The Joe Kent saga lays bare the real Trump derangement syndrome
When Joe Kent resigned this past week in protest of the war with Iran, he did so in a way that was characteristically MAGA.
Which is to say: He didn't blame the president for the president's war.
"High-ranking Israeli officials and influential members of the American media deployed a misinformation campaign," wrote Kent, the Washington state resident and now ex-head of the National Counterterrorism Center. Together, those two actors formed an "echo chamber (that) was used to deceive" Trump.
So it was their fault - the Israelis and, as always, the media's. Not Donald Trump's.
We've seen these accountability contortions from Kent before. As a two-time candidate in southwest Washington's 3rd Congressional District, Kent also didn't hold Trump responsible in any way for the sacking of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. The FBI did that one, he said. Both Trump and the rioters were actually innocent victims, "political prisoners" of a self-dealing, cheating government swamp.
It was Kent's loud and proud fictions on behalf of the "J6ers" that first brought him to Trump's notice. It's likely the reason Kent got picked to be one of America's top national security officials, despite criticism he had ties to antisemitic, neo-Nazi figures.
But just as Trump isn't really responsible for his own war, according to Joe Kent, the president also isn't responsible for Joe Kent.
"I always thought he was weak on security, very weak on security," Trump said about Kent the day he resigned.
Always?
"I didn't know him well."
Well then why did you appoint him?
Kent was branded a leaker, a loser, even a "Trump hater" (that last one came from Fox News' Sean Hannity.) Major ramparts of the conservative media ecosystem pivoted instantly to the line that this Kent person was a nobody, a functionary, clueless and out of his depth.
"Respect to Joe Kent's service, he is an American veteran, but he never should have been in that position of leadership," Rebeccah Heinrichs of the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank, said on Fox News.
OK, who put him there? Shouldn't that person's poor judgment be at least part of the story?
Trump never acknowledges error himself. He infamously said, about his own government's bungled coronavirus response, I don't take responsibility at all. When things go wrong, he typically blames former presidents (in the case of the coronavirus, he was blaming Obama.) Or, he throws subordinates under the Trump train, or foreign nations, "radical left lunatics," the "fake news media," and so on.
It's mystifying that this shirking sits well with the GOP, which used to dub itself "the party of personal responsibility." If someone suggests I write a column on a certain topic and it turns out to be a colossal mistake, that's 100% on me. But if people suggest the president bomb the Middle East, that's not on the president, but on the suggesters?
"I share some of my former opponent's questions about the strategy and trajectory of the war in Iran," said U.S. Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, D-Washougal, who got to know Joe Kent well enough to beat him twice. "Yet … now he's insinuating the Jews are controlling the president. Very strange to see some on the left swooning on him. Can we just share the goal of ending forever wars without celebrating this weirdo?"
It is odd Kent failed to register that Trump has always been a huge booster of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Or how Trump attacked Venezuela and has been imperialistically threatening to take Greenland, Cuba, the Panama Canal, even Canada.
In what world is it surprising then that Trump would partner with Israel to go after Iran? MAGA world, apparently.
I'm harping on all this not to debate the specific merits of the war. But this blurred lack of agency, of any personal accountability, is the political hallmark of the Trump era.
It's tempting to treat it as a joke how Trump acts like he's scarcely heard of his own top staff picks. Ha-ha, we've all had bosses who shamelessly take credit for success but blame the team when things go south.
This same pattern holds, though, with massive issues across the government. Remember just last year, when Trump tasked an agency called DOGE to cut the federal deficit? It failed, and has been forgotten as fast as Joe Kent. Instead, the national debt and deficit are soaring after a round of tax cuts plus a gusher of military spending.
"Put the goddamn taxes back on the table," fumed Rep. Adam Smith, D-Bellevue, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, in a podcast interview Friday. "You want war, you want a military this size, then (expletive) pay for it."
Smith said his anger stems from how this basic compact - if you're going to do something, you need to ask the citizenry to pay for it - is completely gone at the federal level. Republicans aren't holding their own leader to any ideals of fiscal balance that they themselves preached about for decades.
Maybe they'll start now that Trump wants a gob smacking $200 billion for the war?
Doubt it. When even a lonely war critic within the party lets him wriggle out of the decision to start it, it would seem the buck just doesn't stop there. The buck shimmies past, where it will go straight onto the nation's credit card.
This is the real Trump derangement syndrome, by the way. MAGA has made him the leader of everything who isn't answerable for anything.
It's tempting to hold Joe Kent out as a first sign this fever might be breaking. Good for him for resigning and all. But the way it went down is unfortunately more of a show of just how deep this illness runs.
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This story was originally published March 21, 2026 at 8:15 AM.