President-elect Donald Trump picked former Hawaii legislator Tulsi Gabbard to lead the US national intelligence, suggesting another choice acknowledging loyalty over conventional competence.
In 2022, the 43-year-old Democratic House member Gabbard left the party after making a failed run for the 2020 presidential primary. She has been accused of repeating Russian propaganda since she embraced Trump in August and frequently campaigned alongside him this fall.
“I know Tulsi will bring the fearless spirit that has defined her illustrious career to our Intelligence Community,” Trump declared in his statement.
Following Trump’s announcement, Florida Democratic Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz called Gabbard “likely a Russian asset” in an interview with MSNBC.
“She is considered, by most assessments, essentially a Russian asset and would be the most dangerous,” Schultz said.
She further recalled Gabbard’s meeting with Bashar al-Assad, the President of Syria, in 2017, who has been charged with deploying chemical weapons against his own countrymen. “Tulsi Gabbard is someone who has met with war criminals, violated the Department of State’s guidance, and secretly went to Syria to meet with Assad, who gassed and attacked his own people with chemical weapons,” Schultz stated.
On social media, Wasserman’s remarks received a lot of criticism, with one X user calling all Democrats in Congress an “Ukrainian asset.”
Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, also dismissed Wasserman’s assertion, stating, “Debbie thinks that talking fast is the same as thinking intelligently; she is actually not smart.”
Meanwhile, Russia media too came out in Gabbard’s support, stressing that Washington-Moscow’s relations will improve with her appointment.
However, Trump’s decision, according to the President-elect’s detractors, was a risky one that would jeopardize national security and showed respect to Putin’s ideology.
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Here’s why Russia media hailing Tulsi Gabbard’s nomination
When Russia President Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Gabbard accused NATO and the US of inciting the war by disregarding Russia’s legitimate security concerns.
She has since implied that the US was responsible for the September 2022 bombing of the Nord Stream gas pipeline connecting Russia and Germany. She even accused the Biden administration of secretly collaborating with Ukraine on dangerous biological pathogens.
While Gabbard has received harsh criticism from Washington leaders for repeating the anti-American rhetoric of the nation’s enemies, her comments have assisted her becoming a favorite of Russia’s state media.
Meanwhile, analysts and former officials claim that Gabbard only appears to agree with the geopolitical stance of the Kremlin, particularly with regard to the use of American military force.
Her possible appointment has been met with delight in Russia, even if Putin’s regime remains still suspicious of American policy under a second Trump administration.
According to Washington Post, the Russian publication Komsomolskaya Pravda ran a complimentary profile of Gabbard on Friday, stating that Ukrainians view her as “an agent of the Russian state” and that “the C.I.A. and the F.B.I. are trembling.”
State media station Rossiya-1 referred to Gabbard as a Russian “comrade.”
Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a history professor at New York University, called Gabbard’s nomination for chief of national intelligence director “is the way to Putin’s heart, and it tells to the world that America under Trump will be an ally of the Kremlin rather than an adversary.”
If confirmed, Gabbard would be responsible for managing the same organisation that tracked and exposed Russian disinformation and propaganda efforts during the 2024 election.
She will go through a rough path to get the confirmation in the Senate.
