The Tulsi Problem

Will Republicans really confirm a defender of despots to head up our national intelligence program?

Tulsi Gabbard attends a live taping of Hannity at Fox News Channel Studios. Photo by Steven Ferdman/Getty Images.

Tulsi Gabbard is a Russian asset. Either that, or she’s compromised. At best, she’s a useful shill for the Kremlin. She’s even been called “Russia’s girlfriend” by its own propagandists. And she is a big vector for disinformation, particularly around Ukraine and other countries Putin has his sights on.

Those countries include Syria, where Russia has long backed the murderous regime of Bashar al-Assad against rebel forces in a war that has killed half a million people and displaced 12 million more both inside and outside the country. Gabbard infamously visited Assad on her own in 2015, after which she became a chief apologist for his regime, to the horror of her fellow Democrats at the time.

Now Assad has fled, apparently to Moscow, and we may still learn what caused Gabbard to come to Assad’s defense at a time when he was gassing his own citizens. But time is running out. In a true “we’re in the upside down” moment, Donald Trump has nominated Gabbard to the position of Director of National Intelligence, an office that oversees no fewer than 18 different U.S. intelligence agencies.

In that position, Gabbard would oversee the National Intelligence Program, which funds intelligence activities in several federal departments, and the Central Intelligence Agency. She would also advise Trump, the National Security Council, and the Homeland Security Council on matters of national security. In order to do so, she would necessarily have access to all of our nation’s top secrets—a terrifying proposition if Gabbard is actually in the tank for Russia.

There is ample reason to suspect that Gabbard has at a minimum been brainwashed into becoming a reliable Putin mouthpiece. And her bizarre and as yet unexplained affinity for Assad is now fully in the spotlight too, given that regime’s total collapse. All of her favorite leaders are now gathered in Moscow, which raises a crucial question: What the hell are we doing considering her for the top intelligence post?

Look what you made Vlad do!

It isn’t clear when exactly Gabbard made the jump from U.S. isolationist to Putin apologist. But few can forget her public position, tweeted out to the world when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.

The “war and suffering” could have been avoided, Gabbard claimed, if the Biden administration and its allies had acknowledged “Russia’s legitimate security concerns regarding Ukraine’s becoming a member of NATO,” which she said would “mean US/NATO forces right on Russia’s border”:

This statement essentially amplified a major pretext by Putin for his invasion, i.e., that it was necessary to stop NATO expansion. (Ironically, after the invasion, Finland, which shares a 1,340 km border with Russia, became a member of NATO.)

Parroting dangerous bioweapons claims

Gabbard followed this up with a call for a cease-fire, recording a video in which she claimed there were 25 or more U.S.-funded “biolabs in Ukraine which if breached would release and spread deadly pathogens.” U.S. officials had vehemently denied these allegations when they were made days earlier by Russian officials, but Gabbard again sided with Russia.

Fact-checkers debunked the claims of “biolabs” in Ukraine as initially spread by anonymous social media accounts. But after they emerged, the claims went viral. Per reporting by the Washington Post, the false claims eventually reached Tucker Carlson’s show on the Fox Network and were amplified by the Russian government. (Carlson is another apologist for Putin, and portions of his show were aired earlier this year on Russian state television.)

The question over the alleged biolabs was no small matter, and Gabbard’s amplification of the disinformation was alarming to many. As the Associated Press reported,

Moscow claimed Ukraine was using the labs to create deadly bioweapons similar to COVID-19 that could be used against Russia, and that Russian President Vladimir Putin had no choice but to invade neighboring Ukraine to protect his country.

In fact, the labs are public and part of an international effort to control outbreaks and stop bioweapons.

“Regime change” in Russia

In March 2022, during the second month of the Russian invasion of its sovereign neighbor, Gabbard went on Carlson’s show on Fox and claimed that President Biden sought no less than regime change in Moscow, meaning toppling Putin. President Biden had made a comment (really, one of his famous gaffes) that Putin “cannot stay in power,” a statement the White House quickly walked back. It clarified that that the U.S. was not actually calling for regime change, but that the Russian leader “cannot be allowed to exercise power over his neighbors or the region.”

