Patterico's Pontifications

11/13/2024

Trump Names Tulsi Gabbard to head. . . National Intelligence

Filed under: General — Dana @ 3:37 pm



[guest post by Dana]

President-elect Trump named the former Democrat, Trump-loyalist and conspiracy kook for director of National Intelligence:

If confirmed for the role, Gabbard would oversee all 18 of the nation’s intelligence agencies.

In a statement Wednesday, Trump highlighted Gabbard’s background as a former Democrat, saying, “she has broad support” from both political parties. Her political turn means she’s not likely to gain support from Democrats.

“I know Tulsi will bring the fearless spirit that has defined her illustrious career to our Intelligence Community, championing our Constitutional Rights, and securing Peace through Strength,” he said.” “Tulsi will make us all proud!”

Let me remind you of Gabbard’s, uh, embrace of Syrian leader Bashar Assad after meeting with him and saying that she would meet with anyone necessary to achieve peace:

The former Hawaii congresswoman has taken stances that have been at odds with US foreign policy, including meeting with Syrian President Bashar Assad in Syria in 2017, and saying in 2019 that he was “not an enemy of the United States.”

And more currently regarding Russia’s invasion of Ukraine:

Thus, I am in complete agreement with this House member:

As a former CIA case officer, I saw the men and women of the U.S. intelligence community put their lives on the line every day for this country — and I am appalled at the nomination of Tulsi Gabbard to lead DNI.

Not only is she ill-prepared and unqualified, but she traffics in conspiracy theories and cozies up to dictators like Bashar-al Assad and Vladimir Putin.

As a Member of the House Intelligence Committee, I am deeply concerned about what this nomination portends for our national security.

My Republican colleagues with a backbone should speak out.

Yeah, we’ve already seen previously, that aside from a handful of Republicans (who paid a hefty political price for speaking out), backbones remain in short supply with Congressional Republicans.

Hardest hit if Gabbard confirmed: Ukraine.

Praying for her confirmation: Putin.

—Dana

36 Responses to “Trump Names Tulsi Gabbard to head. . . National Intelligence”

  1. Any effort at optimism or at least a wait-and-see attitude regarding Trump’s election went out the window just with his latest selections for some incredibly important agencies.

    Dana (c17f05) — 11/13/2024 @ 3:39 pm

  2. Tulsi is cute my handle is named after her.

    asset (3d4b83) — 11/13/2024 @ 3:40 pm

  3. Also, Matt Gaetz at DoJ. *sigh*

    *Maybe* the Senate will reject Gaetz, if there aren’t recess appointment shenanigans.

    aphrael (078a66) — 11/13/2024 @ 3:41 pm

  4. This:

    Isolationists on the right & left are repeating the gravest mistakes of the 20th century, looking away as dictators enslave & murder within their borders, then cross them. Perhaps “never again” has no resonance for Ms Gabbard.

    Dana (e8bbc7) — 11/13/2024 @ 5:54 pm

  5. As I said on a different thread, she will be the only DNI who should have registered as a foreign agent.

    Rip Murdock (a8f7fb) — 11/13/2024 @ 6:18 pm

  6. What is this “confirmation” thing you speak of?

    Kevin M (a9545f) — 11/13/2024 @ 7:55 pm

  7. She’s still cute.

    And Democrats who want to complain about Little Aloha Sweetie’s meetings with Bashar al-Asad should be cross-referenced against those Democrats who cheered on Barack Obama’s pointless overtures to Iran and to Russia when he was trying to justify his Nobel Peace Prize.

    JVW (1f63ab) — 11/13/2024 @ 7:56 pm

  8. I have to say, having liked the National Security advisor, this really shows the lack of vetting.

    Does Trump like them (Y/N)? seems to be the entire process.

    Kevin M (a9545f) — 11/13/2024 @ 7:56 pm

  9. “I’ll have more flexibility after the election” still comes to mind.

    Kevin M (a9545f) — 11/13/2024 @ 7:57 pm

  10. Gabbard is clearly not as qualified as the professionals who permitted a Chinese spy balloon to traverse the US, closed the Afghanistan airbase before the ground with drawl, debated pronouns as the Russians deployed hypersonic rockets, and permitted a CIA employee to disclose Isael’s plans to Iran.
    And did i mention the professionals at CIA that thought the use of email drafts was a foolproof way for Chinese sources to communicate with CIA handlers? All rolled up and executed but hey-what does Gabbard know?

