Tusli Gabbard shows ‘momentum’ on the Hill after whipping vote for DNI position
Any “uproar from the Uniparty" seen as a result of her nomination, according to Wisconsin’s U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, “simply proves she’s the perfect choice.”
Despite mostly partisan concern over an apparent closeness to ousted-Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and what critics say is a tendency to repeat Kremlin propaganda, it seems former U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard has found a warm reception on Capitol Hill.
Gabbard, a former Democratic representative from Hawaii, has been nominated to serve as Director of National Intelligence in the second Trump term. In advance of her confirmation hearings, Gabbard has been making the rounds on the Hill and meeting with the GOP senators who will take the majority in January.
According to President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team, Gabbard has managed to impress many of the Republican powerbrokers who will decide her political future.
“After a week of successful meetings with senators on Capitol Hill, Tulsi Gabbard has received an outpouring of support for her confirmation as President Donald J. Trump’s Director of National Intelligence,” Trump’s team declared over the weekend.
Gabbard’s path to confirmation seemed rocky from the start, after her selection as the next national intelligence chief brought past statements regarding Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and travel to Syria back into the spotlight.
Shortly after Russia’s invasion, Gabbard said that Putin’s aggression was the fault of NATO, and not a tragedy of the Russian President’s own making, and echoed a Russian talking point in declaring that Ukraine was home to several U.S.-funded biolabs working with lethal pathogens and therefore a legitimate target of military action.
“This war and suffering could have easily been avoided if Biden Admin/NATO had simply acknowledged Russia’s legitimate security concerns,” she said in 2022.
In 2017, when rebel forces in Syria were in the midst of what would prove to be a decade-long civil war against al-Assad’s brutal regime, she made a secretive trip to Damascus and met with the now-former Syrian President. At the time, Gabbard said U.S. officials should be able to “meet with anyone” if it helped bring about the end of the war, which would continue for another seven years.
In November, after her nomination was announced, Russian state-backed newspaper RIA Novosti described Gabbard as a “superwoman” and frequent guest on state television, writing that she is “probably an agent of the Russian special services” at least as far as Ukrainian intelligence could tell.
Her past statements and associations “call into question her ability to deliver unbiased intelligence briefings to the President, Congress, and to the entire national security apparatus,” according to dozens of former National Security Advisors who signed onto a letter urging law makers to hold her confirmation hearings behind closed doors.
Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren has questioned whether giving the nation’s secrets to her was a good idea, considering she “has been so clearly in Putin’s pocket.”
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence was created in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks with an aim toward improving coordination between the nation’s vast intelligence apparatus and providing better intelligence advice to the President.
Gabbard is a former Democratic presidential primary contender who has since joined the Republican Party. In addition to her service in Congress, she spent two decades serving in the U.S. Army National Guard and Army Reserve. According to Trump’s team, “she puts country before party and approaches every issue, domestic and foreign, based on ensuring the safety, security, and freedom of the American people.”
Any “uproar from the Uniparty” seen as a result of her nomination, according to Wisconsin’s U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, “simply proves she’s the perfect choice.”
“I look forward to voting in favor of her confirmation,” he said via social media.
U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, the Florida Republican tapped to serve as Trump’s first second-term Secretary of State, said after speaking with her that he is looking forward to working with her.
“Tulsi is going to be a great Director of National Intelligence. I know her meetings are going well and our conversation was great,” Rubio said recently.
Despite pushback from the left, according to Kentucky’s U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, he’s “enthusiastic” about Gabbard’s nomination, and that feeling seems to be “gaining momentum” among his colleagues.
“There was a rally recently with military veterans — there are a lot of senators who have come out for her, so I think they’re going to have a tougher time defeating her. They will try, and these are the people who are a part of what they call the ‘bipartisan consensus’ in Washington … a policy of eternal intervention. Those people are always going to be opposed to anyone who questions that,” he said in a recent interview.
Gabbard’s confirmation is unlikely to fail, if the past is any guide. Excepting the U.S. Senate’s rejection of former President George H.W. Bush’s nomination of Texas Sen. John Tower as Secretary of Defense in 1989, for the most part cabinet nominees have made it through the upper-chamber’s “advice and consent” process routinely.
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