“Shocking COVERUP!” - Joe Kent UNLOADS on Iran, Butler, Charlie Kirk & Epstein | 452
Julian Dorey · 20 Jul 2026 · 4h 17m
Guest: Joe Kent · Host: Joey Def, Julian Dorey
A former National Counterterrorism Center director who resigned from the Trump administration in protest of the Iran war walks through his career from Army Ranger and Green Beret to CIA paramilitary officer to a senior counterterrorism post under DNI Tulsi Gabbard, and explains why he quit. He argues that Israeli government officials, donors, and media allies pushed Trump into the 12-day war against his own instincts, that the strikes on Iranian nuclear sites did not achieve their stated goals, and that killing the Iranian supreme leader hardened the regime rather than weakening it. He lays out a theory that the war has accelerated de-dollarization by damaging Gulf state trust in US security guarantees, and predicts continued disruption to Strait of Hormuz shipping without a clear military or diplomatic fix. He also describes being blocked by the FBI when trying to investigate foreign ties in the Butler, Pennsylvania assassination attempt on Trump and in the killing of Charlie Kirk, arguing that institutional resistance kept both cases from being fully examined. Personal material threads through the conversation as well: his path into special forces as a teenager, his deployments across Iraq and Yemen watching the war on terror sour into something he no longer believed in, and the death of his wife, a linguist killed by a suicide bomber in Syria in 2019, which he says shapes why he now speaks out publicly against reflexive military intervention.
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What comes up
Timestamps link into the episode on YouTube.
- McConnell joke opener
- Resigning over the Iran war
- Family life and going public
- Soleimani strike and Trump's use of power
- Iran's nuclear breakout doctrine and the 12-day war buildup
- Israel's real goal: regime decapitation vs nuclear issue
- Straits of Hormuz disruption and ceasefire (MOU) collapse
- Butler assassination attempt investigation stonewalling
- Career path: Rangers, Green Berets, CIA, 9/11 memories
- Wife's deployment and death in Syria
- JFK files declassification frustration
- Charlie Kirk assassination investigation blocked
Said on this episode
Quoted from the auto-generated transcript, which mishears names and technical terms. podcite.com reports what a show said; it does not endorse or fact-check it.
“I think this could be you know an event that jumpst starts a lot of the the downfall of the American empire.”
“We got blocked. got, you know, crickets on that one. You know, like no no answers whatsoever. You know, nothing to see here.”
“Nobody backs a winning horse like an Arab.”