    Harcourt Fenton Mudd (00a4c7) — 11/13/2024 @ 8:01 pm

  11. Over at NRO, where Jeffery Blehar (rapidly becoming one of my favorite writers there for his mordant wit) is fulminating against the nomination of Matt Gaetz, he has this to say about President-elect’s other nominees, including Little Aloha Sweetie:

    I will admit that up until about 20 minutes before I began writing this, I’d been quite pleased about the appointments Trump has been announcing for his new cabinet: Representative Mike Waltz as national security adviser, former Trump director of national intelligence John Ratcliffe at the CIA, Elise Stefanik representing America (and putting antisemites in their place) at the United Nations, Lee Zeldin to the EPA, and particularly Marco Rubio as secretary of state — you could be hard-core MAGA, a Trump skeptic, or even a center-left Democrat and rate every single pick as anywhere from “perfectly cromulent” to “great.” (I particularly look forward to Rubio finally returning seriousness to U.S. foreign policy in the western hemisphere. Sorry Maduro, it’s about to become a really rough four years to be a dictator.)

    Some have rolled their eyes at the idea of Pete Hegseth running the vast bureaucracy of the Pentagon — and the generals will indeed immediately try to undermine his authority like piranhas furiously skeletonizing a cow — but I tend to agree with Charlie Cooke’s assessment of Hegseth and think that a man closer to the enlisted ranks than the pompously entrenched brass is the viewpoint that the Department of Defense needs. I was even willing to accept Trump naming Democrat-turned-Republican Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence, because (1) war skeptics authentically deserve a voice at the table (sorry, Liz) and Gabbard will not automatically melt into the Beltway “Blob” of consensus; (2) the ODNI ought to be abolished wholesale anyway as the post-9/11 monstrosity it’s always been. (The real question is whether you feel comfortable with someone who held secret meetings with Assad now holding the highest-level security clearances in the nation.)

    But today our luck finally ran out. [. . .]

    Again, point taken about her interest in Assad, but I do strongly agree that she is (hopefully) less likely to be captured by the stale Beltway consensus which has had us stuck in the mud for the past twenty years than your typical ODNI nominee would be. I especially cringe at how those folks continually sing their own praises. I have no idea what Rep. Abigail Spanberger’s time in the CIA was like, but she served from 2006-2014, a period in which the agency wasn’t exactly covering themselves in glory. Remember how they totally missed the revolution in Egypt and in general fucked up everything that had to do with the Middle East? Again, maybe the Beltway consensus needs to be disassembled and put back together again.

    Or maybe we’re about to get eaten alive by Russia (doubtful) or China (far more likely). Guess we’ll find out one way or another.

    JVW (1f63ab) — 11/13/2024 @ 8:12 pm

  12. Harcourt Fenton Mudd steps up to the plate a belts a triple off of the right field wall. He has about as dim a view of the CIA as I do.

    JVW (1f63ab) — 11/13/2024 @ 8:14 pm

  13. According to the Wikipedia page, Abigail Spanberger taught English at the Islamic Saudi Institute in Virginia. So she apparently received a paycheck from the Saudi government. Can we assume that she is compromised and unfit to serve in Congress?

    JVW (1f63ab) — 11/13/2024 @ 8:21 pm

  14. The Tulsi pick is absurd. A national security threat shouldn’t have an executive role in our national security. Nichols is right.

    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.”

    Gabbard’s shilling for Assad is a mystery, but she’s even more dedicated to carrying Putin’s water. Tom Rogan, a conservative writer and hardly a liberal handwringer, summed up her record succinctly in the Washington Examiner today:

    She has blamed NATO and the U.S. for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (again, to the celebration of both Russian and Chinese state media), has repeated Russian propaganda claims that the U.S. has set up secret bioweapons labs in that country, and has argued that the U.S. not Russia is wholly responsible for Putin’s nuclear brinkmanship.

    When she appeared on Sean Hannity’s show in 2022, even Hannity blanched at Gabbard floating off in a haze of Kremlin talking points and cheerleading for Russia. When Hannity is trying to shepherd you back toward the air lock before your oxygen runs out, you’ve gone pretty far out there.
    […]
    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. If she is nominated to be America’s top intelligence officer, that’s everyone’s business.

    Paul Montagu (271b15) — 11/13/2024 @ 11:17 pm

  15. Tom Nichols is a loon.

    Tom Nichols @RadioFreeTom Nov5
    There’s no point in any more arguments. After today, we’re either moving ahead as a democracy or we’re figuring out how to shore up the American system against an authoritarian takeover.

    lloyd (929ce8) — 11/14/2024 @ 6:09 am

  16. The folks who think Gabbard is a security risk were cheering John Brennan as CIA Director as he went after Trump. Brennan, who wanted the head of the Communist Party to be our president.

    lloyd (929ce8) — 11/14/2024 @ 6:12 am

  17. https://redstate.com/beccalower/2024/11/13/az-judge-recuses-himself-from-fake-electors-case-after-emails-surface-demanding-judges-defend-kamala-n2181972

    Another biased leftist judge who only recuses when his bias is shown to be obvious.

