Before the media canonizes Joe Kent, Americans deserve to know who he actually is.

Joseph Kent’s resignation letter is textbook antisemitic dog-whistling dressed up as patriotism.

He didn’t resign over intelligence failures. He didn’t resign over a policy disagreement on strategy or sequencing. He resigned because, in his telling, America is fighting Israel’s war, waged through a Jewish lobby and an echo chamber of Israeli officials and American media. He says his wife died in “a war manufactured by Israel.”

Let’s be precise about what Kent is actually claiming: that the United States government was deceived into military action by Israeli influence operations — that American officials, American intelligence, and the American president himself were manipulated by Jewish power into a war that serves no American interest. That is not a foreign policy critique. That is a conspiracy theory with a body count of history behind it, and Americans deserve a full accounting of who Kent is, what he has done, and what his record reveals about the sincerity of his sudden conscience.

During his two congressional campaigns in Washington’s 3rd District, Kent’s campaign received significant criticism over its alleged ties to white nationalist groups. He entered into a dispute with far-right commentator Nick Fuentes, who described a phone call the men had in which Kent purportedly said, “I love what you’re doing.” After Kent disavowed Fuentes and stated he had not sought his endorsement, Fuentes chastised Kent for not being sufficiently conservative. Kent was later interviewed by an organization associated with Fuentes and stated American culture was “anti-white” and “anti-straight-white-male.”

The Fuentes connection alone would be disqualifying for any serious public official. Fuentes is an avowed white nationalist who describes his ambition as “fighting for a white majority” and who organized the America First Political Action Conference, a gathering that drew members of Congress willing to mainstream his ideology into........

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