Several senior national security officials from President-elect Donald Trump’s first administration have questioned his decision to nominate Tulsi Gabbard to lead the intelligence community due to her global views.
Gabbard, a Hawaii native and U.S. Army veteran who previously served in the House of Representatives as a Democrat, has no previous experience in the intelligence community. She did, however, endorse Trump and campaign for him in the lead-up to the election. The former president has emphasized the significance of loyalty in his Cabinet selections.
Trump’s selection of Gabbard to be the next director of national intelligence has drawn new scrutiny on her remarks about foreign conflicts and U.S. adversaries, in particular, her defense of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad and Russian leader Vladimir Putin.
“The worst and most dangerous nominee at this point is Tulsi Gabbard for DNI, and I think that her views are not simply extreme; they’re really very dangerous and would have significant negative effect on confident other countries have in us to share intelligence with us and work cooperatively on a range of things,” John Bolton told the Washington Examiner.
Bolton served as Trump’s third national security adviser during his first administration, while the man he replaced, H.R. McMaster, also questioned Gabbard’s selection.
Gabbard has a “fundamental misunderstanding” about what motivates Putin, H.R. McMaster, Trump’s former national security adviser, said on CBS’s Face the Nation last weekend, adding more broadly that he “can’t understand” the Republicans who “tend to parrot Vladimir Putin’s talking points.”
Nikki Haley, who served as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations during the first Trump administration, also recently criticized the president-elect’s choice.
“She went to Syria in 2017 for a photo op with Bashar al-Assad while he was massacring his own people. She said she was skeptical that he was behind the chemical weapons attacks,” Haley said on her podcast earlier this month. “After Russia invaded Ukraine, Tulsi Gabbard literally blamed NATO, our Western alliance that’s responsible for countering Russia. She blamed NATO for the attack on Ukraine, and the Russians and the Chinese echoed her talking points and her interviews on Russian and Chinese television.”
“She’s defended Russia, she’s defended Syria, she’s defended Iran, and she’s defended China. No, she has not denounced any of these views,” she added. “None of them. She hasn’t taken one of them back. DNI, Department of National Intelligence. This is not a place for a Russian, Iranian, Syrian, Chinese sympathizer. DNI has to analyze real threats.”
Former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper also accused her of having “parroted talking points that seem to come from the Kremlin.”
“So, again, members are going to have a lot of questions about her views about how she regards U.S. intelligence, what her vision is for the intelligence community. And those are going to be all very important questions,” he added. “And she’s going to have to pass that test and get the support of at least a majority.”
The GOP will have a slim majority in the Senate, though even some Republicans have questioned her selection to lead the intelligence community, which could threaten her nomination. One of Trump’s Cabinet picks, former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), whom Trump tapped to lead the Department of Justice, withdrew from the nomination.
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Trump’s pick of Gaetz and Gabbard, among others, represent his desire to install loyalists to key positions around him, whereas his first administration included officials who, at times, disagreed with his policy positions. Trump also picked former Fox News host Pete Hegseth to lead the Department of Defense despite no experience in senior defense positions, though, he spent two decades in the military.