    NJRob (eb56c3) — 11/14/2024 @ 6:42 am

  18. https://dailycaller.com/2024/11/12/rv-sales-banned-six-states-california-climate-rules/

    The real threat to the nation is California laws going nationwide.

    NJRob (eb56c3) — 11/14/2024 @ 6:53 am

  19. The good thing about CA banning RV sales under its EPA waiver is that the EPA waiver will end with wide support.

    Kevin M (a9545f) — 11/14/2024 @ 7:20 am

  20. An enterprising journalist will take Trump’s list of appointees and count how many times each of them appeared on FoxNews. I trust the number would be impressive but also not surprising, that a reality TV star who doesn’t read but watches hours of cable news every day would base his decisions in large part on who he sees on the telly.
    In that light, we may see Comer and Jim Jordan somewhere in Trump 2.0.

    Paul Montagu (271b15) — 11/14/2024 @ 7:49 am

  21. If Trump owned an NFL team, he’s be hiring sports writers commentators as coaches.

    Kevin M (a9545f) — 11/14/2024 @ 7:58 am

  22. Good news in all this: Matt Gaetz resigns from Congress.

    Kevin M (a9545f) — 11/14/2024 @ 7:59 am

  23. I’m fine with Tulsi getting an administration position, but the DNI seems a wee bit of a mismatch.

    I expected Secretary of some military position. Or even the VA…

    whembly (477db6) — 11/14/2024 @ 8:51 am

  24. @22

    Good news in all this: Matt Gaetz resigns from Congress.

    Kevin M (a9545f) — 11/14/2024 @ 7:59 am

    I wouldn’t be surprised if this was some backroom shenanigans here… where by Speaker Johnson got some concession from Senate leadership to support Gaetz, just to get Gaetz out of Congress.

    He then because a “problem” for Trump in the Executive branch.

    whembly (477db6) — 11/14/2024 @ 8:52 am

  25. The folks who think Gabbard is a security risk were cheering John Brennan as CIA Director as he went after Trump. Brennan, who wanted the head of the Communist Party to be our president.

    Cool story bro, now, is Gabbard a security risk?

    Colonel Klink (ret) (96f56a) — 11/14/2024 @ 10:04 am

  26. I’m not sure how a CIA Director “went after Trump”.
    Far as I know, Brennan had intel that sent to Obama in August 2016 that, based on his high-level Kremlin source, Putin was orchestrating a cyber-propaganda attack on America. In his milquetoast way, except for an angry glare at Putin, Obama’s reaction was to do nothing until after the election. Big, dumb mistake.

    Paul Montagu (271b15) — 11/14/2024 @ 10:47 am

  27. This one is not so serious, since the Director of National Intelligence can be ignored. If her loyalties remain toward Putin (which is not guaranteed) she may manipulate intelligence, but this is bound to come out after a while. In 2019, after a lot of effort, Putin succeeded in

    1. Getting the United States Ambassador to Ukraine fired, only to get her replaced by Mike Pompeo (who was careful not to suggest an new ambassador) as chargé d’affaires, by a former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine during the Bush Administration, who was a decent pick.

    2. Getting President Zelensky not to name some people to official positions in his government – only to be substituted by equally worthy people. Giuliani had arranged that before the July 25, 2019 phone call but Trump didn’t know.

    3. Getting military aid to Ukraine to be cut off fora total of 55 days, until people in the U.S. government, in conjunction with Adam Schiff, succeeded in making that public, under the guise of a whistleblower complaint, which didn’t really apply, at which point Trump reversed himself. Before that some people in the Administration were trying to find a way to lift the hold – Ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland coming up with the idea of Ukraine announcing an investigation of the company on which Hunter Biden was on the board. This despite Donald Trump rejecting the idea of such a trade when it was put to him both by Gordon Sondland and by Senator Ron Johnson, saying that Ukraine should do that on its own.

    4. Trump inquiring of Zelensky if he could find an imaginary computer server in Ukraine that belonged to the DNC.

    Sammy Finkelman (e4ef09) — 11/14/2024 @ 12:08 pm

  28. There are 25+ US-funded biolabs in Ukraine which if breached would release & spread deadly pathogens to US/world. We must take action now to prevent disaster.

    This is imaginary too.

    Sammy Finkelman (e4ef09) — 11/14/2024 @ 12:09 pm

  29. Gabbard’s shilling for Assad is a mystery

    Why should it be a mystery?

    Assad is allied by Russia.

    Now her shilling for Russia – that is mystery. We can only guess what’s going on.

    We don’t know what this us based on:

    https://www.newsweek.com/tulsi-gabbard-tsa-terrorist-watchlist-1985527

    Gabbard, a former Democrat who announced at a Trump rally last month that she was joining the Republican Party, claimed in a video shared in early September to X, formerly Twitter, that she and her husband had been flagged as “a domestic terror threat” in July due to her political shift to the right.

