Tulsi Gabbard Goes On Offense

With Matt Gaetz and Pete Hegseth serving as lightning rods, Tulsi Gabbard’s nomination as director of national intelligence has so far mostly avoided the Washington storm clouds.

The winds are now shifting.

The shocking collapse this weekend of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime has reinvigorated scrutiny about Gabbard’s past sympathies for the brutal dictator. Her 2017 visit to Damascus to meet with Assad — years after he gassed his own people — and her comments defending his rule have long exemplified the former Democratic congresswoman’s unconventional foreign policy views.

Now her past is both a punchline — “Wonder if [Gabbard] will offer Assad safe harbor at her house,” former Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) jested as rebels closed in — and a complication for her confirmation prospects as senators begin to take stock.

As if on cue, Gabbard has left an Army training assignment in Oklahoma for Capitol Hill, where she will begin to press her case in person. That begins today with Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) and James Lankford (R-Okla.), with additional Senate Intelligence Committee Republicans scheduled for later in the week.

Despite the attention on her views, Gabbard and her allies remain cautiously optimistic. They say she’s eager to tackle her critics head-on. And unlike Gaetz and Hegseth, she has a posse of Hill allies prepared to help her along.

“She is very prepared, because it’s the same shit people have been throwing at her for years,” one Gabbard confidant said Sunday night. “She’s not easily rocked by anything.”

Former national security adviser John Bolton is already swinging hard. In a Sunday phone call, the renowned hawk said Gabbard has shown “an inclination to believe the most outrageous propaganda against the United States by some of its strongest enemies” — citing, as an example, her parroting the unfounded, Russia-backed “biolabs” conspiracy theory holding that the U.S. was conducting biological warfare research in Ukraine.

It “raises serious questions about her judgment,” Bolton said, reflecting a “funhouse of mirrors” view of American foreign policy that “goes beyond normal political discourse in this country — and really is evidence of some kind of flaw, maybe even a character flaw, that she doesn't realize what she's saying.”

But Gabbard’s allies say she’s ready to go toe-to-toe with Bolton and likeminded critics, Republican and Democrat alike.

When it comes to Bolton & Co., they argue, they are simply out of touch with today’s GOP — it’s Gabbard who is in lockstep with President-elect Donald Trump, who controversially met with authoritarian figures like Russia’s Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un in his first term.

“John Bolton is irrelevant and him saying he would write in Dick Cheney for president this year should tell you everything you need to know about his disastrous and failed foreign policy instincts of never-ending wars and more American deaths,” said transition spokesperson Alexa Henning.

Senate Republicans, however, are a different breed on foreign policy matters. Most are traditionally hawkish and aligned ideologically with Bolton. They will want to know if she will respect the assessments of intelligence community professionals — or substitute her own judgment in advising the president.

But Gabbard’s team says she is well-positioned to address any doubts.

— She already holds a Top Secret security clearance, one Senate Republican recently told us (and the Trump transition confirmed). The senator also noted that Gabbard was promoted to lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve in 2021 — years after her Syria trip. “If this were a problem, then they would have had an investigation a long time ago and she wouldn’t have the high-level clearance she has,” one ally said.

— She’s prepared to add context to some of her more controversial moments. Expect Gabbard to argue that meeting with Assad isn’t the same as sympathizing with him, and she can point to instances where she called him a “brutal dictator” and made other frank assessments of his atrocities.

— She’s ready to make a broader case for her noninterventionist views and argue to senators that meetings like the one she had with Assad are critical to stopping “endless wars.” She’ll argue that it’s her military service — not Russian propaganda — that shaped her worldview. Gabbard “is in lockstep with President Trump and his statements on the events in Syria over the weekend,” Henning said. “This is why President Trump was re-elected to prevent endless wars and put America First.”

— She has the backing of one prominent hawk in Graham, who called her “extremely bright and capable” last month. On the other side of the ideological spectrum, she has Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) in her corner. And her team says she’s close with a cadre of former House members now in the Senate, including Lankford, Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) and Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.).

— She’s looking to cross the aisle, or at least try: The former Bernie Sanders backer has tried to schedule meetings with at least some Intel Committee Democrats, so far to no avail. Still, her team has taken note that House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries was recently asked if she was a Russian agent, and he wouldn’t go there. One nod she could conceivably get is from Sanders (I-Vt.) — who has expressed a willingness to support Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s HHS nomination but has kept mum on Gabbard’s.

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