Many Dubious Pundits Seem To Be Getting A Lot More Mileage Out Of “Just Data Points” Than Facts, Backed Up By Insinuations And Winky, Winky, Nod, Nods: Click bait, is click Bait
I outlined in Part 1 how Joe Kent has pretty much embarrassed and outed himself with his recent actions and theatrical resignation from the government. Dan Bongino spent a few Podcasts addressing the issue and exposing what represents a circle of presumed MAGA who are pushing gateway conspiracies that paint Trump as uninformed-stupid-while surrounded by people who won’t tell him the truth about how bad things are going.
Trump as a simp theory. Which enables them to undermine Trump without directly attacking him while focusing on going forward with some of his policies, but without him: they know they can’t directly attack him, which means getting him defeated by attacking his flanks and suppressing any and all policy goodness.
Targeted on the mid-terms and moving away from MAGA in 2028, including Trumps nominated successor. Which translates to democrat control of at least the House and impeachment starting in early January 2027.
I touched upon some of these personalities in Part 1, but the best way to get up to speed on it is to listen to Bongino’s Rumble Shows that covered the nexus between Tucker Carlson, Joe Kent, Mike Flynn and his son, Candice Owens, Max Boot and Max Blumenthal, among others. There is a very strange and disturbing connection between these folks and common messaging and social media bots that defies common sense, logic and goodness: but mostly nature.
The nexus was analyzed in this article which described the plot pointed out by Kash Patel’s girlfriend Alexis Wilkins on X that documented non-random communications and bot activity coinciding with mutual attacks. The mere association with lefty Max Boot and Syd “the Squid” Blumenthal’s kid is indicting on its face, as is Flynn’s quick endorsement of Kent and Tucker’s referenced Chinese interview.
Regarding Kent, I explained in detail how he managed to embarrass himself and go from somewhat of an insider to a rogue outsider in mere months. I went a bit long on most of it and had yet to get to some of the nettlesome points.
I was also struck-not impressed-but appalled by his claim that “all 18 IC agencies” in effect weighed-in that Iran represents no threat to the US-by which I guess he means the continental US.
Number one-you can’t get all 18 IC elements to agree on anything. Number two-only about 5 of the IC elements are truly relevant when it comes to this type of global and regional threat assessment. Number three-there is a provision within the ODNI threat reporting construct where it is a requirement to include dissenting opinions-and you can almost always tell when such things happen because in the era we are in, those dissents are leaked!
Recall that almost every time we hear some politician tout that “all IC entities were unanimous” about anything, it always turns out to be hyperbolic nonsense like when President Obama had CIA Director John Brennan make up the Russia Collusion Intelligence Community Assessment that we were told was the “consensus of all 17 IC entities,” but turned out to be the slap dash work product done by only 4 of them-all cherry-picked-one of which was the DNI. With one-NSA Director Adm Rodgers himself-non-concurring with the raison d’etre of the ruse ICA, being the judgement that said Putin colluded on behalf of Trump.
We heard that nonsense “Consensus of all 17 IC members” for months from December 2016 through early 2017 when it was clear from day one to all-from the President’s office on down the line-that it was an embarrassing, slap dash, rush to judgment, inside job by the main colluding IC elements: and there was not even consensus among the 4. And the whistleblowers have since spoken.
Kent has also spoken with seeming authority about the Defense Intelligence Agency “doing Battle Damage Assessments” on Iran. In truth, so has Sec of War Hegseth (not stressing DIA,) but both should be fully aware that decades ago the term was updated to reflect the actual mission cycle which is called Combat Assessment Program (CAP,) which consists of a continuum of battle damage assessment, munitions effectiveness and reattack recommendations. DIA could be the lead for the Department of War, but CAP is done mostly from imagery and that mission is done by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and its NGA Support Teams (NST) throughout the community, providing geospatial-intelligence expertise: even for all-source agencies like DIA and CIA.
What is shocking about Kent adopting and supporting that talking point (all 18 IC consensus) is that he should know better based on his experience, but it also outs him as being out of touch-or perhaps never truly being in touch-with his constituents in the IC. With Iran-particularly from the strategic missile technology developments-we have a subject and topic that has some of the longest tenured subject matter experts on those accounts from State INR, CIA-WINPAC, DIA, NGA, ODNI Counter-proliferation, Army National Ground Intelligence Center, USAF National Air and Space Intelligence Center-throughout the community.
If this Iran operation is that far off the commonsense or consensus line, we should be seeing evidence of that discord, like scads-dozens of comments from across the IC, as well as similar resignations or at least much wider leaking of that somewhat hard to hide apparent fact.
Like the DNI or CIA Director getting wire brushed when presenting that position to congress.
It did not help his cause-which he has attempted to bolster with the long-ago debunked lie of the Iranian leaders expressing a “Fatwa” against nuclear ambitions-while also spreading nonsense about Iran willingly limiting their missile developments to 2500Kms or about a 1500-mile range-that Iran recently debunked all by themselves by attacking Diego Garcia with a near 4000Km or 2400-mile range missile attack that places most of NATO at risk: very inconvenient and untimely for his story.
Two things, one being that taxpayers deserve better than having somebody who is apparently that gullible in such a position of responsibility: because both of those narratives evidence a naivety or ignorance (lack of knowledge) that ignores near 47 years of Iranian aspirations.
Secondarily-and more importantly-the IC monitors Iranian missile developments and technical advances very closely. It would be quite a surprise bordering on astonishing to learn that our IC agreed with a proposition that such limits were being self-imposed or deliberately instantiated in the Iranian ballistic missile program developments, as that would be a 180 reversal since I left government in 2017 defying decades of monitoring their rocket engine and missile body testing regimen.
