Transcript: Trump Case for War Undermined by Bombshell as MAGA Breaks

Horne: That’s exactly right. And I think it’s important to note that Kent is something of an outlier among NCTC directors. Traditionally, the people who hold this role are career national security and intelligence professionals. They’ve come up in this system. They know how the bureaucracy works. They know how to get policymakers the information that they need to make informed decisions. Kent is something of an outlier—he’s former Army Special Forces, he’s a veteran, he’s a former congressional candidate. He’s a lot of things, but a career national security official is not one of them.

Sargent: Right. I want to bear down on Joe Kent’s claim in the letter that Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation. Obviously, Trump has said his attack on Iran was necessary because Iran was about to develop a nuke—but he varies how long it would have taken. Sometimes it’s a week, sometimes it’s two, sometimes it’s three. The New York Times reported that American officials don’t believe that about Iran. But the point is, Kent would have been in a position to see intelligence on this, correct?

Horne: Absolutely. And look—to be generous—any former, now-former national security official cannot talk publicly about what they saw when they were inside, even if they’ve resigned their position. And so I’m sure there’s a lot he knows that he is constrained from saying, even as he has now left office. But it also, I think, really bears repeating that the administration has not presented a coherent case for Trump’s war on Iran from day one. And so it’s not surprising that three weeks in, the public is still confused about what success looks like, what our goals are, and why we’re there in the first place.