President-elect Donald Trump nominated Tulsi Gabbard to be the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) in his second cabinet on Wednesday, prompting anger and concern from many within the US political class.
While many of Trump’s cabinet picks have been surprising, appointing Gabbard to the role of DNI is particularly contentious, given she is a self-described “isolationist”.
However, it is the former Democratic Congresswoman’s record of support for the regimes of Bashar al-Assad and Vladimir Putin that should be cause for most concern.
Reacting to the news of Gabbard’s appointment on social media site X, US Representative and former CIA case officer Abigail Spanberger said she was “appalled” at her nomination.
"As a former CIA case officer, I saw the men and women of the U.S. intelligence community put their lives on the line every day for this country — and I am appalled at the nomination of Tulsi Gabbard to lead DNI," Spanberger wrote.
"Not only is she ill-prepared and unqualified, but she traffics in conspiracy theories and cozies up to dictators like Bashar Al-Assad and Vladimir Putin," she added.
Of all Trump’s cabinet picks, Gabbard is perhaps the most controversial due to the nature of the role of DNI, which is the head of the US’s entire intelligence community, and her recent history of supporting and amplifying the propaganda of Assad and Putin.
Assad’s guest
In January 2017, Tulsi Gabbard, then a Democratic representative for Hawaii's 2nd District, travelled to Syria on a "fact-finding mission" that ended up sparking more questions than it resolved.
According to the Honolulu Civil Beat, which cited travel forms, as reported by The Washington Post, Gabbard met with Assad twice during her time in Syria. Her first meeting with Assad lasted an hour and a half shortly after she arrived in Damascus, followed by a second 30-minute meeting two days later.
The trip caused considerable controversy at the time, due to the fact that Assad was carrying out war crimes against his own people, including the indiscriminate bombing of civilians, starvation sieges and locking up opponents in death camps, which led to the US’s Caesar Act and a raft of new sanctions.
Gabbard would later go on to defend her actions as mere diplomacy, likening it to Trump’s meeting with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.
However, Gabbard then began espousing what many would consider to be pro-Assad talking points, such as refusing to acknowledge Assad’s crimes and claiming all of the Syrian opposition were akin to Al-Qaeda and ISIS.
She refused to support even rhetorical House condemnations of Assad, such as in 2016, and began to criticise the Obama administration for its extremely limited support for some Syrian opposition groups, including giving credence to the conspiracy theories that Obama "funded al-Qaeda" and “created ISIS”.
When asked by MSNBC during her 2020 Democratic presidential nominee run if she considered Assad to be an enemy of the US, Gabbard said the Syrian tyrant was “not the enemy of the United States because Syria does not pose a direct threat to the United States.”
Putin propaganda
Gabbard has also been accused of parroting and amplifying Russian propaganda on Ukraine.
When Russia invaded Ukraine, Gabbard accused NATO and the US of being responsible, while repeating provenly false conspiracy theories about the US government operating secret bioweapons labs in Ukraine. Gabbard’s repetition of Putin’s propaganda has been widely celebrated by Russian state media.
Gabbard is also vocally opposed to US military support for Ukraine.
Many fear that Trump appointing Gabbard to DNI could be part of a wider attempt by his new government to disengage from Ukraine and allow Russia to win – or end the war on favourable terms for Russia, while they also see her closeness to Russia as a potential national security threat.
A friend of Israel
Despite Gabbard attempting to portray herself as an "anti-war" figure, she has been fully supportive of Israeli militarism, including its current wars on Gaza and Lebanon.
Gabbard is often seen by Trump's MAGA base as "anti-establishment", yet her support for Israel aligns closely with establishment Democrats and Republicans.
In recent months, Gabbard has taken aim at pro-Palestine protesters in the US, calling them "puppets" of a "radical Islamist organisation", referring to Hamas.
Gabbard also opposes a ceasefire, believing Israel should be allowed to wage war on Gaza for as long as it wants and without any limitations, saying that "as long as Hamas is in power, the people of Israel will not be secure and cannot live in peace."