The only time there was such a disturbance in the Iran strategic and ballistic missile technology development threat assessment narrative was when President Obama was surreptitiously kissy-facing with the Iranians from 2011-2016 or so to get to the ill-considered JCPOA.
Where the ODNI via PDDNI Stephanie O’Sullivan and DNI Clapper himself starting talking nonsense that Iran had not pursued such missile technology advancements since the 2003 timeframe: which-honestly-smacked of hitting the bong, ingesting edibles, or common crass political IC double-speak nonsense.
But-moreso-both points above-and three including the nonsense “consensus of all 18 IC elements-” prove that Kent is spewing just bullspit political talking points. I mean-do better…What it signals to me is that the NCTC-or Kent specifically-was doing Biden era political intelligence such as was seen in the Ukraine estimates, the Afghanistan effort, the failure to see any clue buses in Gaza leading up to 7 Oct 2023, etc.
Kent also has a somewhat problematic history that was worked through during his hearings in the senate. The most noticeable somewhat change in his public persona is definitely his stated views toward and about Israel. Which disturbingly mimic fringe elements in the movement he purports to be a part of that track with leftist, democrat, rabble rousing narratives that find Israel at the heart of every complaint or protest today.
I don’t know how any rational, Army veteran or politician could make the claim that Bush went into Iraq because of Israel. Nothing I’ve seen over the past decades-in this century-supports such a view. That doesn’t make the Iraq action any less stupid: it was not a smart move from any standpoint one would care to argue. Powell had it right that “if we broke it, we owned it.” Although he would unfortunately go on to argue vehemently and make the case to go into Iraq.
Similarly-the US position on the most recent Iran campaign has been very clear and straight forward in terms of goals and objectives: you may not like them-particularly if you are ingesting democrat talking points-but in order to believe that Israel forced or goaded us into war you have to disbelieve the entire administration in favor of leftist, democrat talking points.
Not just President Trump, but the entire administration on down the line. I guess you can argue it would constitute a repeat of the Iraq effort but ignores the fact that the debate and decision was placed before and was agreed upon by congress.
It also simply denies or ignores four decades of Iranian terrorism that has killed and maimed thousands of Americans.
I get that some portion of MAGA is not happy with recent activity and is making attacks on Trump about the forever wars.
Many of us have not been happy about the continued, pusillanimous, kissy faced overtures of politicians like Obama kowtowing to the Iranians while they were killing Americans with IEDs in Afghanistan, Iraq and around the world. The fact that those discussions were not conditioned on Iran stopping attacks on American military was criminal.
Or actions not taken over 5 decades about the “war on drugs” where no American leader took that war-the fight-to the enemy responsible for it. Over 100K American overdose deaths sustained for nearly half a decade before something bold and demonstrative was done about it.
Our government was guilty of decades of malfeasance where reports came out year after year documenting the burgeoning drug trafficking problem in America, while being slow to warn the American people about the dangers of modern drugs and the increased potency over so-called harmless, recreational drugs.
All the while many communities were making such gateway drugs legal while not addressing the elephant in the room of the danger of even small amounts of fentanyl, which was treated like any other nickel and dime street drug offense by addressing quantity limits while failing to acknowledge what constituted a lethal dose.
I personally have difficulty understanding how any Army veteran can fail to appreciate how righteous it is for America to punish Iran for each and every American casualty-death, wounded and crippled-over the past near five decades.
A lot of us in service who witnessed the events of 1979 and the debacle that was Desert 1 in 1980 have watched as our government basically whiffed for decades as Iran became a global terrorist power, including the biggest threat to American forces and civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq through their proliferation and innovation of Improvised Explosive Devices (IED.)
It was a great day when Qassam Soleimani was taken out by a drone strike: the blood and deaths of thousands of Americans was avenged that day in that righteous attack.
The battle to stop these attacks-eventually led by the Counter IED Task Force-faced a daunting task to get left of the bang. We got really good at doing the forensic work to kill those who committed such attacks-but as the US Central Command Deputy Commanding General reinforced by a tongue lashing administered to a group of us about the problem in early 2003-going after the people who committed the attacks was of little good nor solace for those killed by the attacks.
Just imagine that before Soleimani’s innovations to implement non-detectable components, explosive shape charges/sophisticated explosive penetration devices, we would routinely see mortars and artillery rounds used as the explosive component.
Later-as the IED components became more and more sophisticated-it was critical that these maniacs be stopped before the IED was emplaced as the technology became advanced enough so as to be undetectable, including sophisticated counter-jamming, anti-detonation defeat capability.
I can’t imagine any military person who served or whose family served questioning why Iran now-or insinuating we only did this because we were forced to do so by Isreal: a total insult and ridiculous allegation.
But-if you believe this fact and have evidence-stop talking and present it. Insinuating you have inside knowledge about such a claim can’t be done while hiding behind security restrictions. Turn whistleblower-seek the protection of the process-and get that evidence to the authorities who can properly investigate it. That’s why the IC invests so much time and energy in Inspector Generals, Ombudsman, and the like.
You have a real scoop and a tremendously important story if you have such information.
But insinuating to the world you have such data while hiding behind security concerns-citing “data points” that you can’t detail-is pretty chicken poop.
Max Dribbler
12 March 2026
LSMBTGA: Lamestream media echo chamber (LMEC-L) social media (SM) big tech tyrants (BT,) government (G) and academia (A)
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