By any fair measure, the past few months have been difficult for Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. 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 strategy sessions and briefings, and allegations in a Washington Post report that she created a special team in the hopes of using artificial intelligence tools to monitor agencies, looking for communications that “the administration deems as efforts to undermine its agenda.”
Things went from bad to worse when Trump was asked for his reaction to Gabbard’s recent testimony on Iran’s nuclear program — and the president explicitly said, more than once, that he didn’t care what his own handpicked director of national intelligence said.
But as it turns out, the beleaguered DNI isn’t quite done undermining what remains of her credibility. The Washington Post reported:
Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Virginia), the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, is criticizing President Donald Trump’s national intelligence director, Tulsi Gabbard, for speaking at a political event over the weekend. Gabbard spoke Saturday at a Turning Point USA conference in Florida and criticized the ‘deep state,’ claiming anti-Trump bureaucrats are ‘continuing to fight hard every single day.’
Warner, who hasn’t exactly earned a reputation as a knee-jerk partisan who takes cheap and unnecessary shots, issued a written statement in response to Gabbard’s remarks.
“What we have here is a Director of National Intelligence willing to break decades of precedent to attack her own workforce and weaponize American intelligence at a political rally,” the Virginia Democrat said.
“Director Gabbard is unable to adhere to her oath. Her claims that she cares about depoliticizing intelligence are incompatible with reality. When will my Republican colleagues, who claim to care about national security, finally speak up? Our intelligence community deserves better.”
Warner’s point obviously has merit. During her Senate confirmation hearing, Gabbard told senators, under oath, “You have my commitment to be completely objective, unbiased and apolitical.” At the same hearing, she vowed, “I’ll work to end the politicization of the intelligence community.”
Roughly five months later, she accepted an invitation to deliver political remarks at a far-right political event — an unprecedented move for someone in her position. Plenty of other Republican politicians spoke at the same gathering, but therein lies the point: They serve in partisan offices and never swore under oath to be completely apolitical. Retired Gen. Michael Hayden, who led the CIA and the National Security Agency, recently co-authored a report with David Gioe, a former CIA analyst and operations officer, writing in Foreign Affairs about how dangerous it is to see Trump, Gabbard and their colleagues politicize the entire American intelligence system. The piece came to mind anew watching the director of national intelligence criticize the “deep state” while on stage at a far-right political event.
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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