178","title":{"rendered":"Who\u2019s the Boss?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"\"<\/a>Who\u2019s the Boss?<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/h3>\n

Lee Smith<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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Joe Kent is out the door at the ODNI after blasting President Trump\u2019s Iran policy. Is his boss Tulsi Gabbard next?<\/strong><\/h4>\n<\/div>\n

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard testifies during a House Select Intelligence Committee hearing on March 19, 2026 in Washington, D.C. \/  Heather Diehl \/ Getty Images<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

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The podcasters and senior Trump administration officials who attached themselves like parasites to the president to draw power from him because they have no power of their own are losing in Iran. They\u2019re losing because they have no influence over Trump or his MAGA base, which supports the campaign to stop the terror regime\u2019s nuclear program, by anywhere from 82% to 95%. They\u2019re losing because they lost the argument over Israel on the ground, where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is proving to be America\u2019s greatest wartime ally<\/a> since Winston Churchill held off the Nazis until Franklin Delano Roosevelt brought America into World War II. And since the anti-Trump resistance is losing like Iran is losing, also like the Islamic Republic, they\u2019re emptying their arsenal in scattershot fashion in the hope that they\u2019ll hit something to ward off total defeat for at least one more day.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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For instance, a U.S. law enforcement source tells Tablet<\/em> that before Joe Kent hit the antisemitic podcast circuit to make the case that Israel killed Charlie Kirk, the former director of the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) claimed that the late pro-Trump activist was assassinated by Iran.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The source says that \u201cKent has zero evidence to support any of his speculative claims,\u201d and yet it\u2019s not hard to see why the U.S. Army combat veteran who served 11 tours in the global war on terror has made a 180-degree turn: Kent is reportedly under FBI investigation for leaking classified information to the media, so he\u2019s instrumentalized the antisemitic paranoia prevalent in right-wing podcast circles to deflect attention away from his alleged misdeeds by implying he\u2019s being hounded because he\u2019s critical of Israel.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The Jewish state\u2019s magical mind-control of American foreign policy was the central theme of the resignation letter Kent posted publicly last week. Kent can\u2019t support the war because, according to him, not only did Israel, and \u201cits powerful American lobby\u201d pressure Trump into war with Iran, but also it forced America into the Iraq war and caused the Syrian civil war, during which Kent\u2019s first wife, a Navy cryptologist, was killed by ISIS terrorists.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Kent has earned Americans\u2019 sympathy for his suffering and their respect for his service, but he is no more entitled to plot against the president than was John Brennan. Indeed, set aside their partisan alignments (Republican, not Democrat) and the specific content of the op (Israel, not Russia), and it\u2019s clear that Kent\u2019s claims that Trump is controlled by high-ranking Israeli officials are no different from the former CIA director\u2019s serial lies during Trump\u2019s first term that the president was a Kremlin asset.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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It\u2019s a continuation of the same information operation weaponized to subvert Trump\u2019s foreign policy, and the current crop of schemers can no longer hide under a MAGA skin suit\u2014not since Trump called out schemer prince Tucker Carlson. \u201cHe\u2019s not MAGA,\u201d Trump told the media earlier this month. \u201cMAGA is saving our country. MAGA is making our country great again. MAGA is America first, and Tucker is none of those things. And Tucker is really not smart enough to understand that.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The ODNI was a relatively safe place to put Gabbard, especially since the main mission was to shrink the office with an eye to shutting it down. Instead, she built out a base from which to undermine Trump\u2019s Iran policy.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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Reports identify<\/a> Carlson as a likely destination for Kent\u2019s leaks, which became so frequent that the White House brought it to the attention of Kent\u2019s boss, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. Whether she ignored White House requests to fire Kent, as some sources say, is irrelevant: It is her job to protect the president\u2019s policy, whether she likes it or not, by stopping the leaking in one way or another. Because she didn\u2019t, it seems she wasn\u2019t told the FBI was investigating her subordinate.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Gabbard hired Kent as her chief of staff in February 2025, and in July he was confirmed to lead the NCTC, a unit under her direction. When Gabbard was nominated for the post, Republican lawmakers were aware of her record of attacking Trump\u2019s foreign policy, especially on Iran. She criticized him during his first term for withdrawing from Barack Obama\u2019s nuclear deal with Iran and said there was no imminent threat that justified the January 2020 targeted assassination of Iranian terror master Qassem Soleimani.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cI just came from the intelligence briefing that the administration came and brought to Congress,\u201d Gabbard told the media after the Iranian terrorist was liquidated. She said there was no justification \u201cfor this illegal and unconstitutional act of war that President Trump took\u201d and no \u201ccompelling information to prove their point of imminence, and really it brings us to the central question here, which is: Is our country\u2019s national security better off because of Donald Trump\u2019s actions and decision? And the answer to that is, no.