Tulsi Gabbard is a Threat to National Security
Through her contrarian connections and apologia for Russia and Assad, Tulsi Gabbard has shown she is unfit to be Director of National Intelligence.

The last several days have been a frustrating mess of unqualified nominees for the Trump administration. Whether it’s Pete Hegseth, Matt Gaetz, or Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the overwhelming theme is just how unqualified, unethical, and dangerous these figures are. However, none of these figures pose a threat to national security, like Donald Trump’s nominee for Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard.
Who is Tulsi Gabbard?
Tulsi Gabbard is the former Congresswoman from Hawaii’s 2nd district. She was elected in 2012 and was the first Hindu elected to Congress. An Iraq war veteran and, at the time of her election, a remarkably popular representative, Gabbard had the story to be a strong, long-term figure within the Democratic Party and progressive politics. Her election in 2012 and her subsequent reelections all sent the message of a strong, religiously tolerant block within the Democratic Party and America at large.
However, her relationship with the party was fraught at times. In 2016, she endorsed Bernie Sanders (I-VA) for President and resigned as DNC Vice Chair. In a 2019 podcast, former Secretary of State and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton indirectly accused Gabard of being groomed by the Russians to run as a third-party candidate in 2020 and serve their interests. Gabbard denied the allegation and subsequently ran an unsuccessful campaign for president in the Democratic primary before dropping out to endorse then-candidate Joe Biden. Before that, she was criticized for her continued presence in the race, in part because she failed to gain any serious support in the polls and the mix of white nationalist and Russian boosting she received. By the end of the primary, she won only two delegates.
While Gabbard denounced the white nationalist support she received, the boost from Russian state media and more right-wing figures such as Tucker Carlson, who has since promoted Russian propaganda, raised some eyebrows among Democrats.
Now that she is positioned to hold American secrets, it is increasingly clear that they were right to worry, as she not only switched parties but also because of a continued willingness to defend the indefensible.
The Apologia for Russia and Asaad
Up to this point, I have been discussing Gabbard’s career in the context of her electoral politics, but when it comes to her foreign policy, Gabbard has a serious problem. Namely, she consistently tends to defend and downplay the cruelty of Vladimir Putin and the now-deposed Syrian dictator Bashar Al-Assad.
When Assad gassed his citizens, the world was alight with shock at the cruelty of the dictator’s act. However, Gabbard has a history of downplaying the attacks. In a 2015 trip to the country, she questioned whether or not ISIS carried out the attack. An observer later reminded her that the gas was dropped using planes, something ISIS doesn’t have. In a secret 2017 trip to Syria, Gabbard met with a cleric who threatened to unleash suicide bombers on America if Washington intervened in Syria. In her hearing, she claimed that she wasn’t aware of the statements by said cleric, but records uncovered by The Washington Post show that she was warned about the cleric after she returned from the trip.
As the Post’s Jon Swaine and Ellen Nakashima write:
When asked by Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-New Mexico) whether she was aware of the threat made by Ahmad Badreddin Hassoun, who was then grand mufti of Syria, Gabbard — President Donald Trump’s nominee for director of national intelligence — answered: “I was not and had not heard that until today.”
But documents reviewed by The Washington Post indicate that Gabbard was aware of Hassoun’s threats soon after she returned from her controversial visit to the country in January 2017.
The documents, which appear within a larger trove from Gabbard’s former congressional office, show that Hassoun’s comments on suicide bombers were flagged as problematic by one of her aides in early 2017 and were identified in an external vetting process as the likeliest source of negative publicity about the trip.
A Google account in Gabbard’s name left comments in an electronic draft of potential answers her office was preparing to counter anticipated media questions about the cleric.”
As the Post’s reporting shows, she was not only aware of the cleric’s comments and history of aggression against the United States but also went out of her way with her staff to downplay the severity of the meeting. Her saying that she wasn’t aware of the cleric’s statement is, at the very least, dishonest and, at the worst, perjury.
After her trip, Gabbard continued to question the attack and its perpetrators. To date, there is no credible evidence that the attack was a false flag or that Assad wasn’t the perpetrator of said attack. It wouldn’t be her first time engaging in conspiracy theories to defend dictators.
When Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine in 2022, Gabbard posted a defense of the Russian invasion, arguing that the fault lay with NATO and the United States, saying: “This war and suffering could have easily been avoided if Biden Admin/NATO had simply acknowledged Russia’s legitimate security concerns…” She also spread the Russian propaganda line that the United States was building secret biological labs in Ukraine, a lie that the Chinese government has happily spread. The labs in question were built with full public knowledge to protect people and prevent the spread of deadly pathogens. Nowhere in her original statements, nor in any of her supposed clarifications, did she point out that Russia was spreading lies about supposed weapons being built to target Russian citizens. Nor did she ever put pressure on the Russians, who, mind you, were invading Ukraine at that very moment, to end their invasion to avoid damaging these labs. Instead, she equivocated between the United States, Ukraine, Russia, and NATO. If she were seriously concerned with the well-being of these labs, the only appropriate response would be to call on the Russian government to leave the sovereign territory of Ukraine.
Conclusion
Tulsi Gabbard is a tiptoeing contrarian, and her past statements on foreign policy disgrace her and disqualify her for public office. She can’t be trusted to uphold even an iota of the responsibility necessary to command all of the United States' intelligence agencies. From her continuous defense of Russia and its wars of aggression to outright denial of atrocities, Tulsi Gabbard is not only unfit but is morally culpable for downplaying the suffering of her fellow human beings. Putting her in such an important position will only put American secrets at risk and weaken our presence on the world stage.