Joe Kent: Charlie Kirk told me ‘stop us from getting into a war with Iran’

Joe Kent, a top intelligence official who resigned this week in the wake of the U.S. strikes in Iran, said the late conservative activist Charlie Kirk last summer implored him to do what he could to make sure the Trump administration resisted getting involved in a war in the Middle East.

“I wasn’t particularly close with Charlie, he was very gracious to me when I was running for Congress, very supportive. So, we knew each other,” Kent said during an interview with pundit Tucker Carlson published on Wednesday evening.

He added, “The last time I saw him on this earth was in June in the West Wing in the stairway.”

Kent noted that when he said “hi,” to Kirk, the Turning Point USA (TPUSA) co-founder, “looked me in the eye and he said very loudly … Joe stop us from getting into a war with Iran.”

“So, when one of President Trump’s closest advisors who is vocally advocating for us to not go to war with Iran and at least rethink our relationship with Israel, and he’s suddenly publicly assassinated and we’re not allowed to ask questions, it’s a data point,” he continued. “A data point we need to look in to.”

The outgoing intel official, who served as the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, earlier in the interview, said “by no means am I saying the Israelis did this or any of that.”

“But I’m saying there’s a lot of unanswered questions,” Kent added.

TPUSA, the grassroots political activism organization Kirk founded that was taken over by his wife Erika following his September 2025 assassination, did not respond to a request for comment on Kent’s remarks.

The ex-aide to Director of National Security Tulsi Gabbard has taken fierce criticism from the White House after he stepped down citing opposition to the continued U.S. military action in Iran — an operation he and other critics of the war argue is needless and pushed by Israel.

Several defenders of the president mocked Kent’s story about Kirk on social media overnight Wednesday, including right-wing influencer Laura Loomer, who called him a “conspiratorial crackpot who is blinded to the Islamic terror threat.”

“We could have simply said to the Israelis, ‘No, you will not [attack Iran], and if you do, we will take something away from you,’” Kent said during his conversation with Carlson, also a critic of the war. “I think it’s fine that we offer defense to Israel but when we’re providing the means for their defense, we get to dictate the terms of when they go on the offensive, otherwise they stand to lose that relationship.”

Trump and his allies have argued striking Tehran was a necessary decision citing what they say was “imminent” threats from the Iranian regime.

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