One of the oddities of Donald Trump’s personnel choices in his second term is the frequency with which he has chosen failed Republican candidates for key positions. Indeed, the White House’s pipeline for Republicans who’ve been rejected by voters became so common that Roll Call several months ago said the president had created a “Team of Losers.”
With this in mind, it might not have been especially surprising when the White House tapped Joe Kent to serve as the director of the National Counterterrorism Center. He did, after all, run two failed campaigns for the U.S. House in the state of Washington in 2022 and 2024 following a career in the military and CIA.
The GOP-led Senate has been eagerly confirming other failed Republican candidates to powerful federal positions, and with this in mind, few were surprised to see Wednesday night’s confirmation vote on Kent.
Kent was confirmed 52-44, with four Democrats missing the vote. Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who’s retiring at the end of this term, was the only Republican to vote against the nominee.
To be sure, Senate Republicans have made some outlandish confirmation decisions in recent months — Emil Bove, Pete Hegseth, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard, among many others, come to mind — and the vote on Kent probably won’t generate as many headlines as those others.
But it’s every bit as ridiculous.
In Washington state, Kent was actually expected to fare quite well in his conservative district, but local voters rejected him and elected Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, at least in part because of the GOP candidate’s radicalism. The Associated Press published this memorable report during Kent’s 2022 campaign, for example, highlighting his “connections to right-wing extremists, including a campaign consultant who was a member of the Proud Boys.”
The Seattle Times later noted Kent’s “reported associations with white nationalists and other far-right groups, and embrace of conspiracy theories on an array of subjects.”
Such as? Kent has insisted, for example, that the 2020 presidential election was “rigged and stolen” and that the FBI — an agency he’ll now be working with — is “corrupt” and needs to be brought “to heel.” Kent has also defended Jan. 6 rioters as “political prisoners” and called the Covid vaccines an “experimental gene therapy.”
Despite — or perhaps, because of — this record, the Republican has spent recent months working as the acting chief of staff to Tulsi Gabbard, the national intelligence director, while waiting for his Senate confirmation vote. In this role, he’s been accused of brazenly trying to politicize intelligence, allegedly ordering analysts to “rewrite” intelligence assessments to help the White House. Under the traditional rules of politics, accusations such as these from U.S. intelligence professionals, bolstered by documentary evidence, would’ve led the president to pull Kent’s nomination. But in 2025, Trump stuck with his nominee anyway and told Senate Republicans to confirm him, and GOP senators did as they were told. As The Seattle Times reported when Trump nominated Kent, the counterterrorism center the Republican will now lead “coordinates the nation’s strategy against terrorism and maintains a national repository of known and suspected terrorists. It operates as a partnership of organizations including the CIA, FBI and Defense Department.” The president’s recent record on counterterrorism has been awful. With Kent leading the National Counterterrorism Center, it’s difficult to be optimistic that the administration’s handling of the issue will improve any time soon. This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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