    The video came one month after the conservative website UndercoverDC claimed that unnamed “Federal Air Marshal whistleblowers” had revealed Gabbard was flagged by the TSA’s “Quiet Skies” program, which is separate from the U.S. government’s terrorist “no fly list” but subjects some travelers to enhanced security screenings.

    “Just before boarding a flight on July 23, my husband and I were pulled aside for additional TSA screening,” Gabbard said in the video. “We were told by the TSA agent there that this was just a random selection. Now, that might have been believable if it had happened just once or twice. But five, six, seven, eight times in a row? There’s no way.”

    “Federal air marshal whistleblowers came forward with very disturbing information,” she continued. “They revealed that I had been added to a secret terror watchlist run by the TSA called Quiet Skies on July 23. This is the very same day my husband and I began to be subjected to those in-depth TSA searches.”

    Gabbard went on to say that she had “put all the pieces together” and determined that she was targeted by the TSA because she had criticized Vice President Kamala Harris, who had just announced her run for president, during a Fox News interview one day earlier.

    “The TSA placed me on the Quiet Skies domestic terror watchlist in what I can only describe as the ultimate betrayal,” she said. “The Harris-Biden regime has now labeled me a domestic terror threat. Why? They see me as a threat to their power.”

    The one thing we can be reasonably sure of is that that’s not the reason, and we can be almost as certain that the real reason is some indication of lack of loyalty, but stupidly and bureaucratically
    applied to travelling on airplanes. If she’s a danger, it’s not that way.

    The senate Committee will find out what that’s all about and she will probably not even be confirmed.

    Sammy Finkelman (e4ef09) — 11/14/2024 @ 12:22 pm

  30. I wouldn’t be surprised if this was some backroom shenanigans here… where by Speaker Johnson got some concession from Senate leadership to support Gaetz, just to get Gaetz out of Congress.

    He then because a “problem” for Trump in the Executive branch.

    whembly (477db6) — 11/14/2024 @ 8:52 am

    LOL! Why would Speaker Johnson place his own majority in peril by doing so? He needs every Republican vote to retain his majority.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8) — 11/14/2024 @ 1:25 pm

  31. @31

    LOL! Why would Speaker Johnson place his own majority in peril by doing so? He needs every Republican vote to retain his majority.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8) — 11/14/2024 @ 1:25 pm

    Because stepping down NOW allows Florida to fill his seat before Jan 3rd.

    That’s the rationale for his resignation “so early” in the process.

    whembly (477db6) — 11/14/2024 @ 1:30 pm

  32. Because stepping down NOW allows Florida to fill his seat before Jan 3rd.

    That’s the rationale for his resignation “so early” in the process.

    whembly (477db6) — 11/14/2024 @ 1:30 pm

    LOL again! The “rationale” for Gaetz leaving so early is to avoid the House ethics report that was about to be released. Talk about Trump throwing him a lifeline.

    There are a lot of steps for replacement elections:

    ∎ The Governor issues an order declaring a fixed date the election shall be held.

    ∎ The Department of State prepares a notice that sets the dates for a four-day candidate qualifying period, and primary and general elections.

    ∎ County supervisors of elections shall publish the dates twice in a general circulation newspaper and their website at least 10 days before the start of the qualifying period.

    ∎ There must be a minimum of 14 days between the end of the qualifying period and the primary election.

    ∎ There is a minimum of 14 days between the primary and general elections.

    The upshot: The quickest path to a special general election, once the governor sets the wheels in motion, is six weeks.

    Plus you have the intervening holidays.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8) — 11/14/2024 @ 1:49 pm

  33. Because stepping down NOW allows Florida to fill (Gaetz’s) seat before Jan 3rd.

    That’s the rationale for his resignation “so early” in the process.

    whembly (477db6) — 11/14/2024 @ 1:30 pm

    I guess Florida Rep. Michael Waltz (named as National Security Advisor) didn’t get the message, as he is still a member of Congress.

    Rip Murdock (d2a2a8) — 11/14/2024 @ 1:59 pm

  34. Gonna have to go with Jordan Peterson’s opinion on this matter.

    Dick Dutton (ddc02c) — 11/14/2024 @ 4:48 pm

  35. The new SecDef loves war criminals, and he’s only Trump’s fourth or fifth most odious secretariat nominee. To everyone who assured me Trump would be restrained and competent this time, kudos. You really nailed it.

    lurker (c23034) — 11/15/2024 @ 10:11 am

  36. Whoops. Meant to put that in the open thread. I’ll copypaste it there.

    lurker (c23034) — 11/15/2024 @ 10:12 am

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