Who is Tulsi Gabbard, Trump's nominee for national intelligence, and why has she raised the alarm around the world?!
As Donald Trump's second presidency begins, many of his cabinet appointees are drawing ire from his political opponents. Pete Hegseth, now confirmed as defense secretary, still faces concerns about his inexperience, as well as further allegations of spousal abuse. Robert F Kennedy Jr, earmarked for the Department of Health and Human Services, is a well-known anti-vaccine activist and conspiracy theorist.
Trump’s nominee for FBI director, Kash Patel, has repeatedly suggested using federal law enforcement to go after Trump’s enemies. But among them all, one name has raised alarm not just domestically but across the Western world: Trump’s nominee for director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard. A former congresswoman from Hawaii, Gabbard identified as a progressive Democrat for many years and even ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2019-2020.
However, since failing in that race, she has gravitated towards the hard right of the American political spectrum, appearing frequently on the pro-Trump network Fox News and becoming one of Trump's leading supporters on the 2024 campaign trail.
The alarm with Gabbard is not about Trump . Her past sympathy for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and defense of Vladimir Putin's foreign policy have turned the national security community against her to the point where nearly 100 former officials jointly signed an open letter warning about her "ability to provide impartial intelligence briefings to the president, Congress, and the entire national security apparatus."
“The Senate should carefully evaluate whether... Gabbard is equipped to effectively oversee an organizational structure as unique and large as the National Intelligence Program and also the effect of her holding this position on the willingness of our closest allies to share intelligence with the United States,” the letter said.
Gabbard’s pro-Russian leanings are particularly striking. She has long promoted Russian-sympathetic and anti-Western views on Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, often quoted by Russian state TV, which sometimes describes her as “our friend Tulsi.” So how did Gabbard get to this point, and what are the chances that despite her history, she could soon be appointed as one of America’s top intelligence officials?
Having previously served in the US military, Gabbard has long positioned herself as an anti-war crusader and a staunch critic of US foreign policy. As part of that identity, she has sometimes sided with governments that most in her former party would have considered beyond the pale.
Most famously, she was perhaps the most prominent American politician to show solidarity with al-Assad as his brutal crackdown on anti-regime protests escalated into a catastrophic civil war, marked by allegations of crimes against humanity committed by his regime with the support of Russian forces.
Gabbard has repeatedly expressed doubts about the well-documented evidence of these crimes. In one infamous incident during a congressional visit to Syria in 2015, she suggested to victims of an airstrike that it might not have been launched by the Syrian military but by the so-called Islamic State group, which has never had an air force.
She also made a single, illegal visit to al-Assad in January 2017, several years into the conflict and long after his forces had attacked Syrian civilians with chemical weapons incidents thoroughly investigated and substantiated by both the U.S. and the U.N. At the time, Gabbard said she met with him in the interest of ending the war.
"When the opportunity arose to meet with (al-Assad), I did so because I felt it was important that if we declare that we truly care about the Syrian people, about their suffering, then we should be able to meet with whoever we need if there is a possibility of achieving peace ," she said.
Gabbard was not a senior member of Congress at the time and did not hold a diplomatic office. However, she introduced legislation to end U.S. support for certain Syrian rebel groups, in what she called “an end to our war to overthrow the Syrian government.”
The congresswoman’s one-person mission to Damascus and her other statements about the conflict were so different from those in Washington that in 2018, there were serious concerns that she might leak closed-door testimony given to the House Foreign Affairs Committee by Syrian dissidents. The conference continued with Gabbard on the panel, but with the Syrian witness disguised.
Sympathy for the Kremlin
Speaking after her visit in 2017 and after the first Trump administration had confirmed the US assessment that al-Assad had used banned chemical weapons in a recent attack, Gabbard said she was " skeptical" of the claims. "There are a number of theories about what exactly happened that day," she said. " Standing here pointing fingers is not going to bring peace to the Syrian people. It's not going to bring an end to this war."
By framing the war in the terms she did, Gabbard moved into the same territory as a number of prominent Western conspiracy theorists, spread across the far left and far right of the political spectrum, who sought to portray the conflict as the result of a brazen Western-led regime change operation. Many of them cast doubt on the motives and identities of the Syrian volunteer medics, claimed that the al-Assad government’s infamous chemical attacks were staged, and vigorously defended Russia’s often brutal involvement in the conflict.
While her views on Syria drew criticism for their perceived moral relativism when it came to al-Assad's actions, her increasingly bold defense of Russia's involvement and remarks about Washington's policy toward the Kremlin more generally quickly gave Gabbard a reputation as an unwise influence on the left.
A further shift to the right
After resigning from the House of Representatives and completing her final term in January 2021, Gabbard began her post-congress career with increasingly inflammatory comments about her former colleagues. Shortly after the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, she likened Democratic members of Congress to “domestic terrorists,” accusing them of “trying to undermine our constitutionally protected rights and turn our country into a police state with KGB-style ‘surveillance.’” And calling them “far more powerful, and therefore dangerous, than the mob that stormed the Capitol.”
With the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in early 2022, Gabbard was among those arguing that the conflict was actually the fault of the West. “ This war and suffering could have been easily avoided if the Biden/NATO admin had simply acknowledged Russia’s legitimate security concerns about Ukraine joining NATO, which would have meant US/NATO forces right on Russia’s border ,” she tweeted when the invasion began.
“NATO troops on Ukrainian soil” was one of the grounds the Kremlin used to justify its all-out war against its western neighbor, now approaching its third year. Moscow has failed to provide any evidence to support these claims since then.
Gabbard’s full-blown political transition only accelerated as the Biden administration wore on. With increasingly frequent appearances on Fox News and star turns at the ultra-conservative CPAC conference, she steadily attracted more support from the anti-Biden right while continuing to advocate for U.S. withdrawal from overseas conflicts, including easing sanctions on Russia.
In late 2022, Gabbard left the Democratic Party altogether. In a statement posted to X, she made it clear that what turned her off about the Democrats was no longer just the party’s stance on international affairs, but its position on what the right sees as a “culture war.” “I can no longer stand in today’s Democratic Party, which is under the complete control of an elite cabal of warmongers fueled by cowardly wake-up calls who divide us by racializing every issue and fueling anti-white racism,” she wrote.
By the time Trump’s reelection campaign reached its final stages in the summer of 2024, Gabbard was one of his top advocates, helping him prepare for his debate with Vice President Kamala Harris and sometimes addressing rallies on his own. And not long after Trump was reelected, he announced that he would nominate Gabbard to the top intelligence role she now stands on the verge of taking.
While Republicans control the Senate and publicly appear fully behind Trump’s agenda, Gabbard’s confirmation is by no means guaranteed, especially with the party’s majority in the chamber so weak. For Europe, the key question is whether Gabbard’s worldviews could negatively impact the continent’s already precarious security situation, further exacerbated by the ongoing war.
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