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It\u2019s why Trump nominated Robert Kennedy Jr., a COVID conspiracy theorist who spreads medical misinformation and\u00a0advocates for medical racism,\u00a0for Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary. It\u2019s why Pete Hegseth is now leading the Department of National Defense despite Hegseth having no clear experience in the field, being\u00a0unable to answer basic questions about U.S. foreign policy\u00a0, and believing that his top priority as defence secretary should be to\u00a0de-woke-ify\u00a0<\/em>the military.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, it should surprise absolutely no one that the man Trump has tapped to oversee U.S. intelligence on terrorism threats is a MAGA loyalist who once referred to Jan. 6 terrorists as \u201cpolitical prisoners.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Meet Joe Kent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Trump has selected Kent to serve as director of the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), which \u201coversees U.S. government intelligence on terrorist threats and retains a database of all known and suspected terrorists,\u201d according to\u00a0NBC News\u00a0. Now, on paper, Kend appears to be qualified, unlike many of the diversity-averse appointees that the DEI-hating president has selected. He served in Army Special Forces for 20 years, and after that, he worked for the CIA. But Kent doesn\u2019t believe the people who attacked police officers at the U.S. Capitol, stormed the building and threatened legislators, all to upend democracy by overthrowing the government are terrorists. He also reportedly has an affinity for white nationalist groups, but don\u2019t worry, folks, because he rejects \u201cracism and bigotry.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n From NBC:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Joe Kent ran unsuccessfully for Congress twice in Washington state, in 2022 and 2024.\u00a0Campaign finance documents\u00a0show that Kent in 2022 made payments for \u201ccampaign consulting\u201d to Graham Jorgensen, who was identified as a Proud Boy in a\u00a02018 law enforcement report\u00a0.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n The Proud Boys are viewed as \u201c\u00a0an extremist group with ties to white nationalism\u00a0\u201d by the FBI, and authorities say they played a significant\u00a0role\u00a0in the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol. The group has\u00a0denied\u00a0any connection to racist elements and says it is a fraternal group opposed to political correctness.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n A Kent campaign strategist\u00a0told\u00a0The Associated Press\u00a0in 2022\u00a0that the Army veteran rejected \u201cracism and bigotry.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Kent spoke at a \u201cJustice for J6\u201d rally in 2021 in Washington, D.C., saying people convicted for their role in the Jan. 6 attack were \u201cpolitical prisoners\u201d who were being denied their civil rights.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOur fellow citizens, when their constitutional rights are taken, if we do not speak out against that we are guilty of standing by and watching those rights erode,\u201d Kent said. \u201cMake no mistake: What governments do overseas they will do here, and they\u2019ve already started.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n So, just to recap: The president who inspired a terrorist attack at the U.S. Capitol has selected a man who has vehemently defended those terrorists to lead the department on counterterrorism. That domestic terror-loving counterterrorism expert is also a member of the Proud Boys, the right-wing extremist group the ADL named as a white supremacist group, which Trump famously told to \u201cstand back and stand by.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Damn, I hate it here.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Here\u2019s the rub, though. Months before Joe Kent called the Jan. 6 terrorists \u201cpolitical prisoners,\u201d he seemed to, at the very least, recognize them as rioters and criminals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe second people start throwing bricks through windows, we just have to call that out,\u201d Kent was\u00a0quoted\u00a0as saying by Oregon Public Broadcasting.\u00a0\u201cI feel the exact same way about the guys who acted violently on Jan. 6. You know, like, what they did was absolutely atrocious and they should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n But, hey, if you want to advance your political career in the MAGA world, you have to do more than show your hypocrisy, white nationalism and love for Trump; you have to abandon any minuscule amount of integrity and moral standing you might have had. \u201cJoe will help us keep America safe by eradicating all terrorism, from the jihadists around the World, to the cartels in our backyard,\u201d Trump wrote in a statement. OK, but what about our front yard? Will the white nationalist group member who praises domestic terrorists he even recognizes as domestic terrorists going to \u201ckeep America safe\u201d from white supremacist terrorists while he\u2019s \u201ceradicating all terrorism\u201d from the entire world?<\/p>\n\n\n\n I think we all know the answer to that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" At this point, it\u2019s beyond clear that President Donald Trump is not only filling his administration by prioritizing the loyal over the qualified (some might even call it white nationalist… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":53866,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"15","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":true,"token":"eyJpbWciOiJodHRwczpcL1wvaTAud3AuY29tXC9sYWtlbGFuZGdhemV0dGUuaW5mb1wvbmV3c1wvd3AtY29udGVudFwvdXBsb2Fkc1wvMjAyNVwvMDJcL1NvdXJjZS1Ub20tV2lsbGlhbXMtR2V0dHktcG5nLndlYnA_Zml0PTU1NiUyQzM1MCZzc2w9MSIsInR4dCI6IlRydW1wIFNlbGVjdHMgUHJvdWQgQm95IFdobyBDYWxsZWQgSmFuLiA2IFJpb3RlcnMgXHUyMDE4UG9saXRpY2FsIFByaXNvbmVyc1x1MjAxOSBUbyBMZWFkIENvdW50ZXJ0ZXJyb3Jpc20gT2ZmaWNlIiwidGVtcGxhdGUiOiJoaWdod2F5IiwiYmxvZ19pZCI6MTYzMDQwNjYxfQ.fNu1_fY7y6MFBeredUwZAeCT05el28W_lUtW9JFTlIwMQ"},"version":2,"attached_media":[{"id":53866,"url":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/Source-Tom-Williams-Getty-png.webp","type":"image\/png"}]},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[15],"tags":[10887],"class_list":["post-53865","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-trump-selects-proud-boy-who-called-jan-6-rioters-political-prisoners-to-lead-counterterrorism-office"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53865","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53865"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53865\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53867,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53865\/revisions\/53867"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53866"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53865"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53865"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53865"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}