Is It Too Late? Joe Kent Says

Off the Cuff Public Off the Cuff
, ,
1

Originally published at: Is It Too Late? Joe Kent Says… – Peak Prosperity

This is the inaugural podcast in the “Is It Too Late?” podcast series. We begin with Joe Kent, the decorated Green Beret, CIA paramilitary officer, and former National Counterterrorism Center Director.

As you may recall, Joe Kent resigned over the Iran war, calling it contrary to US interests, driven by Israeli lobby influence rather than any imminent threat, and at the cost of American lives with no clear strategic upside or direction.

So I asked Joe, did Trump change? Trump, for the first two to three months of his current presidency, seemed to be on track. But then something shifted, and Trump became far more Israel-focused and placed his America First agenda on the back burner.

But our governance problems and predicaments extend far beyond any one president or party. Sure, the government contains many decent, checklist-oriented workers and post-9/11 true believers. Yet most institutions prioritize self-preservation, budget fights, and risk avoidance. Over time, this becomes entrenched and self-absorbed.

Over time, a darker layer involving intelligence networks arose, as evidenced by rapid national crime-scene cleanups, blocked investigations, and Epstein pointing to an elite leverage operation involving transnational coordination.

Joe sees the two-party system functioning as a single party that consistently delivers perpetual Middle East wars, deficits, and civil-liberty erosion.

He thinks that there’s room for a new political party focused first on ending foreign wars and influence and then on the task of rebuilding America.

Is there any hope of this? Yes, he says, especially if younger people are reached and given a clear message of what’s involved and how we get there.

But is it too late for this? Never say never, but the hour is definitely late.

Timestamps

00:00 – Opening remarks / intentional patterns
00:20 – Chris intro: series premise, DC disconnect from voters, wealth gap & fiscal issues; introduces Joe Kent
03:55 – Why Joe resigned over Iran war; Israeli influence & lack of U.S. interest
06:03 – Early Trump admin optimism vs. later shift toward Iran conflict
07:42 – Good people vs. bureaucracy / deeper institutional problems (Epstein, JFK files, security failures)
12:05 – Pattern recognition: rapid cover-ups at major crime scenes
13:41 – Iran war options for Trump; risks of escalation vs. walking away
19:26 – Iran’s position, long-term strategy, energy leverage & sanctions limits
23:56 – Links between Iran & Ukraine wars; energy shocks & possible coordination
26:59 – Broader question of intent vs. incompetence in weakening the West
30:15 – Fracturing of populist/MAGA energy; factors that may have constrained Trump
35:46 – Butler & Charlie Kirk assassinations: unanswered questions & investigative blocks
45:25 – Neither major party represents anti-war + fiscal restraint; need for a real alternative
48:35 – Election integrity concerns & limits of peaceful reform
51:10 – Media influence & rise of alternative platforms
54:09 – Generational divides, reserve-currency risks, and China’s long game
01:00:48 – Building a new political vehicle; education focus

13 Likes
2

Until the Fed and CIA, also probably the FBI are, dismantled there’s little chance of any change. They have been the tools of control since there creation. The Fed is controlled by the central bankers. As long as they control the money supply and can print money and give it to anyone they want, they can bribe whoumever is elected. The CIA (and Mossad) blackmail or kill anyone that doesn’t cooperate.

The real Epstein story is that he gathered videos of powerful people doing horrid things, either willingly or after they had been drugged. The curated emails aren’t the real Epstein files, it’s the videos. None have been released and most were allowed to be removed, and likely made their way to Israel. I’m sure they are being used to control a major chunk of Congress. If they don’t have videos of Trump I’m sure they have ones of enough of his friends to still be effective on him.

20 Likes
3

I’m old enough to remember that J Edgar Hoover was director of this organization from … 1924 to 1972. I also remember he had a room full of files. I also remember he himself was (shall we say) compromised as well.

It was a bad start. Do we think it has improved since those good old days of Hoover?

I suspect FBI wasn’t at the top of the food chain, given all that.

8 Likes
4

:backhand_index_pointing_down: This is what happens when elected officials actually care about their job, constituents and act with integrity, instead of serving Israel and its wars. Imagine if Trump did this for the Epstein files and RFK for COVID!

