00:00President Trump has had enough of U.S. allies backing away from supporting the war with Iran.
00:05I think NATO is making a very foolish mistake. And I've long said that, you know, I wonder whether
00:11or not NATO would ever be there for us. So this is a this was a great test because we
00:17don't need
00:17them, but they should have been there. That rather tempered public response stands in contrast to an
00:23earlier post from the president where he stated in all caps, we do not need the help of anyone
00:29as well as a readout from Senator Lindsey Graham, who spoke with Trump directly about the issue.
00:34Graham posted to X and said of the president, quote, I have never heard him so angry in my life.
00:40I share that anger given what's at stake with allies refusing support and the key Strait of Hormuz
00:46remaining closed. The last thing the president needed was a defection from within. But that is
00:51exactly what he got. I am talking about the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Joe Kent,
00:57who stepped down from his post yesterday. He took to X to explain, writing in part, quote,
01:02I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran. Iran posed no imminent threat to our
01:09nation. And it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful
01:13American lobby. The Post's chief Washington correspondent, Stephen Nelson, dug into the
01:18resignation and the political impact it's having.
01:20Kent is the highest profile resignation to date in protest of the Iran war. Kent is a notable figure
01:29in the anti-interventionist camp among President Trump supporters. He resigned with a lengthy letter
01:36saying that President Trump had been duped into the Iran war by Israel and certain unnamed media figures.
01:44His resignation has provoked divided opinion. People who are critical of him in the White House say that
01:53he has spouted a bunch of lies on his way out the door, where his supporters say that this was
01:58something that he struggled with and was a clearly difficult and principled decision.
02:05Now, this, of course, does political damage to President Trump, who thus far has been able to
02:11keep together his diverse coalition of supporters throughout this major conflict. President Trump
02:17has, of course, said that he expects the war only to last a moment of a matter of weeks. But
02:23oil prices
02:23are rising and the war continues. Vice President J.D. Vance, who sources say did, in fact, like he was
02:32fond of
02:33Kent. He said yesterday that he would encourage people who are like him, skeptical of foreign wars,
02:39to trust in President Trump and know that he is, in Vance's words, smarter than his predecessors
02:45and will not repeat the mistakes of the past.
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