He said that the Israelis officials were able to push a war “agenda” on Trump by bypassing American intelligence with their own “narrative” of Iran getting a bomb soon. “The Israelis came in, they moved [the] red line,” Kent said. The Israelis argued that “enrichment is going to get them a bomb in a certain amount of time” and rightwing talking heads on TV then echoed the Israeli line.
But in classified intelligence “we didn’t see anything of that,” Kent said. He found the process “infuriating.”
The Israelis had a startling degree of access to the White House. “It did seem that Benjamin Netanyahu was…. in the White House quite a bit, and then his other officials as well, [Ron] Dermer, etc,” Kent said. “When you heard what they were saying, it didn’t reflect in [U.S.] intelligence channels…. There was a clear gap between the intelligence and the information the president was given and the decision the president was making.”
Kent said that the White House overrode the “caveat” that Israeli intelligence is provided “to influence us as well as to inform us.”
The liberal press soon found a way to dismiss his claims — as antisemitic concoctions. On CNN Joel Rubin, a former Obama aide, said that people should ignore the allegation, it’s a conspiracy theory. J Street official Ilan Goldenberg described Kent’s letter as “ugly stuff that plays on the worst antisemitic tropes,” as reported by the BBC. The New York Times also buried the Israel angle, and described Kent as a conspiracist.
Third-Way Democrats published an op-ed in the WSJ saying that the Epstein class is an anti-Semitic trope.
But at this point, all they're doing is trying to maintain their base of support among right-leaning boomers, because that is the last stronghold of Israeli support, no matter how much the mainstream media tries to cover for them.