Joe Kent interview: Pro-Trump Republican challenger says Jan 6 protesters ‘held in DC gulag’

Former Green Beret hoping to take down one of the Republicans who voted to impeach Trump tells The Independent hs support for the former president inspired him to run

Former Green Beret Joe Kent is looking to defeat a Republican congresswoman who voted to impeachDonald Trump, terming her and others like her “Republicans in Name Only”, or RINOs.

The 41-year-old is among half-a-dozen challengers for Washington state’s third congressional district, which has been held since 2011 by Jaime Herrera Beutler.

Ms Herrera Beutler, 43, is one of just 10 Republicans in the House of Representatives who in 2020 voted to impeach Mr Trump, and the former former president has vowed to support challengers to each of them.

The former president announced his endorsement for Mr Kent last September, declaring he would be a “will be a warrior for the America First agenda, unlike Jaime Herrera Beutler”.

“I met Joe at Dover Air Force Base on the evening that his wife was being brought back from the Middle East, where she had been killed in combat,” he added.

“It was a very sad moment in Joe’s life, but I was incredibly impressed with him and told him that he should someday run for office.”

In an interview with The Independent Mr Kent outlined why he supported the former president’s false claim that the 2020 election was rigged, and shared his thoughts on Mr Trump’s chances were he run again.

• The unvaxxed ex-Green Beret aiming to take down an anti-Trump Republican

Joe Kent, a GOP challenger to Jaime Herrera Beutler, speaks at a ‘Justice For J6 rally’ near the US Capitol (AP)

Q: When did you decide precisely to get in the race and challenge for Washington’s 3rd congressional district?

A: After [Congresswoman Jaime Herrera Beutler] voted for impeachment. I had been pretty frustrated with her prior to that with a lot of her votes, and then in particular, her vote to certify the election. She didn’t even really consider any of the evidence of fraud. And she just said, ‘Hey, this isn’t a Washington state thing, I’m gonna vote to certify it’. So I was frustrated by that. I had never intended to go into politics. You’re aware of my story - I had a chance to meet Trump in Dover, after my wife was killed. And, he was very gracious and all that. But I was getting ready to just go ahead and resign - I was working in the CIA at the time - from really government service, and then come back to the Northwest, just to focus on my kids. That was my goal. And when I met Trump, I told him, ‘Hey, look, you don’t know who I am. But I’m a guy who’s been fighting these wars for my entire adult life. And you’re getting this right. But you’re being thwarted at the mid to senior levels in a way that I have never seen before’.

I served under under Bill Clinton, George W Bush and Barack Obama. The amount of disdain and general treachery towards President Trump was something I’d never seen before. While at the same time, he was actually getting things right. He was letting us actually go out and defeat the enemy. But then, when we got to the point where the enemy was destroyed, he said ‘Hey, I’m getting the troops out. This is what I campaigned on, and this is what I’m going to do’.

So my wife was killed a month after Trump tried to get our troops out of Syria. She was supposed to be out on Christmas Eve of 2018. And then when he announced to withdraw, that’s when [Defense Secretary James] Mattis publicly resigned.

Trump’s people followed up. And so I got an opportunity to go and meet with pretty senior members of his national security team. This is after I had already resigned from the agency. I was a civilian. I had already moved back out to the Pacific Northwest to get my kids closer to my parents. So I started writing white papers on foreign policy, in particularly the Middle East. They said, ‘Hey, if you want a job here you have it. And at the time, I was like, ‘No, I got, I don’t want to jump back into it anything’. And they said, ‘Well, okay, if you could help us out with the campaign, we’d appreciate it’. And so I became a member of the Trump campaign in 2020. Really focusing on foreign policy and military military issues.

And then 2020 happens, and between the lockdowns and [protests in] Portland and Seattle, I just felt that our country was heading in a horrible direction.

And that deteriorated when the election went the way that it did. And then Jamie voted the way that she did. And so I was like, ‘Well, I can sit here and I can, I can complain about it. Or I can go try and do something about it.’

Q: To clarify, you said you encountered treachery at the mid level of the system. Mr Trump, as president, always said he believed there were people in government, part of the deep state or such like, who did not agree with him, who were trying to stop him. You said you encountered that. How were they trying to stop his actions?

