The Daily Blast: Trump Case for War Undermined by Top Official as MAGA Crack-Up Worsens

The DSR Network

Chris Cotnoir

Government

4.5 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 18 March 2026

⏱️ 21 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Donald Trump’s case for invading Iran took a big blow Tuesday when top counterterrorism official Joe Kent resigned. Though Kent is a crazed extremist with vile views, his letter directly undermined the core rationale Trump has offered for his war and made big news in doing so. This comes as MAGA figures are splitting badly over the conflict. Some (Megyn Kelly, Tucker Carlson) are raging that the United States is doing Israel’s bidding, and others (Ben Shapiro) are denouncing them for blaming Israel for the war, and their battle has grown truly vicious. We talked to Emily Horne, a former National Security Council official under Joe Biden who also worked at the State Department and writes the Spin Class Substack. She explains what Kent might know about the weaknesses of Trump’s case for war, why that case is collapsing, and how the deepening MAGA fractures suggest the bottom is falling out under Trump’s adventure. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the Daily Blast from the New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network.
0:16.4	I'm your host, Greg Sargent.
0:29.8	Donald Trump is very unhappy with our NATO allies.
0:34.7	On Tuesday, he angrily ranted that most of them won't clean up his mess by helping to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
0:37.9	Trump ridiculed them by saying they agree with the need to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear
0:42.8	weapon, then praised himself for doing that without them.
0:47.3	But this message was badly undermined by the sudden resignation of a senior Trump intelligence
0:52.7	official who said explicitly that Iran
0:55.4	did not pose an imminent threat to the U.S. This is going to further Royal Maga, which is in a civil
1:01.7	war over the Iran conflict. So how damaging is this resignation to Trump's case for war?
1:08.4	We're discussing all this with Emily Horn, who served on Joe Biden's
1:12.1	National Security Council and worked for nearly a decade at the State Department. Emily, nice to have
1:18.0	you on. Thanks for having me, Greg. So we just had the resignation of Joe Kent, the head of the National
1:23.9	Counterterrorism Center. In a letter to Trump, Kent said, quote,
1:28.4	I cannot in good conscience support the war in Iran.
1:32.0	Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation,
1:35.0	and that is clear that we started this war
1:37.1	due to pressure from Israel.
1:39.2	Emily, can you describe for us what the position
1:41.3	of head of the National Counterterrorism Center entails?
1:49.8	Sure. So the NCTC, as it's often referred to, is part of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. And the NCTC was created out of the 9-11 Commission. One of the recommendations
1:56.2	from that work was to bring together specialists from across the intelligence community and other
	...

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