Joe Kent, veteran and Washington state congressional candidate, says Trump revealed military politicizationFox News, Jun 19, 2021
Washington state congressional candidate Joe Kent, a U.S. Army veteran and Gold Star husband, joined Fox Nation's "Tucker Carlson Today" on Friday to sound off about the politicization of the military establishment he recognized when former President Donald Trump decided to shake up the commander-in-chief role as a political outsider.
Kent, who is seeking a primary challenge against Rep. Jaime Herrera-Beutler, R-Wash., – one of ten Republican congresspeople who voted to impeach Trump in January – said Trump didn't "pull any punches" and rankled the Pentagon by trying to "check their math" on certain things.
The Defense bureaucracy, Kent claimed, most prominently took issue with Trump's stated goal of pulling U.S. troops out of the Middle East, which the veteran said goes against the proclivity for the government to support "lucrative programs… like wars."
"There was those of us that were on the ground that have been fighting the wars, we really liked President Trump's foreign policy. Because ISIS had taken over two countries at that time, three if you count Libya. And he said, hey, I want the caliphate crushed --you all in there, crush the caliphate, and we're getting out," Kent told host Tucker Carlson.
"So he gave us the tools that we needed, the authority we needed to go in and conduct that mission. But then, he attempted to, at least, get us out."
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"Under Obama, there had just been the stagnation of we're going to continue to deploy, put people in danger, but we don't actually have the will to go in and defeat the enemy," he added. "So Trump was very refreshing. But then, also, the way that Trump cut through a lot of the rhetoric about why we got into these wars in the first place"
The rank-and-file troops later appreciated Trump's new tact, Kent recalled.
But, with the now-Florida Republican's arrival, the Pentagon collectively bristled, he said.
"It was a night and day difference. There was a partisan bitterness to a lot of the leadership. They did not like what Trump had said about them getting things wrong before, and then they did not like the drastic changes that Trump wanted to make," he said.
"Trump had the audacity to say, like, 'I'm going to check your math every now and again'. It's like, what? You're going to check my math? How dare you?"
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