A: I think that for people that aren’t familiar with the government, when they think of [the term deep state] they think of shadowy backrooms, and characters coming up with these well-thought out plans. I think maybe there was some of that when you look at what happened with like Russiagate. But I guess the biggest thing is that  culture always trumps strategy. And when Trump took over, and I was already towards the tail end of my military career and working towards my job in the CIA. And the culture was that President Trump didn’t belong there, that the people that voted for President Trump just were simply rubes, and they didn’t understand the way the way the world works. That was a narrative on every single level, but especially about foreign policy. There was no conceivable way that President Trump was right about foreign policy.

The foreign policy establishment hasn’t been successful in a very long time. In my lifetime, they haven’t been successful. So a lot of it was  basic human nature. Trump really insulted them. And if you were being accurate, if you were being honest, these insults were pretty warranted. But Trump was such an outsider, I think people simply took it personally.

And so when Trump took over, there was a culture that you didn’t necessarily need to listen to the president that like, we knew better. We’re the national security experts, we are just going to run things because we’re the steady hand and we can just do whatever we want, and this Trump guy will go away.

I compare it to the time when President Obama took over. He was already a senator and all that, so he wasn’t a true outsider. But on the campaign trail, he said some things especially about foreign policy that were not what folks would commonly say. Also, he didn’t have the original sin of the Iraq war on his record.

And when Obama came in we got read the riot act. Special operations leans right, it just does. We got read the riot act, it was like, ‘Hey, we know most of you guys probably didn’t vote for Obama, but he’s the commander-in-chief now. So be professional’. So we were kind of insulted because we were like, ‘Of course, we defend the constitution, the United States. If the American people voted for this guy, he’s our boss. Period. End of story’. It was a night and day difference when Obama came in and when Trump came in.

Representative Jaime Herrera Beutler was one of ten Republicans in the House who voted to impeach Donald Trump (POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

Q: Do you agree with President Trump the election was not fair?

A: I’m pretty adamant. I’m pretty confident in what I’ve seen, that the election was rigged or stolen, however you want to put it, [and] that Joe Biden did not get 270 electoral votes. The way I’ll always caveat that, though, is that I believe that and I want to prove it. So I want there to be a venue. And I think when I get into Congress, we need to have a full congressional inquiry.

Q: Why do you think that? Even the [election integrity unit] in the president’s Department of Homeland Security put out a report saying it was a fair election. Why do you think it wasn’t?

A: If you look at how thin the margin of errors were, or margins of victory were in key battlegrounds….In Arizona, where you have a margin of 10,500, you found over 30,000 ballots that were out of the chain of custody, you had somewhere close to 70,000 unauthorized accesses to the Dominion tabulation machines. In Pennsylvania, the way that consent decrees were broken down, the lack of chain of custody, a lot of the changing of the laws in places like Wisconsin. There’s a good number US states out there that that actually have ballot level fraud.

[Dominion Voting Systems has rejected such allegations saying it is “the gold standard for transparent and accountable voting equipment”.]

Q: In 2016 Mr Trump won by very small margins in places such as Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Why can’t it just be that Mr Biden won by similarly thin margins?

A: Because of the Covid pandemic, you had multiple states, especially these key battleground states, switch to where the vast majority of votes were cast with unsolicited mail-out ballots, something that had never been done before, in a lot of those states. You also had laws that were changed, like at the last minute, to specifically target and penalise people who were voting in person, which is typically how Republican voters tend to vote. I think the pandemic was really exploited.

So what I want to see happen is the process that was supposed to play out on January 6, before the riots took place. Each state, as prescribed by the constitution, where there is evidence of fraud, they have a congressman or senator, they get two hours to lay out their case. And I think that’s something that we still need, because I mean, if you look at the polling, most Republicans right now, don’t believe the most result of the presidential election.

[Voting rights activists promoted mail-in voting as a safe and secure alternative to voting in person during the pandemic. Statewide primaries that took place early in the pandemic served as trial runs for states across the nation.]

Q:  Do you not think Mr Trump was at least in part responsible for the Jan 6 riot, because of the speech he gave and therefore ought to have been impeached?

A: No, not at all. The speech - I listened to it - for a Trump speech, it was actually fairly tame. He was talking about the procedures I was just talking about, he was kind of getting into the weeds a bit, he was encouraging Mike Pence, because Mike Pence just released that letter saying he wouldn’t play ball.

