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So, you beautiful bastards. Welcome back to the Philip DeFranco show. You daily dive into the news.

It is Thursday, and there's a lot we need to talk about today.

But first, a quick announcement, tomorrow, on Friday, you'll be getting another Philip to Franco show. So make sure you're subscribed, make sure you have all notifications turned on. And hey, maybe even join the text line, 813, 213, 4, 423. With that said, we've got a lot to talk about right now, starting with this. The former director of the National Counterterrorism Center just went to Tucker Carlson and said that there was zero U.S. intelligence showing Iran

posed an imminent threat. We're saying that we're being lied to, he said that Iran wasn't building a nuclear weapon. He said everyone in the intelligence community knew that striking Iran would endanger U.S. allies and shut down the Strait of Hormuz. And he said that key decision makers were shut out of the room before Trump gave the order. This is Joe Kent. He is a Trump appointee. He's MAGA and the FBI is now investigating him. So let's get into what he said. Let's get into the baggage that comes with him and why it matters. Because before we dive into the interview, you need to know some things about Kent. Because this isn't just kind of a simple whistleblower story. Kent is not a career bureaucrat who turned on Trump after years of institutional loyalty. He is literally a Trump appointee who is MAGA through and through, which arguably makes this even more notable that he's speaking out, but it also, it does come with real baggage. During his failed 2021 congressional campaign, Ken had a call with white nationalist Nick Fuentes. He hired a proud boy's member as a campaign consultant. He worked closely with the founder of a Christian nationalist group.

And he didn't interview with a neo-Nazi blogger, though he's also tried to distance himself from the Nazi sympathizers in that orbit.

He's also embraced conspiracy theories, right, calling the COVID vaccine an experimental gene therapy. He claimed that the 2020 election was stolen.

And he said that the January 6th insurrection was instigated by federal agents.

And in his resignation letter while containing real substantive claims, he also veered into what a number of people have called conspiratorial territory,

because he framed Israel's role not just as influence, but as a sweeping misinformation campaign that Trump was helpless against,

and he claimed that the 2003 invasion of Iraq was the result of an Israeli lie.

So that's why you've maybe seen a lot of people across the political spectrum, accusing him of crossing from legitimate criticism of Israel into explicit anti-Semitism. And I preface all that, not because I want you to like throw out everything he says, right? He was very high up in the administration. He was close to the operations of this war, but also I think just as part of my job, you need to know who he is,

so you can decide for yourself how to weigh in on what he's claiming. So with all that said, right, Ken's central claim is that there was no intelligence showing Iran was about to attack the United States. None. I think this is, this is key. I mean, this would be more challenging to explain had the Secretary of State, the president, and the Speaker of House, the House not come out and said

that we conducted this attack at this time because the Israelis were about to do so.

So that takes away the argument that there was an imminent threat, as in Iran was planning to

attack us immediately. That just simply did not exist.

Kent also said that Trump essentially created a self-fulfilling prophecy, right? There was no intelligence showing that Iran posed a threat unless the U.S. went after them first in a way that threatened the regime. So by doing exactly that, Trump manufactured the danger that didn't exist before. But there was no intelligence that said, hey, on whatever day it was, March 1st, the Iranians are going to launch this big sneak attack. They're going to do some kind of a 9-11 to Pearl Harbor, et cetera. They're going to attack one of our bases. There was none of that intelligence. Then on the nuclear threat, which has been the administration's other justification, Kent was equally direct. Was Iran on the verge of getting a nuclear weapon?

No. They weren't, you know, three weeks ago when this started, and they weren't in June either.

I mean, the Iranians have had a religious ruling of fatwa against actually developing a nuclear

weapon since 2004. That's been in place since 2004. That's available in the public sphere.

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