Hello, and welcome back to our very serious news summary.
My only announcement this week is to keep submitting questions for Abigail Shrier’s brilliant advice column.
→ Joe Kent joins the new right circuit: The director of the National Counterterrorism Center, who was confirmed last July, resigned this week over the war in Iran, writing that the only reason it started is because of Israel “and its powerful American lobby.” He quickly scheduled an appearance alongside Candace Owens and showed up on Tucker Carlson’s pod. The new circuit. Now, of course, “four people with direct knowledge of the investigation” have leaked that Joe Kent has been under FBI investigation for allegedly sharing classified information. A theme of Kent’s letter and chat with Tuck-Tuck is the idea that Israel is behind everything, that no other group has agency. Kent writes that he is a “Gold Star husband who lost my beloved wife Shannon in a war manufactured by Israel.” But his wife was killed in a 2019 suicide bombing in Syria, for which ISIS claimed responsibility? He writes that the Israelis drew us into “the disastrous Iraq war.” But Israel was against that war and expressed concern to America about its possible consequences. Even Grok, the one AI that you know could get Nazi-licious if it wanted to, agrees with me. (I’ll be real here, the name Grok sounds like a guy who maybe used to be a skinhead. Oh, him? That’s just Grok, don’t ask about the tattoos, okay, he’s over all that.)
You see the same obsession echoed here: “Pakistan dropping bombs on Afghanistan is completely unacceptable. And we can only conclude that the Pakistan military has been compromised by the U.S., and therefore Israel,” writes the editor of a Muslim news website. Actually loads of popular writers are echoing that, claiming Pakistan is attacking Afghanistan because it’s been inspired by Israel or something. Anything that happens anywhere between any two groups of people can be described by its proximity to Israel. Which one is Israel-coded? Why is it Pakistan?
