Things haven’t been going especially well for Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard lately. She recently fired the leaders of the National Intelligence Council, for example, because it dared to produce accurate information Donald Trump didn’t like.
That coincided with reports of a member of Gabbard’s team trying to politicize intelligence, the release of a weird Gabbard video that even Republicans found bizarre, reports that the DNI has been left out of important meetings and strategy sessions, and a Politico report on the degree to which the president has soured on the former congresswoman.
Things went from bad to worse this week when Trump was asked for his reaction to Gabbard’s recent testimony on Iran’s nuclear program. “I don’t care what she said,” the president told reporters, referring to his own handpicked director of national intelligence.
Soon after, the DNI appeared to be in damage control mode. The Washington Post reported:
Gabbard blamed the media for misconstruing her earlier testimony, asserting that ‘President Trump was saying the same thing that I said.’ … ‘We are on the same page,’ she told CNN. Asked for comment, Gabbard’s office referred to those remarks.
I can appreciate the predicament she’s in. After all, Gabbard, who was never qualified to hold this position in the first place, doesn’t appear to be an especially influential voice in the president’s orbit right now. Indeed, no president has ever before said, “I don’t care what she said,” in reference to someone in her role.
But to blame journalists and pretend that she and Trump “are on the same page” is difficult to take seriously. Gabbard appeared on Capitol Hill in March and testified — under oath, while reading from a prepared text that her office published online — that the U.S. intelligence community “continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme leader Khomeini has not authorized the nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003.” Three months later, Trump considered the assessment of his own country’s intelligence agencies and then rejected it. Iran is “very close” to having a nuclear weapon, the Republican told reporters this week while dismissing Gabbard’s testimony. That raises all sorts of notable questions — including whose intelligence Trump is following if he has no use for his own country’s assessments — but it’s difficult to see how Gabbard can credibly claim that she and Trump said “the same thing.”
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
Latest Post
Recommended