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Carlson had interviewed her in May 2019 for his Fox News show when she said: \u201cHow does a war with Iran serve the best interest of the American people of the United States? And the fact is it does not.\u201d She continued, \u201cIt better serves the interest of people like Bibi Netanyahu and Saudi Arabia, who are trying to push us into this war with Iran.\u201d It\u2019s not hard to notice her rhetoric tracks with the poisonous accusations Kent injected into his resignation letter.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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After Gabbard\u2019s unsuccessful run for the Democratic Party\u2019s 2020 nomination, she switched parties in 2022 and campaigned for Trump in 2024. Trump nominated her to the DNI post and Carlson ran point for her, enjoining podcast guests like pro-China and anti-Trump ideologue Jeffrey Sachs to add their voice to the chorus of those who believed Gabbard was \u201cthe most important appointment of the Trump administration.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Carlson threatened to harass Republican lawmakers if they didn\u2019t fall in line. \u201cIf there are Republican senators who are voting against Tulsi Gabbard confirmation,\u201d he said at a Turning Point USA meeting, \u201cyou will know that person is not only my enemy … that person is an enemy of the United States. Period. It\u2019s really that simple.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Carlson\u2019s hectoring showed that he saw Gabbard as a partner inside the administration who, given her track record, would help stop Trump from fulfilling the promises he\u2019d made during his three campaigns to stop Iran from getting the bomb. Even Republican senators not entirely satisfied that Gabbard was willing to loyally serve the president believed she couldn\u2019t do much damage as DNI, as it\u2019s essentially an administrative post responsible for the intelligence community\u2019s budget. Because the Office of the Director of National Intelligence has no role in operations or investigations, it was a relatively safe place to put Gabbard, especially since the main mission was to shrink ODNI with an eye to shutting it down. Instead, she built out a base from which to undermine Trump\u2019s Iran policy.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Even before starting his second term, Trump publicly warned his deputies not to bring anyone into the administration who\u2019d been part of the Charles Koch network, whose think-tank experts favor a restoration of Obama\u2019s nuclear deal and amicable relations with a terror state that since the 1979 Islamic Revolution has, together with its proxies, made a habit of kidnapping and torturing Americans and killed thousands of us.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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And yet last March, Gabbard named Daniel Davis, a foreign-policy analyst at the Charles Koch-backed Defense Priorities, to a top spot at ODNI. Davis was in line to be deputy director for mission integration, responsible for preparing the presidential daily briefing. This raised concerns that an official in charge of the president\u2019s briefing who was opposed to the president\u2019s policies\u2014and Davis was at odds with Trump not only on Iran, but also on China, Russia, Hamas, and pro-Hamas campus protesters\u2014might try to curate intelligence so as to steer the commander in chief away from his preferences and toward Davis\u2019 own.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Due to public outcry from Trump allies on Capitol Hill, prominent media and social media figures, and donors, Davis was replaced before he even officially started. Gabbard\u2019s second pick for the same job was William Ruger, who worked at the Charles Koch Institute. Recently, Gabbard hired another former Defense Priorities adviser, Dan Caldwell, who worked under Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth before he was removed from his post for reportedly leaking to the media.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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She wasn\u2019t just staffing DNI with aides intent on protecting Iran from Trump. According to U.S. officials, she was also freezing out pro-Israel candidates. \u201cShe and her team actively campaigned against people going into the administration who saw Israel as a key ally,\u201d one senior government official told Tablet<\/em>. \u201cAnd they viewed the Koch implants across the administration as an ally in that mission.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Last year, Gabbard tried to move the country\u2019s counterintelligence (CI) mission from the FBI to the ODNI. \u201cThanks to Kash Patel fighting Gabbard\u2019s empire-building attempt, control of CI operations remained with FBI, which has the deep expertise in countering foreign espionage threats,\u201d the senior government official told Tablet<\/em>. \u201cHad Tulsi succeeded in moving FBI CI ops to DNI, our country\u2019s premier counterespionage service would have been in disarray and unable to respond to the surging Iranian threat.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Or she would\u2019ve buried the threat altogether for fear of giving the president and his top national security officials more reason to end the 47-year threat for good. Indeed, last March, she undercut Trump when she testified on Capitol Hill that the U.S. intelligence services \u201cassess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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If, as Gabbard testified, Iran wasn\u2019t building a bomb, then Trump\u2019s vows to end Iran\u2019s nuclear program either through diplomacy or force were ridiculous. But Iran didn\u2019t suspend the program in 2003, as Israel\u2019s 2018 seizure of Iran\u2019s nuclear archives made plain. And by the time of Gabbard\u2019s testimony, Iran had enough material to make at least 10 bombs.