But Gabbard seized upon the statement to argue that regime change was really what the U.S. sought in Russia. She asserted that the economic pressures and sanctions by the U.S. were intended to starve the Russian people and cause them to overthrow the Russian government from within, rather than simply force Russia to abandon its invasion and withdraw its forces from its neighbor’s territory.

Russia’s state media very much appreciated these wild claims. Vladimir Solovyov, who hosts the popular news show Vecher (meaning “Evening”) on Russia's Channel One played the clip to his audience, translating it for them. In it he refers to Gabbard as “Russia’s girlfriend,” and toward the end, he was asked by another panelist if Gabbard was some kind of agent for Putin. Solovyov agreed, eliciting bemused reactions from his guests.

Taking the side of a mass murderer

Gabbard’s preference for our enemies isn’t limited to Russia. She has frequently defended Bashar al-Assad in Syria. And it takes a unique kind of person to do so.

In her first visit to Syria, which took place in June 2015, Gabbard went on her own as a Congresswoman representing the state of Hawaii. She met with burn victims who had suffered head-to-toe injuries from air strikes. But rather than condemn Assad, according to her translator, Gabbard sought to persuade the victims that their injuries had not come from government air strikes but from the resistance. This was patently absurd because the rebels had no air power. Only the government did. So why was she so keen to argue this, even to burn victims?

In September of 2015, Putin entered the conflict on the side of Assad. He sent mercenaries but also increased the regime’s ability to perform air strikes, which Assad used to bomb hospitals and other civilian structures. This turned the tide in favor of Assad for a prolonged period.

That seemed to suit Gabbard just fine. In Congress, she stepped up her defense of Assad. As historian Timothy Snyder notes,

In Washington, in speeches in Congress, Gabbard showed an uncanny ability to turn almost any issue into a justification for defending the Assad regime. In 2016, concern for Christians in Syria was a pretext to defend the Assad regime. In 2017, she presented worries about terrorism as a reason to defend […] the Assad regime. In 2018, the anniversary of 9/11 was her prompt for defending the Assad regime. In 2019, she found her way from the genocide of Armenians a century earlier to the need to defend the Assad regime. She even worked hard to segue from the lack of affordable housing in Hawai'i to the need to defend the Assad regime.

Denying the use of chemical weapons

The most egregious instance of siding with the bad guys occurred when Gabbard visited Syria and met privately with Assad in January 2017. After that meeting, she began to openly deny that he had deployed chemical weapons against his own people.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson made the U.S. position clear at the time. “We have a very high level of confidence that the attacks were carried out by aircraft under the direction of the Bashar al-Assad regime.” Then-President Trump also stated, “There can be no dispute that Syria used banned chemical weapons.”

But Gabbard insisted, with no basis whatsoever, that she was “skeptical.” Wolf Blitzer of CNN asked Gabbard why she didn’t believe the President, the Secretary of State, and the Pentagon, all of which said Assad’s regime was responsible. Gabbard then pulled a whataboutism, raising the previous invasion of Iraq and the intelligence suggesting Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, which turned out to be false. “So, yes, I’m skeptical,” she said.

Gabbard then let fly one of her favorite topics: regime change. “Why should we just blindly follow this escalation of a counterproductive regime-change war?”

No one trusts Tulsi

Gabbard’s inexplicable defense of Assad reached such levels that many in Congress worried she would actively compromise the identity of opponents of his regime who came before the members to testify.

Gabbard served on the Foreign Affairs Committee, and in the Spring of 2018 a Syrian defector, who had risked everything to expose atrocities being committed by the Assad regime, was set to testify before that committee behind closed doors. Aides to House members were so concerned Gabbard might actually leak information about the defector, who had hidden his identity out of fear of reprisals, that they instructed those accompanying the witness, known only as “Caesar,” to be certain his face was covered before Gabbard entered the room.

This wasn’t just a partisan concern. “It was Democratic and Republican staffers on the committee coordinating with me to figure out how do we make sure that Tulsi doesn’t take a photograph of Caesar, or learn his real name, or record his voice,” said the executive director of the group that had helped organize the appearance.

