It's the Brian Laris Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone.

So as the war in Iran drags on and escalates, let's look at a divide that's opening up inside the Republican Party

and inside Trump's own circles over where this is headed. Yesterday, you've probably heard

this. Joe Kent, the man Donald Trump appointed to run the National Counterterrorism Center,

resigned, and posted his letter of resignation on X for all of us to read.

Here are a few excerpts from that letter.

Quote, 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, unquote, and further down, as a veteran who deployed to

combat 11 times, and as a gold star husband who lost my beloved wife Shannon in a war

manufactured by Israel, he wrote,

I cannot support sending the next generation off to fight and die in a war that serves no

benefit to the American people nor justifies the cost of American lives.

Unquote.

So this letter is drawing sharp criticism, as you might imagine, for language that furthers anti-Semitic

conspiracy theories, blaming Israel in the way that he does, and quote, it's powerful American

lobby for a war that critics at Vox and many other news organizations say Trump chose to start

himself. We'll get into that. But the underlying anxiety, the letter reflects,

is real and spreading inside Trump's own circle, that this war had no clear purpose in terms of an imminent

threat and is pulling Trump away from his America First brand, especially as there continues

to be no clear off-remp. We are going to talk in just a minute with Megan Messerly, White

House reporter at Politico, covering the Trump administration and the future of the GOP,

...