After Donald Trump announced his intention to nominate former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard as the next director of national intelligence, the pushback was immediate. At least for now, the president-elect doesn’t seem to care: The former congresswoman was at Trump’s side, for example, at the annual Army-Navy football game.
Gabbard is no doubt pleased to have the president-elect’s ongoing support, but her efforts to win over senators’ backing might not be going quite as well: The Hill — citing nearly a half dozen sources, including senators and individuals close to the situation — reported that the Hawaiian has “struggled” during her recent meetings with unimpressed senators. One GOP senator went so far as to say that there have been “a lot of eyerolls” from members who have sat down with Gabbard. (Neither MSNBC nor NBC News has independently confirmed The Hill’s report, though NBC News did report that she’s facing some opposition from GOP senators.)
But for Trump, concerned senators aren’t the only people he should be worried about.
When reporters from Time magazine sat down with the president-elect for the outlet’s latest cover story, they asked a rather pointed question that he definitely needed to hear: “Mr. President, some foreign officials have expressed concern about sharing intelligence with Tulsi Gabbard, given her positions in support of Russia and Syria. Would her confirmation be worth the price of some of our allies not sharing intelligence with us?” Trump replied:
I’m surprised to hear it, because I think she’s, like, a really great American. Hey, look, they said I was friendly with Russia until they saw the tapes, and then they said, ‘You know, he’s not actually.’
For now, let’s not dwell on the fact that there are no “tapes” proving that Trump is not friendly with Vladimir Putin. Let’s instead note that in the Time interview, reporters added, “If you learn that foreign officials are withholding intelligence because she is the head of your intelligence, would that change your calculus?”
The Republican replied, “I don’t know. I’m surprised to hear it. I heard that the first time the other day. I mean, I think she’s a great American. … I’ve watched her for years, and she has nothing to do with Russia.”
There’s ample reason to believe Trump’s assessment is, to be charitable, incomplete.
As NBC News recently reported, Gabbard repeatedly defended Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian regime and even met the country’s brutal leader in an unannounced trip in 2017. It led some members of Congress, during Gabbard’s tenure as a lawmaker, to express concern about whether she could be trusted with sensitive intelligence related to Syria.
The same NBC News report added that Gabbard “has been accused of repeatedly echoing propaganda spread by Russia.”
It helps explain why nearly 100 former national security officials signed a joint statement earlier this month, not only criticizing Trump’s decision to nominate Gabbard for director of national intelligence, but also calling for closed-door Senate hearings to review government information about her.
The statement obtained by NBC News read in part, “Several of Ms. Gabbard’s past actions call into question her ability to deliver unbiased intelligence briefings to the President, Congress, and to the entire national security apparatus. Following her trip to Syria, for example, Ms. Gabbard aligned herself with Russian and Syrian officials.” (A spokesperson for Gabbard on Trump’s transition team “dismissed the letter as an ‘unfounded’ attack by people who oversaw foreign policy and intelligence debacles in the past, including the 2003 invasion of Iraq,” according to NBC News.) As Time magazine’s line of questioning made clear, Gabbard’s actions have not gone unnoticed by U.S. allies abroad, who are wondering about cooperating with the incoming administration on intelligence matters. The joint statement came roughly a week after Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois said on CNN that she believes Gabbard is “compromised.” My MSNBC colleague Zeeshan Aleem also recently described Trump’s prospective Gabbard nomination as an “odd and disconcerting choice,” explaining, “She has no formal intelligence experience, and, as someone who has a history of lapping up disinformation, she seems especially ill-suited for a position that’s all about being able to tell the difference between good and bad information.” Assuming the president-elect goes through with his plans, Gabbard will need Senate confirmation. Evidently, the world will be watching — and our allies’ willingness to trust the White House with sensitive intelligence might very well hang in the balance.
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."
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