1 Like
5

Did Trump change?!?

https://x.com/georgegalloway/status/2097569876789334233?s=20

3 Likes
6
6 Likes
7

I think most of us like Joe, Tucker, MTG and Massie and we would vote for them. However the reality is, they don’t stand a chance against the machine in Washington which is the MIC that Dwight D Eisenhower warned us about in 1961. It is now an all consuming BLOB from your favorite 1950’s Sci-Fi B movie.

The MIC is a lethal and dangerous cancer to the Republic and it won’t let go because the government which it controls, feeds it money. It’s not much different than the US funding Israel and Israel turning around and buying the votes of those favorable to Israel.

Ross Perot tried warning us about NAFTA when running as an independent. Rush Limbaugh who carried water for the Neocons had a field day, making fun of Ross Perot: “The Little General with the bad haircut”. And yet Perot kept warning us about “That Giant Sucking Sound” and boy was he ever right. We are so dependent on others that we can’t even build our own missiles and military arms without the help of China who holds a large swath of rare earth materials and is pretty much the biggest game in town when it comes to processing those rare earths.

So Joe/Tucker/MTG/Massie can wish to change things via a third party but they will go up against a violent machine in the MIC/Israeli Lobby. They will make sure they won’t win. Trump in his second campaign was against the MIC and now he says we have the greatest military in the history of the world, sans those Navy Sailors who wanted to jump off those ships and those rust buckets floating in the Persian Gulf. I just don’t see them having a chance unless we have a bloody revolution, which Martin Armstrong has been predicting will happen in 2032 when the US breaks apart.

11 Likes
8

I haven’t engaged in the “is it too late” debate.

The answer is obvious.

Name one societal institution that functions in the public interest.

Just one.

Agriculture? Arts? (“buy some Hunter Biden originals before Joe leaves office”) Commerce? Education? Finance? Government? Healthcare? Labor Statistics? Law? Media? National Defense? Public Administration? Scientific Research? (Don’t even get me started), Securities? even veterinarians now disable and kill your pets for profit.

The concept of “public interest” no longer exists.

It is now: “just loot the system and feast off the carcass of empire.”

30 Likes
9

A few things stood out to me from this conversation and I think they’re worth sitting with:

· Joe admitted ‘we’ killed the religious leader, his family, and children. That reframes everything. It wasn’t just Israeli influence, it was us. We pulled the trigger. I had left open the possibility it was Israel. Nope. It was us.

· The FBI shut down the investigation into external players. That’s not just bureaucratic self-protection, it’s active undermining of American sovereignty. They weren’t hiding from accountability; they were preventing it.

· The WEF said Western values would be tested to the breaking point by 2030. That’s not a prediction, it’s a schedule. We’re watching it unfold in real time. So working assumptions should be that milestone events should be attributed to WEF leaders as a default/working assumption.

· China broke SWIFT, not India or any other country. When China refused to break from Russia and kept trading, they made the weaponization of the dollar irrelevant. That was independence, not collusion.

· Kent still believes in voting. I respect that, but the system is too far gone. The intelligence apparatus has to be dismantled, not reformed. Creating a second party is essential but again, the AI/tech deadline is fast approaching.

· Epstein could call leaders to coordinate. It’s strange that Kent doesn’t see that a single person (or network) could coordinate attacks on Iran and Ukraine. The intelligence apparatus is the problem. Again, WEF gave us a timeline/schedule.

A few points I’d add:

· MacGregor said we have to pack it up and show, not tell, what we’re doing. But we’ve backdoored so many deals while pretending to negotiate that it may be out of our hands.

· The media is losing relevance. That’s a good thing. The new media (podcasts, social media) is where the conversation is actually happening.

· Kent said ‘the system is too big to rig’ but I think it’s too big to reform. We need to build something new alongside it, not try to fix what’s already broken.

The spiritual framing is real. Both Chris and Joe are open to the idea that we’re in a struggle between good and evil. That’s not a cop-out, it’s the only framework that makes sense of the pattern.

