WASHINGTON FREE BEACON: ---------------------------https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!DTK9!,w_1100,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7b1db273-651f-492a-bd86-e08f52c3318c_736x515.jpeg ChatGPT When Joe Kent was confirmed as director of the National Counterterrorism Center, the New York Times said he “embraced conspiracy theories and has links to extremist groups.” Now that he’s resigning in protest of Operation Epic Fury, which he blamed on the “Israel lobby,” the Times is changing its tune, describing Kent in a report on his resignation as a “credible dissenter.” President Donald Trump gave a harsher assessment: “When somebody is working with us that says they didn’t think Iran was a threat—we don’t want those people,” Trump told reporters. “There are some people, I guess, that would say that, but they’re not smart people or they’re not savvy people. Iran was a tremendous threat.” Our Andrew Stiles writes: “This is Trump at his finest. Once a neocon, always a neocon. Dick Cheney—may he rest in war—must be smiling down from the heavens. If he wasn’t fully confident that Neocon Don could wear the big boy pants and crush our enemies with overwhelming force, he never would have left us when he did. “It’s amazing to think that Neocon Don was a Washington Free Beacon Man of the Year in 2025 for everything he accomplished last year—finishing the war in Gaza, bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities, ending Marjorie Taylor Greene’s career. That’s all child’s play compared to Trump’s output in the first two and a half months of 2026.” READ MORE: Say His Name: Neocon Don