Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s future in the Trump administration is being questioned after her top aide and “closest adviser,” Joe Kent — who served as the director of the National Counterterrorism Center — abruptly resigned in protest against the Iran war on Tuesday.

Trump White House reporter Jake Lahut commented that Kent’s resignation “puts Tulsi in an even more precarious position.”

“Embarrassing for Tulsi,” remarked Sarah Longwell, publisher of The Bulwark.

Gabbard’s standing in the administration has at times appeared tenuous, and has been questioned before, including over Iran — the reason Kent quit.

As The Hill reported last June, Gabbard’s “strength and standing within the Trump administration” were coming under question “after the president twice publicly brushed off her testimony that Iran is not close to developing a nuclear weapon, and amid reports of tensions between the two.”

Gabbard’s “anti-war stance” at the time fit in with the “MAGA movement’s aversion to getting the U.S. sucked into foreign conflicts,” although now Trump voters largely support his Iran war.

Gabbard was told by the White House to fire Kent for being a “known leaker,” but “she never did,” according to Fox News’ Aishah Hasnie, citing a senior Trump administration official. Hasnie also reported that Kent “was cut out of” the president’s intelligence briefings “months ago,” and that Kent “has not been part of any Iran planning discussions or briefings at all.”

MS NOW national security contributor Marc Polymeropoulos, a former CIA officer, called Kent’s resignation a “nuke from a true MAGA member,” and commented, the “big question, is Tulsi next?”

Michael V. Hayden Center director Larry Pfeiffer asked, “Over/under on how quickly Gabbard throws Kent under the bus at the hearing tomorrow?” Last year, Pfeiffer called Gabbard “the perfectly dangerous mix of incompetence, narcissism, sycophancy, and malign intent.”

Gabbard is slated to testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Wednesday and before the House Intelligence Committee on Thursday.

Republican former U.S. Rep. Barbara Comstock summed it up, asking, Gabbard “kept on a known leaker in a national security position?”

“Let’s face it,” she added, “Tulsi has been cut out too because she agrees with Kent – or at least always did before Trump flipped his position.”

Far-right political activist Laura Loomer, who at times has had the ear of President Trump, responded to Kent’s resignation by predicting that Gabbard “will resign next.”

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The Trump White House is scrambling to contain fallout after Tuesday’s sudden, very public, and high-profile resignation of its top counterterrorism official — the first senior departure linked to the Iran war.

Joe Kent, who served as the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, resigned in a letter to President Trump that he posted to social media.

“I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran. Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation,” wrote Kent, whose wife was killed by ISIS. “Until June of 2025, you understood that the wars in the Middle East were a trap that robbed America of the precious lives of our patriots and depleted the wealth and prosperity of our nation.”

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt quickly pushed back on Kent’s resignation, declaring that there are “many false claims” in his letter, including, she said, that “Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation.”

Leavitt charged that this claim “is the same false claim that Democrats and some in the liberal media have been repeating over and over.”

READ MORE: ‘Clear All Along’: Backlash Grows as Trump Aide Shrugs Off Consumer Pain From Iran War

“As President Trump has clearly and explicitly stated, he had strong and compelling evidence that Iran was going to attack the United States first.”

Just five days ago, Leavitt reportedly “declared that Iran poses no threat to the United States,” as The Daily Beast reported.

“TO BE CLEAR: No such threat from Iran to our homeland exists, and it never did,” she wrote.

On Tuesday, multiple high-profile social media accounts mocked the Press Secretary over those very remarks.

According to a New York Times report two weeks ago, Trump’s “decision to order the attack on Iran, he said, was mostly a matter of gut instinct about Iranian intentions.”

“We were having negotiations with these lunatics, and it was my opinion that they were going to attack first,” he said. “I think they were going to attack first, and I didn’t want that to happen.”

The Times added that Secretary of State Marco Rubio “had offered the opposite explanation the previous day, telling reporters that because Israel was going to act, Mr. Trump had no choice but to join what he called a ‘pre-emptive’ strike before Iran counterattacked U.S. bases and allies.”

But according to Leavitt on Tuesday, Trump’s decision to go to war against Iran was based on evidence that “was compiled from many sources and factors. President Trump would never make the decision to deploy military assets against a foreign adversary in a vacuum.”

Leavitt appeared to dismiss any other interpretations of what constitutes a threat to the nation.

READ MORE: ‘Sick, Demented, or Deranged’: Trump Issues Harshest Threat Yet Over Voter ID Bill

“The Commander-in-Chief determines what does and does not constitute a threat, because he is the one constitutionally empowered to do so – and because the American people went to the ballot box and entrusted him and him alone to make such final judgments,” she wrote.

Leavitt denounced what she called the “absurd allegation that President Trump made this decision based on the influence of others, even foreign countries,” calling it “both insulting and laughable,” despite what Secretary Rubio had said earlier.

She lashed out at Kent’s allegation that “it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby,” remarks that have been derided by both sides of the aisle.

Heath Mayo, founder of the pro-democracy center-right group Principles First, on social media on Tuesday warned his followers to not hold Kent up “as some paragon of principle.” He urged them to “recall this is the same man who flunked his congressional bid for his outspoken anti-Semitism, his ties to Nick Fuentes, and his insistence that the 2020 election was rigged.”

READ MORE: ‘He Was the Only One’: Trump Mocked for Declaring Iran’s Moves ‘Shocked’ Him

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A top Trump economic adviser is under fire after declaring that consumers hurt by an extended Iran war are the “last of our concerns right now.”

Despite some expert predictions of possible recession or even stagflation, Kevin Hassett, the Director of the National Economic Council (NEC), on Tuesday called the U.S. economy “very sound,” and insisted that the  Iran war “wouldn’t really disrupt the U.S. economy very much at all” if it were to continue for an extended period of time, MS NOW reported. The war is in its 18th day.

“It would hurt consumers, and we’d have to think about, if that continued, what we’d have to do about that, but that’s really the last of our concerns right now,” he said, claiming that the war is “ahead of schedule.”

Consumers are feeling the pain, especially at the pump.

As of Monday, five states were hovering near $4 a gallon and several others were seeing sharp increases. “The national average is up 80.0 cents from a month ago and is 66.1 cents per gallon higher than a year ago,” WANE reported on Monday, citing data from GasBuddy.

Critics rushed to denounce Hassett’s remarks.

“In any normal administration, a senior advisor to the President (basically) saying they don’t care that Americans are being harmed financially by something the President has done would resign before 5 pm today b/c the media outrage would be THAT extreme,” wrote one social media political commentator.

“This is what this Administration of billionaires for billionaires really thinks. The consumer is an inconvenience,” said Democratic congressional candidate Fred Wellman.

“It has been clear all along that consumers, aka the American public, are the least of this administration’s concerns,” observed Jared Ryan Sears, who writes at The Progressive Capitalist. “Fits right in with claiming that affordability is a hoax, as Americans are draining their 401ks and savings trying to stay afloat. Pretending the economy is good is a joke. Instead of creating jobs, the US has been losing jobs over the past 10 months, and GDP growth was just 0.7% last quarter. Trump has ruined the economy.”

The New Republic’s Greg Sargent called Hassett’s comment “an extremely serious political blunder” that “will end up in a lot of Dem ads.”

“If Republicans were trying to lose the midterms on purpose, they wouldn’t need to change a thing,” wrote podcaster Hemant Mehta.

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