Former Green Beret and Gold Star husband Joe Kent told Breitbart News there is a sharp divide between America First principles and the actions of the Joe Biden administration.
Kent is challenging incumbent U.S. Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler (R-WA) in a primary after Beutler joined 9 other Republicans and the Democrats in impeaching former President Donald Trump in January.
Kent said after nearly two decades of “almost continuous combat” and the loss of his wife, Navy Senior Chief Petty Officer Shannon Kent, to a suicide bomber while she was deployed in 2019 to Syria fighting ISIS, President Trump appealed to him because Trump contrasted the “rhetoric of both parties on why we needed to stay deeply involved in the Middle East and in these wars that never seem to benefit us.”
He argued the U.S. was involved in wars because “our elected leaders had too much hubris to say that they had gotten it wrong and they continued to double and triple down” on failure.
“President Trump’s foreign policy ties directly into his domestic policy getting us to a point where we are energy independent here makes it so that we don’t need to be involved in these endless wars in the Middle East,” Kent said.
“Everything that President Trump did was putting the American people first,” he said.
He told Breitbart News that President Joe Biden’s strategy is “completely different” from Trump’s strategy.
“President Trump was using the full scope of American power, so President Trump was using military strikes only when necessary,” Kent said, citing the drone attack against Iranian General Qasem Soleimani.
“He didn’t escalated any further and he took efforts to get us out of Iraq while using diplomacy against the Iraqi government,” he argued.
Kent also complimented Trump’s strategy of pulling countries together with Israel in the Abraham Accords to isolate Iran.
“Joe Biden and the neocons, the neoliberals, they have a much different vision. They believe that we can use consistent military force as a means of diplomacy and that we need to be deeply invested in the stability and the affairs of the Middle East,” he said.
“Joe Biden and his ilk in the neocons, the neoliberals, they haven’t found a country yet they don’t want to give trillions of dollars to or invade,” Kent said.
Kent said voters in Washington’s Third Congressional District are “furious” over Beutler’s vote to impeach Trump.
“This district benefited greatly from President Trump’s America First policies and overwhelmingly supported President Trump in 2016 and again in 2020,” he said.
Kyle Olson is a reporter for Breitbart News. He is also host of “The Kyle Olson Show,” syndicated on Michigan radio stations on Saturdays–download full podcast episodes. Follow him on Parler.