Former President Trump’s Defense Secretary, Christopher Miller, endorsed fellow Green Beret veteran Joe Kent (R) for Washington’s third congressional district seat on Wednesday.
Miller, who served as Kent’s battalion commander in Iraq in 2006 and 2007 at the height of the violence, said in a statement:
Joe Kent has my complete and total support. I have been in combat with Joe Kent. In combat, a person’s true character is revealed. The only things that matter are honor, endurance, selfless service, and empathy. No one I know better exemplifies those virtues.
Joe served in the Army for twenty years, serving in the special forces. During his eleven combat deployments overseas, Joe saw first-hand the threats we face as a nation. After retiring from the Army, Joe worked for the Central Intelligence Agency.
Miller also noted that Kent is a Gold Star spouse who lost his wife, Navy Chief Petty Officer Shannon Kent, to terrorists in Syria in 2019:
After his wife, a fellow special operator, was killed by ISIS terrorists in Syria, Joe returned home to the Pacific Northwest to raise his sons. He saw first-hand the threats our country faces at home. While our Republic was under threat, Joe served in an advisory role to the Trump Administration on national security. I know Joe personally and can say without hesitation that we need Joe Kent in Congress.
Miller added:
Of all the candidates running in the Third Congressional District, Joe is the only qualified, prepared, and battle-tested candidate. He’s a constitutional conservative, an ally of President Trump, and will always represent those he is elected to serve. I’m humbled and honored to endorse such a great Soldier, Father, and widower who has sacrificed for our United States to a degree that leaves me breathless and feeling unworthy. I ask that you join me in supporting Joe Kent for Congress.
Kent, who announced his run after incumbent Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler (R-WA) voted to impeach Trump, said in a statement:
Throughout his military career and in the Trump Administration, Secretary Miller represented our Armed Forces with distinction and courage. I am honored to receive Secretary Miller’s endorsement and look forward to earning the support of the voters in the Third District in the same way: through hard work and dedication to our Constitutional, Republican values.
Kent said in an interview with Breitbart News on Thursday that Miller’s endorsement meant a lot, since he was a former commander as well as a well-respected leader in the Special Operations Forces community.
“I always had a lot of respect for him, and was proud to serve underneath him,” Kent said. “In retirement he went over and worked in the National Counterterrorism Center, and so those of us who had worked under him thought, ‘That’s pretty cool, he’s still in the fight after retirement.'”
“He’s not a politician. He retired as a colonel — he wasn’t a Pentagon general type of guy. And then he’s a very outside the box, non-traditional thinker.”
“When I found out he wanted to endorse me, I was pretty humbled and honored…I say all the time getting hit up by old teammates or guys I worked with and them saying they support what I’m doing is like really the best endorsement I can get, so he’s kind of like the pinnacle of that,” he said.
Kent, who is running on America First policies, favors withdrawing U.S. troops from the Middle East — something he is pessimistic President Joe Biden will do, given his record over four decades in Washington, as well as in the Obama administration.
“He famously said we’re going to be out of Afghanistan by 2014, so his track record is terrible,” Kent said, adding that Biden will likely not adhere to the Trump administration’s May 1st troop withdrawal date because it would signal that Trump was on the right track.
Kent said Biden and his foreign policy team are “deeply invested” in the idea that U.S. troops need to be in Afghanistan, as well as in Iraq and Syria. Yet, he said, at the same time, the Biden administration wants to lift economic sanctions on Iran, which would lead to its proxies having more money to target the U.S. forces that are in the Middle East.
“They’re wed to this narrative that the more grace we show Iran in the form of sanctions relief, the more cooperative they’ll become — but really, more sanctions relief equals more money in the hands of Iran’s proxies, and that’s their biggest weapon, and if we’re going to leave our troops in the battlefield in places like Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, that just gives the proxies who just got more money from the sanctions relief more ability to strike our guys.
“I just overall think the foreign policy is headed in a very dangerous direction,” he said.
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