I think it was pretty tame. And he said, ‘Hey, we’re we’re gonna march down there’. I mean, but the hallmark of the Trump era is these big, in-person rallies which have been very peaceful. So to think that something violent was going to come from a Trump rally, or from Trump speaking, I think is is ridiculous. And now we’ve seen since a year since the January 6 incident, there’s been just lie after lie told; number one that Trump inspired this riot, and then a police officer was beaten to death by a fire extinguisher by these crazy Trump supporters. Well, it turns out we find out months later, the guy died days later, and they lied about the entire narrative to paint Trump supporters as some sort of insurrectionists or terrorists or whatever.

Q: What would you call the people who stormed the US Capitol that day?

A: Anyone who acted violently on that day, I don’t support it. I don’t condone any violence. I condemn all the violence.

When I was stationed in Washington DC for a time I lived a mile from Capitol Hill. You can see this in the footage, there are some Capitol officers who let people into the Capitol. I have seen with my own eyes protesters, for every cause, particularly left wing causes, let into the building. So for whatever reason, this is the way - and we need to get to the bottom of it - a lot of protesters were let into the Capitol. The narrative has become the storming  of Capitol. Now, obviously, there’s footage showing people acting violently. They should they should have their fair day in court. That right is due to them as American citizens. They shouldn’t be locked away in essentially a DC gulag. Many of them have been deprived of their  basic rights as Americans. They should get their day in court. If they did something illegal, then let’s prosecute them. But to say it was a violent armed insurrection, I think it’s just completely mischaracterises it. It not just mischaracterising it, it’s intentionally doing so to paint Trump supporters in a certain way.

Q: Liz Cheney has a voting record that is 98 per cent in accordance with President Trump. Elise Stefanik, the woman who took over his post as GOP House chair, has a voting record of 78 per cent. Why do you think Liz Cheney is not a good thing for the Republican Party?

A: Well, Liz Cheney represents the old Republican Party that really just caters to the corporate donor class. These are the people that want to send all of our jobs overseas. They want unlimited immigration to undercut US working class labour. They want endless foreign interventions for the benefit of the military industrial complex. She’s literally the daughter of the warmonger who started these wars and benefited the most from them. You raised her conservative record, I mean, it’s really weird how people define conservative records. I think she just represents that old guard, and that old guard really wants Trump gone, they want this whole America-first ideology gone.

They don’t want us fighting for American jobs, to bring work back to our factories, to bring back our natural resources industries, to fight for the American worker and the American family. They want to cater to Wall Street special interest. That’s what that’s at the core of this. It’s got nothing to do with Trump’s mean tweets or any of that type of stuff. It’s really who benefits the most, and the Republican Party, the core of it, the Liz Cheney branch of it, they don’t want to work for the American people, they just want to work for the corporate donor class.

Q: An interesting part of covering the 2016 election was speaking to supporters of Bernie Sanders who vowed not to vote for Hillary Clinton if she were the nominee, and that they’d rather vote for Donald Trump, as they thought he was an outsider. You don’t literally sound like Bernie Sanders, but do you see parallels between what you’re saying and some of what he was saying?

A: Yeah, absolutely. So, the populist left and the populist right, I think we have more in common than we do that separates us. I think the whole Republican versus Democrat, conservative versus liberal. I understand why people have to still use like I would say those are almost legacy terms. But that doesn’t define the fight anymore. And almost to a certain extent those terms are used just to divide and distract us.

The real fight is the establishment, which is highly corporatist, and it’s highly global. They want this international order that only benefits major global corporations, they want to cheap slave labour from China, they want independent countries stomped out, and really they want their will to be able to push back taken away. That’s why they want your average American to be really unemployed, weak, dependent on the government and locked down. That’s why Covid has been such a such a blessing for them.

Q: Mr Trump’s been taking some flack recently for supporting the vaccine. Where are you on vaccines and masks?

A: So I’m anti-government compulsion. If people want to get the vaccine, get the vaccine, but it has to be between you and your doctor.

Q: Have you had the vaccine?

A: No, I’m not vaccinated. I’m not.

Q: You don’t think it’s safe? President Trump urges people to get vaccinated.

