Tulsi Gabbard’s nomination is a national security risk

President-elect Donald Trump has nominated former representative Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence was created after 9/11 to address what US policymakers believed was a lack of coordination between the various national intelligence agencies, and the DNI sits at the apex of all US intelligence agencies, including the CIA.

Gabbard is stunningly unqualified for almost any cabinet post (like some of Trump’s other picks), but especially for ODNI. She has no qualifications as an intelligence professional—literally none. (She is a reserve lieutenant colonel who previously served in the Hawaii Army National Guard, with assignments in medical, police and civil affairs support positions. She has won some local elections and also represented Hawaii in Congress.) She has no significant experience leading or managing much of anything.

But leave it at that for now that she is clearly unprepared to run any kind of agency. Americans usually accept that presidents reward loyalists with jobs, and Trump has the right to hide Gabbard in some office in the bureaucracy if he feels he owes her. It is not a pretty tradition, but it is not without precedent either.

However, making Tulsi Gabbard DNI is not simply giving a bouquet to a political gadfly. Her appointment would be a threat to the security of the United States.

Gabbard ran for president as a Democrat in 2020, trying to position herself as a peace candidate. But she is no peacemaker: She has been an apologist for both the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad and Russia’s Vladimir Putin. Her politics, otherwise disjointed, tend to be sympathetic to these two strongmen, painting America as the problem and the dictators as misguided. Hawaii voters have long been confused moreover, she has positioned herself politically. But Gabbard is a classic case of “horseshoe” politics: Her views can seem both extreme left and extreme right, which is probably why people like Tucker Carlson — a conservative turned … whatever pro -Russian right-wingers are now called -have liked the former Democrat (who used to be a Republican and is now a member of the GOP again).

In early 2017, while still a member of Congress, Gabbard met with Assad and said that peace in Syria was only possible if the international community would have a conversation with him. “Let the Syrian people decide their own future, not the United States, not a foreign country,” Gabbard saidafter chatting with a man who had prevented the Syrian people from determining their own future by using chemical weapons on them. Two years later, she added that Assad was “not the enemy of the United States because Syria does not pose a direct threat to the United States” and that her critics were merely “warmongers.”

Gabbard’s shilling for Assad is a mystery, but she is even more dedicated to carrying Putin’s water. Tom Rogan, a conservative writer and hardly a liberal hand-wringer, summarized her record succinctly i Washington examiner today:

She has blamed NATO and the US for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (again, to the celebration of both Russian and Chinese state media), has repeated Russian propaganda claims that the US has set up secret bioweapons labs in that country, and has argued that the US does not Russia is fully responsible for Putin’s nuclear weapons.

When she appeared on Sean Hannity’s show in 2022, even Hannity blanched on Gabbard floating off in a haze of Kremlin talking points and cheerleading for Russia. When Hannity tries to shepherd you back toward the airlock before your oxygen runs out, you’ve gone pretty far out there.

Someone with Gabbard’s views should not be allowed anywhere near the crown jewels of US intelligence. I have no idea why Trump nominated Gabbard; she has been a supporter, but she has not been central to his campaign, and he owes her very little. For someone as hideously transactional as Trump, it’s not a deal that makes much sense. It is possible that Trump hate the intelligence community—which he blames for many of his initial problems—so much so that Gabbard is his revenge. Or maybe he just likes the way she handles herself television.

But Trump may also be involved in a ploy to bring in someone else. He may suspect that Gabbard cannot be confirmed by the Senate. Once she’s beaten, he could then slide in with an even shakier contender and claim he has no choice but to use a break deal as a backstop. (Hard to imagine who could be worse as a DNI than Gabbard, but keep in mind that Trump has at various times promised to bring retired General Mike Flynn back into government. Flynn is a decorated veteran who was fired from the Trump White House in a scandal about lying to the FBI he is now a conspirator there is fully on board with Trump’s desire for revenge on his enemies.

Gabbard has every right to his personal views, however inscrutable they may be. As a private citizen, she can apologize for Assad and Putin to her heart’s content. But as a security risk, Gabbard is a walking Christmas tree of warning lights. If she is nominated to be America’s top intelligence officer, that’s everyone’s business.

Last spring, I described how US government employees with clearances are trained each year to spot “insider threats,” people who, for various reasons, might compromise classified information. Trump’s open and ongoing devotion to Putin and other dictators, I said, would be a matter of concern to any security organization. Gabbard’s behavior and her admiration for dictators is no less of a concern – especially since she would be at the top of the entire US intelligence community.

Presidents should have respect for staffing their cabinet. But this nomination should be one of the handful of Trump appointments where soon-to-be Majority Leader John Thune and his Republican colleagues draw a hard line and say no — at least if they still care at all about exercising the Senate’s constitutional duty as advice and consent.

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