You can't believe foreign propaganda more than your intelligence agencies -- and hope to run them.
As Tulsi Gabbard evolved from Democratic congresswoman to MAGA celebrity and now Republican nominee for Donald Trump's Cabinet, she has been called a lot of names. She has been accused of being a "Russian asset," a "useful idiot" and even "Russia's girlfriend." Hillary Clinton once suggested Moscow was "grooming" Gabbard to run for president. In 2022, Republican Adam Kinzinger, at the time a representative of Illinois, called her "traitorous."
But the name-calling and claims of a Moscow-driven plot to elevate her (for which there is little concrete evidence) obscure real concerns about her nomination. The head of the U.S. intelligence community must be willing and able to distinguish between democracies and autocracies, and separate propaganda from reality. Gabbard's record shows she consistently fails to do both.
Indeed, Gabbard is dangerous precisely because she doesn't need any outside influence to come to her conspiratorial, dictator-friendly worldview. The problem is not that Gabbard's views are unconventional. It's that her long-standing pattern of embracing and amplifying Russian propaganda speaks to her poor judgment and tenuous allegiance to the truth.
Yes, Gabbard admirably served in the military. But military service alone doesn't ensure one is qualified to lead the intelligence community. Take the case of Michael Flynn, a three-star general and leader of the Defense Intelligence Agency who, after being fired 24 days into his service as Trump's national security adviser in 2017, descended into a spiral of conspiratorial thinking, endorsing QAnon and promoting the idea that the United Nations is working to ban Christianity. Like Flynn, Gabbard has a troubling record of promoting disinformation that is damaging to U.S. interests and the intelligence community she is being asked to lead.
Consider Gabbard's history with Syria. In 2017, she traveled to Damascus and met with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad at a time his army was perpetrating well-documented atrocities. Subsequently, whenever pressed, she refused to acknowledge that Assad was responsible for war crimes. She expressed skepticism about the U.S. intelligence community's assessment that Assad used chemical weapons against his own people. Gabbard went so far as to accuse the United States of funding the Islamic State in Syria -- a baseless assertion that again aligned with Russian disinformation efforts. She even wrongfully accused the U.S. military of itself committing war crimes in Syria, citing an attack clearly perpetrated by the Syrian government as evidence.
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Gabbard's thinking follows a pattern. Instead of condemning Russia's brutal, unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, she claimed that the United States and its allies were responsible for provoking Russia. Worse, she described Ukraine as a corrupt autocracy -- on par with Russia -- as if there were no meaningful difference between a flawed democracy struggling to remain independent and an expansionist dictatorship. And in 2022, she amplified debunked Russian propaganda about the existence of U.S.-funded biolabs in Ukraine, propaganda that was used by Russian President Vladimir Putin to justify his aggression.
But it's not that she's somehow in Russia's pocket. Her antipathy toward America's democratic allies is simply reflexive. At a time when a rising China is destabilizing Asia, Gabbard criticized Japan's remilitarization, suggesting the United States might find itself once again fighting the Japanese in the Pacific.
To have someone who appears more inclined to believe adversaries' talking points than the assessments of U.S. intelligence professionals is deeply troubling. This isn't just a theoretical problem. Trump, a leader who has shown receptiveness to conspiracy theories and disinformation, could end up getting his daily intelligence brief from someone with similar inclinations. The duly-elected president is entitled to his views. But the country is dangerously ill-served if he is not confronted with as accurate a picture of the world as our various intelligence agencies are able to deliver.
And although the intelligence community isn't perfect -- it has made significant mistakes in the past -- it is overwhelmingly staffed by patriotic Americans who work tirelessly to provide good-faith assessments. They deserve a leader who will respect their work and their mission, not someone who might view them as part of a "deep state" to be purged.
In the Senate, defeating her nomination would require opposition of at least four Republican senators (assuming she receives little to no support from Democrats). Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas), as the incoming chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, will likely have a pivotal role. Cotton, who knows the stakes quite well, should prioritize the security of this country and oppose her confirmation, even if it means clashing with a president from his own party.
Gabbard's nomination should be rejected not because her views are different from the D.C. establishment, but because they're incompatible with the requirements of the job. In the intelligence world, sound judgment and a firm grasp of reality are essential. Tulsi Gabbard has shown us, repeatedly, that she lacks both.