Trump Picks Tulsi Gabbard for Director of National Intelligence

Trump Chooses Tulsi Gabbard for Director of National Intelligence

Ms. Gabbard, a former congresswoman who left the Democratic Party, would hold a top job in the administration, overseeing 18 spy agencies.

• Share full article
• 521

By Julian E. Barnes

Reporting from Washington

President-elect Donald J. Trump on Wednesday chose Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democratic congresswoman who became one of his most enthusiastic backers, to serve as the director of national intelligence.

Ms. Gabbard, a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve who served in Iraq, has been a longtime critic of the foreign policy establishment. Her nomination is another sign that Mr. Trump intends to give top foreign policy jobs to supporters who are deeply skeptical of the effectiveness of U.S. military intervention abroad.

In a statement, Mr. Trump said Ms. Gabbard would bring “a fearless spirit” to the intelligence agencies and secure “peace through strength.”

The statement announcing the nomination said she was a former Democrat who had joined the Republican Party “because of President Trump’s leadership and how he has been able to transform the Republican Party, bringing it back to the party of the people and the party of peace.”

The news of Ms. Gabbard’s appointment was first revealed by Roger Stone on his X account. Mr. Stone, a longtime friend and adviser to Mr. Trump who was pardoned by the president in 2020, posted the statement about Ms. Gabbard and said Mr. Trump had just sent it to him.

Along with John Ratcliffe, Mr. Trump’s choice to lead the C.I.A., she would be a top intelligence adviser to the White House. She would oversee 18 spy agencies and would be responsible for preparing the President’s Daily Brief, a written intelligence summary assembled each morning. In his first administration, Mr. Trump did not often read the written summary. But he held in-person intelligence briefings, often twice a week or more, engaging his briefers on world affairs, at least on topics that interested him.

It is unclear whether Ms. Gabbard will have a difficult confirmation, but Democratic senators are expected to ask her about her decision to meet with President Bashar al-Assad of Syria and her past embrace of Russian talking points.

“These are extraordinarily serious jobs,” said Senator Mark Warner, Democrat of Virginia and the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. “It’s why the Senate has an advise and consent process. I have a lot of questions.”

Ms. Gabbard left the Democratic Party after a failed run for the presidential nomination in 2020. Her subsequent enthusiasm for Mr. Trump made her a celebrity among his supporters.

She was briefly considered by Mr. Trump as a possible running mate, before he winnowed the field down to other finalists. Ms. Gabbard helped Mr. Trump prepare his attacks against Vice President Kamala Harris while he was practicing for his September debate.

A spokeswoman for Mr. Trump said Ms. Gabbard was picked to help with the preparations in part because of her 2019 attacks on Ms. Harris during the Democratic primaries. In a debate that July, Ms. Gabbard accused Ms. Harris of hypocrisy in how she had helped enforce marijuana laws. And in a debate that November, Ms. Gabbard called out Democrats for being beholden to “the foreign policy establishment in Washington.” She went on to say that Democrats were overly influenced by “the military industrial complex.”

Ms. Gabbard, a Samoan American, represented Hawaii in Congress from 2013 to 2021. While in Congress, she rose to prominence for criticizing the Obama administration for how it discussed terrorism in the Middle East and Islamic extremism.

She also expressed skepticism about the Obama administration’s intervention in Syria, which included airstrikes on Islamic State fighters and a deployment of military advisers. In 2017, Ms. Gabbard met with Mr. Assad. The visit drew criticism because of his human rights record.

Her opposition to President Barack Obama’s policy in Syria developed into a broader critique of both the Republicans’ and the Democrats’ foreign policy, which she said wrongly believed that U.S. military power could solve overseas crises.

While she has fiercely supported U.S. troops, she has been critical of foreign policy that brought America into overseas conflicts in the first place. During her own presidential campaign she criticized “counterproductive regime-change wars that make our country less safe, that take more lives and that cost taxpayers trillions more dollars.”

During her 2019 campaign, Ms. Gabbard sparred with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Ms. Clinton had said Russia was backing Ms. Gabbard, and that she was a Kremlin favorite who was supported by its propaganda apparatus. Ms. Gabbard shot back that Ms. Clinton was the “queen of the warmongers.”

When Ms. Gabbard left Congress, she began taking more conservative positions and ultimately announced she was leaving the Democratic Party.

After Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Ms. Gabbard posted a video on social media repeating a false claim pushed by the Kremlin that the United States was funding biological weapons labs in Ukraine.

The post prompted Senator Mitt Romney, Republican of Utah, to say that Ms. Gabbard was “parroting false Russian propaganda.”

Trump Builds His Administration

As his team ramps up the transition process, President-elect Donald Trump says his administration will radically reshape the federal government.

• Foreign Policy: While many of Trump’s foreign policy picks were once called neocons by their peers, they now speak the language of the “America First” movement.
• Skirting the Senate: Trump’s demand that Senate Republicans surrender their role in vetting his nominees poses an early test of whether his second term will be more radical than his first.
• Department of Education: The president-elect said he would use the department to further his priorities. He also said he would close it. Both options would face difficulties.
• Middle East: Trump’s nominees to serve as top diplomatic envoys to Israel and the Middle East indicate a staunch pro-Israel policy.
• Deportations: Trump is signaling with his staffing decisions his intention to carry out a campaign promise of widespread deportations of undocumented immigrants.