The Clown Car Is Getting Dangerous
Signal chat threads for unsecured communications on bombing campaigns? With Joe Kent?
Social media blew up this afternoon - but this time, for good reason.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth accidentally added a journalist from The Atlantic to the group text for American war plans.
It’s an incredible read. The TL;DR is that Defense Secretary Hegseth accidentally added Jeffrey Goldberg to a Signal group chat with JD Vance and others in which the administration coordinated a military action. And then celebrated the bombings with emojis, making it look like the group chat for Maryland fans during the game last night.
It’s pretty insane:
We can’t help but wonder how Senator Tillis feels about his vote for Hegseth. One fact in the piece stood out:
A person identified in Signal as “Joe Kent” (Trump’s nominee to run the National Counterterrorism Center is named Joe Kent) wrote at 8:22, “There is nothing time sensitive driving the time line. We’ll have the exact same options in a month.”
We previously described the elevation of Kent in the Trump White House as a “clown car to crazytown.”
Readers of this newsletter will know Kent well as the far-right election denier Joe Kent who has lost back-to-back elections to Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez. Her take on Kent’s nomination was concise: “Doesn’t seem wise.”
And she was proven very correct.
Kent’s Extreme Record
In 2022, Kent’s surprise upset in the preliminary election over moderate Jaime Herrera Beutler helped put WA-03 into contention and cost Republicans what should have been an easy pick-up. Kent claims that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump and has ties to white nationalist Nick Fuentes, Proud Boy member Graham Jorgenson, and Patriot Prayer founder Joey Gibson.
Kent has a laundry list of conspiracy theories, including most recently his assertion that officers in the Secret Service may have been “in on” the July assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump.
Kent is known for his attacks on law enforcement and has threatened to defund the FBI, calling it, “a secret domestic intelligence agency” that will “continue to take us down this road towards total authoritarianism.” And now, he’s advising the administration on sensitive, high-stakes military decisions.
Jewish Insider has more on Kent’s worrying ties:
The former Army Special Forces officer, 44, also gave an interview to a Nazi sympathizer who has praised Hitler and appeared on a white nationalist YouTube channel — where he said that he did not “think there’s anything wrong with there being a white-people special interest group,” among other comments his critics interpreted as dog whistles to the racist far right.
Meanwhile, Kent has espoused conspiracy theories about the 2020 election and other topics, suggesting Secret Service agents were “in on” the assassination attempt against Trump last summer. Kent, who has called to defund the FBI, has also faced accusations of parroting pro-Kremlin talking points — as he has voiced skepticism of aiding Ukraine in its war with Russia.
When Kent was chosen, Republican Adam Kinzinger warned:
“This guy is, I’m not going to say neo-Nazi, but as close as you can get to that without being labeled that is about what he is,” Kinzinger said during a podcast interview with The Bulwark’s Tim Miller released on Wednesday. “Every conspiracy theory he buys into.”
And now, Joe Kent is getting national secrets texted directly to his Signal chat.
Think this is crazy? Want to figure out how Democrats can stop this?
Join us at WelcomeFest on June 4 in DC, because we need a vision for change, not more of the same.