Joe Kent is a former U.S. Army Special Forces Green Beret and a veteran of 20 years of military service and 11 combat deployments.
After his discharge, he also worked as a CIA paramilitary agent, and later ran for the 2022 and 2024 U.S. House of Representatives elections as a Republican candidate for Washington State’s 3rd Congressional District, but was defeated by the Democratic candidate both times.
In July 2025, he was appointed as the director of the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) by the Trump administration with Senate confirmation, and resigned as director on March 17, 2026 due to his opposition to the war with Iran.
He sparked controversy by saying in his resignation letter that Iran was not an imminent threat to the United States and that the war was a result of pressure from Israel and its lobbying groups.
This led President Trump to criticize him as “very weak on security,” and his resignation is being interpreted as a sign of division over foreign policy even within Trump’s support base.
In addition, he was criticized for using anti-Semitic metaphors in the part of his resignation letter that questioned Israel’s influence.
Family-wise, he is the husband of Shannon Kent, a Navy cryptographer who was killed in an ISIS suicide bombing in Syria in 2019, and is known as the Gold Star Husband.
This background and the reason for his recent resignation appear to be the main reasons why Joe Kent was listed on Google Trends in March 2026.