One can easily also imagine that agents in the field currently surveilling the Russians, Iranians, and Chinese might similarly wonder if their identities could be compromised once Gabbard has access to every level of classified information.

The stakes are literally life and death for such personnel.

Is Gabbard a Russian asset?

Many have openly speculated about exactly why Gabbard has been so keen to parrot Russian propaganda and defend a brutal dictator like Assad. And indeed, prominent leaders from both sides of the aisle have accused Gabbard of being everything from a Russian asset to an apologist for our sworn enemies.

Hillary Clinton appeared on a podcast in 2019 stating she believed Trump and the GOP were “grooming” another spoiler third-party candidate who would be helpful to Russia. “She’s the favorite of the Russians,” Clinton mused. “They have a bunch of sites and bots and other ways of supporting her so far and that’s assuming Jill Stein will give it up because she’s also a Russian asset.” Asked later whether Clinton was referring to Gabbard, her spokesperson said, “If the nesting doll fits.” (Gabbard exploded in anger over the claim and even sued Clinton for $50 million claiming defamation, but later dropped the suit.)

On the other side, former UN Ambassador and Governor of South Carolina Nikki Haley recently laid into Gabbard on her podcast. After walking through Gabbard’s worrisome record of siding with our enemies, and speaking specifically about the position of Director of National Intelligence, Haley warned, “This is not the place for a Russian, Iranian, Syrian and Chinese sympathizer. DNI has to analyze real threats. Are we comfortable with someone like that at the top of our national intelligence agencies?”

Either way, it’s very bad

Whether Gabbard is actively working on behalf of Putin and Assad, or if she is merely an unwitting and foolish consumer and regurgitator of Kremlin talking points, the result is much the same. Having Gabbard in the role of DNI so deeply compromises it that our allies won’t be able to trust that we can keep their secrets. That means a breakdown of shared intelligence, putting U.S. interests and personnel around the world at greater risk.

As Timothy Snyder explained,

One feature of disinformation is that it is factually incorrect: and so the very least (or most?) that can be said about Gabbard is that she [is] consistently wrong on matters of the greatest moral and political significance. But the other element of disinformation is that it is consciously and maliciously designed to confuse. These memes (biolabs!) are tested and perfected before they are released. Disinformation is the opposite of an innocent mistake: it is concocted to make rational reflection and sensible policy difficult.

Snyder reminds us that disinformation is an actual weapon used by one regime to damage another from within. But if it spreads within a nation’s intelligence services, it could do immeasurable damage.

That is part of what Gabbard offers America’s enemies, and it is bad enough, because it means that systems meant to protect Americans instead put them in danger. It goes without saying that American allies would be unable to cooperate with the United States, and that patriotic intelligence officers would resign in droves. Informers around the world would cease their work. The US government would be cut off from the world.

But will she be confirmed?

Republicans in the Senate have sent decidedly mixed signals about whether they support Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence. Many are waiting to see what if anything results from the fall of the Assad regime. But reporting suggests that most are willing to give her a pass on the “Assad thing” and that, since the president sets foreign policy, most will fall in line behind Trump’s pick.

“Foreign policy, based on what I’ve seen so far, is going to be set by one person, President Trump. And I don’t think his nominees for any position are going to have the latitude that they think they might have,” remarked Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA). “I don’t know the context in which she said these things. I mean, foreign policy is complex and it’s nuanced.”

There are some senators, however, who worry her pro-Putin statements and mistrust of U.S. support of Ukraine could carry significant negative consequences for our foreign policy. Die-hard supporters of Ukraine, such as Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), may have trouble supporting a pick who not only is so publicly opposed to the war but willing to amplify Russian propaganda about it.

Whether there are at least four principled GOP senators willing not only to recognize the danger Gabbard poses to our intelligence services but to risk the wrath of Trump and his MAGA followers by opposing Gabbard’s nomination remains to be seen.

Until then, Putin and Assad are probably having a good laugh at our expense over in Moscow.