A: I  think it makes sense if you’re an at risk demographic for you to make an informed decision with your doctor. I’m 41 years old, I work out every day. I had Covid early on, and it wasn’t - I mean, knock on wood, I don’t want to invite anything or whatever - but it wasn’t terrible for me. So for me, it’s a personal decision.

When I was in the military, I got every vaccine, every shot. You had to get it.

Had the government not pushed the Covid vaccines so hard, I probably would have gone to a doctor’s appointment, and if they would have offered it me, I probably would have been like, ‘Yeah, okay, fine. It’s another vaccine’.

Former president Donald Trump delivering remarks on 6 January 2021 (EPA)

Q: Why do you think it’s right for the US military to demand its troops get vaccinated and not the government?

A: I don’t think it’s okay for the US military to demand it. When I was a soldier, I was just following orders because I loved my job and I was happy to be there. I don’t think the government has any role in mandating these vaccines, especially this one - it’s an experimental emergency authorization-use vaccine. So I am totally against all those mandates.

I feel the same way about the masks. Initially, when they said that I was like, ‘Okay, fine we’ll all wear a mask’. Then we find out they’re lying about it. And then you can see pretty quickly that the masks don’t really do anything unless you have a N95 surgical mask. So it’s just another means of control. We have Republicans and Democrats voting for a national vaccine tracking database. And to me is just a slippery slope between that and a digital vaccine passport, and it’s like ‘Take the jab or lose your job’, like we had here in Washington state. This is this is totalitarian government-type stuff and I think it’s really important we push back on it..

Q: Do you think President Trump is going to run in 2024?

A: I certainly hope so. I don’t have any insider knowledge. But I think he is. The times I’ve spoken with him he’s incredibly sharp, incredibly energetic. I mean, the guy looks like he’s he’s losing weight and exercise.

Q: Could he win again?

A: Yes, I think so. I mean, we see the disastrous state that Biden has gotten us into. The very simple question ‘Are you are you better off now than you were a year ago’, and unless you have major stock in Johnson and Johnson and Pfizer the answer is no. I’ve never seen bare shelves in America. I’ve traveled the world. And I’ve only seen bare shelves in very, very poor, third world-type countries. I’ve never seen that before here in America. Gas prices…I mean, on the economics alone, I think the American people would be ready to ready to have President Trump back. We have to fix a lot of our election processes, but I think he would have a good deal of enthusiasm.

Q: What do you think are your chances in Washington’s third congressional district?

A: So we’re feeling pretty strong. I mean, we got polling from Trafalgar [Group] that puts me in first place, the Democrats in second and then Jamie, the 12 year incumbent, in third. So Trafalgar has been very accurate recently.

Q: And Heidi St John, the other Republican, did not she say she was going to drop out. Did she drop out?

A: I mean, you’re welcome to ask her why she didn’t adhere to her end of the bargain.

I spoke to Trump early on saying, ‘Hey, I’m seeking your endorsement’. He said, ‘Hey, Joe, I know you, I trust you, I was gonna hire you for another job. But I need to see that you can stand on your own as politician, I need to see that you can generate your own thing. I need to see that you can get polling and I need to see that you can sign up volunteers and do a bunch of events that generate excitement in your district’.

Had Trump endorsed Heidi or the other guys in the race, I would have got out because with our jungle primary, the intra-Republican fighting only benefits the incumbent. And my goal is to defeat Jaime Herrera Beutler. I would not reward her betrayal by staying in the race and taking away [someone] else’s votes.

Q: What has been the impact of Trumps’ endorsement?

A: It’s been pretty good. Obviously, it’s been a big boost in just name recognition. And then the ability to get on the media. I think with fundraising, especially, a lot of people were waiting to see what Trump was going to do. And so it gives donors some confidence that like, ‘Hey, this is the guy that Trump’s backing’. He’s still the most powerful endorsement probably in the history of US politics. I had pretty good luck getting on the media before that, but this really helped out as well, too.

Q: If you become the Republican candidate, what do you think chances are Mr Trump might come out and campaign with you?

A: That’d be amazing. I hope so. And I know Trump tends to do stuff like that. I’m actually heading down to Mar-a-Lago on the first for a fundraiser He’s hosting for me. Matt Gaetz came out here and did a rally with us in a roomful of supporters. He said he thinks Trump will come out here at some point. Matt generated a lot of excitement when he said that, so it would be it’d be pretty awesome to have him out here.