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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On an X post that gave video evidence that she\u2019d testified Iran wasn\u2019t building a bomb, she gaslighted Trump supporters by blaming the media for \u201cintentionally taking my testimony out of context and spreading fake news as a way to manufacture division. America has intelligence that Iran is at the point that it can produce a nuclear weapon within weeks to months, if they decide to finalize the assembly. President Trump has been clear that can\u2019t happen, and I agree.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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And yet in June, with preparations for the first round of strikes on Iran\u2019s nuclear facilities in their final stages, she posted a video warning of a \u201cnuclear holocaust\u201d and chastised \u201cwarmongers\u201d for bringing the world \u201ccloser to the brink of nuclear annihilation than ever before.\u201d Trump was angry. And when reporters asked questions about Gabbard\u2019s earlier assessment that Iran was not building a bomb, the president chafed. \u201cShe\u2019s wrong,\u201d said Trump. \u201cI don\u2019t care what she said.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Sources told Tablet<\/em> that Gabbard \u201cdoesn\u2019t get invited to meetings anymore.\u201d Kent essentially confirmed that when he told one podcaster that the images of Gabbard in Washington while Trump and top national security officials like Secretary of State Marco Rubio and CIA Director John Ratcliffe were directing the war from Mar-a-Lago accurately represent the fact that she\u2019s been locked out. Gabbard brought it all upon herself.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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After Kent published his resignation letter, Gabbard posted<\/a> on X to explain that her job is to help \u201ccoordinate and integrate all intelligence to provide the President and Commander in Chief with the best information available to inform his decisions. After carefully reviewing all the information before him, President Trump concluded that the terrorist Islamist regime in Iran posed an imminent threat and he took action based on that conclusion.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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What was missing was the Trump appointee\u2019s public support for her boss\u2019s decision, whether she privately agreed or not, and criticism of the accusations her former deputy leveled at her boss. Later, reports surfaced that she met with Kent and Vice President JD Vance before the former NCTC director posted his letter. Vance, according to the reports, \u201cencouraged him to be respectful to POTUS.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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It seems Kent ignored the vice president\u2019s advice, because accusing the commander in chief of being fooled into a war that serves the interests of a foreign power is a calculated insult. Yet when asked about Kent\u2019s letter, Vance simply replied, \u201cIf you are on the team and you can\u2019t help implement the decisions of his administration\u2014he has the right to make those decisions\u2014then it\u2019s a good thing for you to resign.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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This is something like passive-aggressive insubordination. The United States is joined with Israel in a major military campaign against Iran, and two of the president\u2019s Cabinet members can\u2019t bring themselves to denounce the abject lies published by a former Trump aide that characterize the president as a lackey of a foreign power and vilify a wartime ally\u2014charges clearly designed to drive down support for the Iran campaign.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Gabbard\u2019s testimony on Capitol Hill last week was similarly jarring. Yes, as she said under oath, the job of an intelligence chief is to give the president the information he needs to make decisions to protect American lives and defend our interests. But as a political appointee testifying before a congressional panel comprising Trump opponents, she must also defend the policies of the president she serves. That she did not, while failing to call out the destructive conspiracy theories of a former subordinate, is more evidence that her priority is not to advance the president\u2019s Iran policy, but rather to undermine it.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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When asked this weekend about Gabbard\u2019s future, Trump told the media she\u2019s doing a good job. That\u2019s not evidence that her post is safe, but that the president\u2019s top priority right now is to win a war to secure American peace and prosperity, not confront an official whose efforts have repeatedly gone in the other direction.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Lee Smith is the author of The China Matrix: The Epic Story of How Donald Trump Shattered a Deadly Pact<\/a>.<\/strong><\/span><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Who\u2019s the Boss? Lee Smith Joe Kent is out the door at the ODNI after blasting President Trump\u2019s Iran policy. Is his boss Tulsi Gabbard next? Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard testifies during a House Select Intelligence Committee hearing on March 19, 2026 in Washington, D.C. \/  Heather Diehl \/ Getty Images The podcasters […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[33,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129178"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=129178"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129178\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":129281,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129178\/revisions\/129281"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=129178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=129178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=129178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}