The girls are fighting again, aren’t they?
What you need to know about Joe Kent’s resignation and what it means for Trump and Vance
Joe Kent’s resignation as Counter-Intelligence Chief was front-page news but I believe it was underreported. At the very least, its significance was downplayed in the media coverage.
Kent is as MAGA as MAGA gets. He’s an election denier with ties to right-wing extremist groups. A failed congressional candidate, his political activism in Washington State included organizing anti-public health rallies, spreading false conspiracy theories during Covid, calling for Anthony Fauci to be charged with murder, and appearing at at least one event for the Three Percenters, a right-wing militia group. This is a man who worked hard to get into Trump’s orbit as a MAGA faithful.
But as I’ve written about previously, thanks to Epstein and Iran, the MAGA coalition has found itself bogged down by constant infighting. Trump isn’t in as strong a position as he once was, and as his health continues to decline, his followers are either looking for exit ramps or vying for their faction to take the movement over. Kent, who describes himself as a non-interventionist, made it clear in the resignation letter that he strongly disagreed with Trump over Iran. He accused Trump of being duped by an Israeli disinformation campaign, helped along by the American media, into doing Israel’s bidding over America First as a foreign policy doctrine.
Kent’s antisemitism is obvious. His resignation letter never outright says Trump has fallen prey to a global Jewish conspiracy, but when he’s talking about Israel being assisted by the American media, there’s no ambiguity about who and what he’s referring to. Or as Jason Sattler so eloquently put it on Bluesky: “The divide between those who want Jews to go to hell after Jesus returns and those who want Jews to go to hell now.” Kent is also sending a warning signal to the MAGA faithful: it looks like Trump chose the wrong side and might in fact be controlled by foreign interests and putting them over America’s interests.
Kent is making his loyalties clear. In the MAGA civil war, he’s aligning himself with the antisemitic Tucker Carlson/Nick Fuentes wing of the coalition. And he’s doing it in the most public way possible, using whatever leverage he had left. Kent and the Regime have continued to snipe at one another all week, with Kent airing his grievances during an interview with Tucker Carlson and Trump’s FBI announcing they’d opened an investigation into Kent for leaking.
It puts pressure on JD Vance, who sees himself as Trump’s successor and is working overtime to keep both factions happy while remaining loyal to his boss. Vance has gone out of his way to refuse to denounce anyone and throw as much red meat as he’s able to the Carlson/Fuentes folks to keep them in line. As more folks go the way of Joe Kent and Marjorie Taylor Greene, choosing an early exit, that will become a more difficult task for Vance. I suspect Vance is waiting for the right moment to knife Trump, but who knows what the next few months will bring.
One final thing to note: Kent’s faction of MAGA was sidelined during Trump’s first term in favor of more “mainstream” (read: aligned with evangelicals) Republican figures. They forgave Trump and came home both on January 6 and when Trump ran again in 2024, but my sense is they went into Trump 2.0 with their eyes open. These folks aren’t about to be sidelined again, and they plan on becoming the dominant MAGA faction once Trump is no longer in power. Whether they can keep the coalition together, and whether they’d accept Trump’s current Vice President to lead them, remains an open question.
ICYMI
Democracy Report 2026: Unraveling the Democratic Era? (V-Dem Institute) If you only read one thing this week, it should be this report. Liberal democracy is taking a hit around the world, and as of this year, the US is no longer considered one. The report is a global snapshot with heavy emphasis on the United States’ rapid loss of rights and freedoms over the past year. If you want the tl;dr version, The Cause has a good rundown of the key takeaways and what they mean for us.
Manosphere Influencer Brags About Dining With Barron Trump (The Daily Beast) Interesting tidbit of news from Netflix’s new Inside the Manosphere documentary (which I haven’t yet watched). It’s always interesting to me how openly MAGA creators talk about the importance of being in proximity to Trump’s family. We’ve seen a lot of that with Don Jr. but this is the first report of MAGA creators talking about being close to Barron. Strategically it makes sense for them to do.
Inside Jeffrey Epstein’s Push to Cleanse His Past Online (New York Times) I’m guessing (and hoping) that a lot of the people and firms Epstein hired to do online reputation repair probably scammed him. Quote: “He never fully sanitized his web presence before he was arrested again, in 2019, and charged with sex trafficking. But the effort at times allowed Mr. Epstein to maintain an air of respectability and preserve social contacts he might have lost had his crimes been more prominent online.”
Want even more content? Subscribers receive bonus content on Fridays.
Coda
Happy March Madness to all who celebrate. Shout out to all my fellow UK fans rooting for the Kentucky Men’s and Women’s teams, But no matter who you root for, I hope you enjoy my personal favorite sports event of the year. May your brackets go the distance!
I’ll see you again next week!
Advertise in this newsletter
Do you or your company want to support COURIER’s mission and showcase your products or services to an aligned audience of 190,000+ subscribers at the same time? Contact advertising@couriernewsroom.com for more information.
Support COURIER’s Journalism
With newsrooms in eleven states, COURIER is one of the fastest-growing, values-driven local news networks in the country.
We need support from folks like you who believe in our mission and support our unique journalism model. Thank you.