🇺🇸🇮🇷 America’s top counterterrorism office was reportedly told to stop investigating foreign ties to the Charlie Kirk assassination... and Trump may have read that killing as a warning not to walk away from the Iran war...
The president got shot in the ear at Butler, a second gunman got close at West Palm Beach, his security was breached in public more than once, and then the man in his inner circle arguing hardest against another round with Iran was killed on a stage.
Joe Kent, who ran the National Counterterrorism Center until this year, says his own office hit a wall:
"We were stopped. We were told, hey, it's a lone gunman. You know, we've nothing else to see here."
Joe says he can't prove a network was behind it, but any analyst assessing a foreign leader with that sequence of events would assume it shaped his thinking, and he believes Trump never wanted this war and understands a message when one is sent.
He won't rule out Israel one day targeting a US official either, though he thinks the money works too well for them to need it... yet.
On the claims about Lindsey Graham surfacing since his death, Joe's question is why material that damaging never leaked while he was alive and voting for every war.
Joe says Washington always had a simple way to stop Israel from starting a war: take back the American air defense batteries that protect it, so Israel would have to spend its own missiles on defense instead of attack.
That option was written up before the 12-day war and never used, and he says that is how America got dragged into this one.
@joekent16jan19