Adding a poll from Danny Haiphong:

Screenshot_20260909_131441_YouTube
Screenshot_20260909_131441_YouTube1080×2340 233 KB

13 Likes
10

I think the platform could include some other things.

  • FLOCK cameras
  • shoe removal at airports
  • AI data centers
  • Centralized beef production
  • Edward Snowden
  • NDAA merging US and Israel
  • NSA (Utah Server Farm)

This is just a start.

14 Likes
11

Due to the Epstein files, all long time incumbent should be voted out, both parties.

10 Likes
12
  • shoe removal at airports
    How about all of DHS.
    But this could be a very long list, and will be anyway once the train gets rolling.
2 Likes
13

That’s great. Compensating the victims is right. However, getting to the root cause of any of the things you cite is the real issue. Mamdani’s speech brought us no closer to that.

14

Ban mRNA shots.

Ban “Gain of Function” research.

Criminalize spying on citizens (either by government or business) with mandatory jail sentences.

Cut the war budget. Make the percentage of GDP represented by the war budget into a mandatory triple proportional tax on all income earned by anyone voting for that war budget.

Define any undeclared war as a “high crime or misdemeanor” requiring mandatory impeachment. If Congress fails to act allow a citizen suit to dissolve Congress and have new elections which bar from participation all Senators and Representatives who failed to act.

Break up the media via anti-trust actions.

Break up all concentrations of corporate power through anti-trust actions.

Pass a constitutional amendment separating “capital” and “state,” just like the first amendment separates “church” and “state.” No more captured government agencies.

Repeal any law giving vaccine manufacturer immunity from suit.

Pass a whistleblowers statute protecting any one blowing the whistle on fraudulent pharmaceutical studies.

Ban television advertising of pharmaceuticals.

Put the CIA under civilian control. Criminalize psyops against the American people. Criminalize covert actions against against anyone except an opposing nation against which a declaration of war had been passed by Congress. .

Repeal the FISA law. There is no place in a democracy for a secret court.

15 Likes
15

Joe Kent’s comment about something happening to Trump — that Kent felt a shift had happened — and then adding that Trump is showing anger about being controlled — made sense to me.
I remember back in 1992 a guy named Ross Perot having a third party run that was getting more traction in the polls than expected – until Perot announced that the intelligence community threatened his daughter. Perot seemed like a crackpot at the time ---- now it doesn’t seem so far fetched.

You don’t suppose Trump woke up with a horse head in the bed, do you?

Screenshot 2026-09-09 at 4.40.05 PM
Screenshot 2026-09-09 at 4.40.05 PM1522×730 210 KB

16 Likes
16

This is only 10 min, a synopsis of Strauss & Howe’s Fourth Turning…

4 Likes
17

He was seen as a “crackpot” because that was the narrative used to assure he wouldn’t have a chance. Same with Dr. Ron Paul.

4 Likes
18

Couldn’t agree more George, you leave me little to add. :grin:
BTW - I second this -

5 Likes
19

“It’s Time to End the Forever Wars”

Didn’t Plato say in “The Laws” that Man’s fundamental existential Reality is “War Of All Against All”?

Michael Yon is in Day 9 of his 40 Day Fast. Yon has Shifted Personalities again. His new Personality in his Day 9 Vlog was reading Buddhist philosophy from a book that some Japanese Buddhists placed in his Japanese hotel room in Japan. (It’s not clear to me why the Japanese place Buddhist literature in English in hotel rooms in Japan.)

Unfortunately, since Yon is a KILLER who has killed a plethora of people he’s in big trouble on the Karma retribution scale. Yon should probably just stick to Christianity or Islam which posit Divine Forgiveness for past sins and transgressions?

Or, Yon could just go Full On, Cannibal Aghori? I’m not sure what the Aghori’s believe regarding Sin and Deliverance? The Aghori’s seem to think that All Distinctions are Illusory phenomena of the Mind? For example, there’s no ultimate difference between eating a dog turd and eating Australian Tasmanian oysters.

I think that Jack in the Stanley Kubrick movie “The Shining” didn’t run amok until Day 28 of his Fast in The Overlook Hotel? There was no Japanese Buddhist literature in The Overlook Hotel….

1 Like
20

Trump is promising to end the war immediately after the mid terms