The ink that tells the story of Trump’s second term
Kent’s tattoo is all the more curious considering his background. A former member of the Army Special Forces who twice ran for Congress in Washington State, he has had repeated interactions with far-right extremists. During his unsuccessful 2022 congressional bid, Kent consulted with Nick Fuentes, the young white supremacist, and hired a campaign adviser who was a member of the Proud Boys, a violent far-right group. (Kent ultimately disavowed Fuentes, and his campaign said that the Proud Boys member, Graham Jorgensen, was a low-level worker). The tattoo “could mean that he’s glorifying the Nazis. Or it could have a different context,” says Heidi Beirich, a co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, an organization that tracks right-wing extremism. Despite what the word evokes in history, panzer references are not common on the far right, Beirich told me. “I don’t think I’ve run across a panzer.”
Other discernible possibilities make less sense. Right-wing accounts on X have spread the claim that Kent has jäger—German for “hunter”—tattooed on his other arm. The two tattoos together would add up to “tank hunter.” The accounts claim that heavy-anti-armor-weapons crewman was one of Kent’s jobs in the Army. It’s oddly specific enough to sound plausible, except that I couldn’t find any evidence that Kent was part of an anti-tank unit—let alone one that would be targeting German tanks—or that he even has a jäger tattoo on his other arm. (Let me point out that Kent could resolve all of this by simply rolling up a sleeve.) There aren’t many other explanations. The United States Army has an installation on a base outside Stuttgart, Germany, called Panzer Kaserne, but there’s no information to suggest that Kent was ever deployed there.
