WASHINGTON ― Hours after his head of counterterrorism quit, saying he couldn’t support the war against Iran, President Donald Trump claimed he didn’t really know him that well but that he had “always thought he was weak on security, very weak on security.”

“I always thought he was a nice guy,” Trump told reporters Tuesday, not long after Joe Kent had announced he had stepped down from running the National Counterterrorism Center. “I didn’t know him well.”

That sentiment is at odds with his past praise of the conspiracy theorist who rose in Trump’s estimation for his embrace of the false claim that the 2020 election had been stolen from Trump and that the FBI had fomented the Jan. 6, 2021, violent attack on the Capitol.

In fact, Trump’s endless lying about a stolen election enraged his followers, and he himself asked them to converge on Washington, D.C., on the day of the congressional election certification. It was his own speech hours before the assault, according to many of those who participated, that drove them to violence.

“I think this man has a tremendous future, a very special person,” Trump said of Kent in 2022 as he endorsed his run for Congress in Washington state.

That year, Kent defeated the sitting Republican who had earned Trump’s wrath by voting to impeach Trump for his coup attempt but then lost the general election to Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Perez. Kent ran again for that seat in 2024 but lost to Perez a second time.

Trump, after winning back the White House in that election, appointed Kent to a top position in the national security world. “Joe will help us keep America safe by eradicating all terrorism, from the jihadists around the World, to the cartels in our backyard. Congratulations Joe!” Trump wrote in a Feb. 3, 2025, post.

That history apparently was no longer relevant Tuesday for Trump. “I realized that it’s a good thing that he’s out because he said that Iran was not a threat,” he said.

Kent had cited his opposition to Trump’s 17-day-old war. “I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran. Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby,” he wrote in a social media post that included an image of his resignation letter.

While Kent has embraced anti-immigrant and white nationalist positions over the years, the theory that Israel pushed Trump into the war was actually laid out by Secretary of State Marco Rubio days after the attack began Feb. 28.

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democratic congresswoman known for her longtime opposition to a war with Iran and Kent’s supervisor, on Tuesday afternoon released a statement that neither addressed Kent’s departure nor the wisdom of Trump’s decision to attack Iran.

“As our commander in chief, he is responsible for determining what is and is not an imminent threat, and whether or not to take action he deems necessary to protect the safety and security of our troops, the American people and our country,” she wrote. “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.”

While Trump in his public comments Tuesday called Kent “a nice guy,” Trump’s aides and supporters were far less charitable.

Press secretary Karoline Leavitt responded to Kent’s letter with a lengthy, 450-word post of her own. “The absurd allegation that President Trump made this decision based on the influence of others, even foreign countries, is both insulting and laughable,” she wrote.

Taylor Budowich, a former top White House aide, claimed that Kent was about to be fired. “Joe Kent is a crazed egomaniac who was often at the center of national security leaks, while rarely (never?) producing any actual work,” Budowich wrote. “He spent all of his time working to subvert the chain of command and undermine the president of the United States. This isn’t some principled resignation—he just wanted to make a splash before getting canned. What a loser.”

Olivia Troye, once a national security aide to former Vice President Mike Pence, said the White House likely feels the need to damage Kent’s credibility because of his assertion about Iran. “He actually calls out the lack of imminent threat,” she said.

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