I cannot believe--it is stunning, and frightening--that Tulsi Gabbard appears to be on the verge of being approved, by the Republican-controlled Senate, as the Director of National Intelligence.
In a November 13, 2024 piece in The Atlantic, staff writer Tom Nichols wrote, pointedly:
"Her appointment would be a threat to the security of the United States."
Mr. Nichols wrote:
A person with Gabbard’s views should not be allowed anywhere near the crown jewels of American intelligence. I have no idea why Trump nominated Gabbard; she’s been a supporter, but she hasn’t been central to his campaign, and he owes her very little. For someone as grubbily transactional as Trump, it’s not an appointment that makes much sense. It’s possible that Trump hates the intelligence community—which he blames for many of his first-term troubles—so much that Gabbard is his revenge. Or maybe he just likes the way she handles herself on television.
Mr. Nichols wrote this:
Gabbard ran for president as a Democrat in 2020, attempting to position herself as something like a peace candidate. But she’s no peacemaker: She’s been an apologist for both the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad and Russia’s Vladimir Putin. Her politics, which are otherwise incoherent, tend to be sympathetic to these two strongmen, painting America as the problem and the dictators as misunderstood.
Gabbard, he said,
is a classic case of “horseshoe” politics: Her views can seem both extremely left and extremely right, which is probably why people such as Tucker Carlson—a conservative who has turned into … whatever pro-Russia right-wingers are called now—have taken a liking to the former Democrat (who was previously a Republican and is now again a member of the GOP).
In early 2017, while still a member of Congress, Gabbard met with Assad, saying that peace in Syria was only possible if the international community would have a conversation with him. “Let the Syrian people themselves determine their future, not the United States, not some foreign country,” Gabbard said, after chatting with a man who had stopped the Syrian people from determining their own future by using chemical weapons on them. Two years later, she added that Assad was “not the enemy of the United States, because Syria does not pose a direct threat to the United States,” and that her critics were merely “warmongers.”
Mr. Nichols wrote this, as well:
Gabbard has every right to her personal views, however inscrutable they may be. As a private citizen, she can apologize for Assad and Putin to her heart’s content. But as a security risk, Gabbard is a walking Christmas tree of warning lights. https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2024/11/tulsi-gabbard-nomination-security/680649/?gift=Tcay7nmVziC9n3Jf9QllmzEmtmaqldM0iAVdy4OyATA&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share
https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2024/11/tulsi-gabbard-nomination-security/680649/https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2024/11/tulsi-gabbard-nomination-security/680649/?gift=Tcay7nmVziC9n3Jf9QllmzEmtmaqldM0iAVdy4OyATA&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=sharehttps://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2024/11/tulsi-gabbard-nomination-security/680649/?gift=Tcay7nmVziC9n3Jf9QllmzEmtmaqldM0iAVdy4OyATA&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=sharehttps://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2024/11/tulsi-gabbard-nomination-security/680649/?gift=Tcay7nmVziC9n3Jf9QllmzEmtmaqldM0iAVdy4OyATA&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share
https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2024/11/tulsi-gabbard-nomination-security/680649/?gift=Tcay7nmVziC9n3Jf9QllmzEmtmaqldM0iAVdy4OyATA&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share
