Tulsi Gabbard at a Trump campaign rally in Pittsburgh on November 4, 2024.Matt Freed/AP
Donald Trump’s appointment announcements are getting weird.
The president-elect’s selection of Susie Wiles as his chief of staff, and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio as his secretary of state nominee, suggested a step toward GOP convention. But Trump’s pick of former Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard as his director of national intelligence—along with his announced plans to nominate Fox News host Pete Hegseth as secretary of defense, and Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) for attorney general, represent a pivot toward the kooky.
Trump plans to put Gabbard, a dabbler in conspiracy theories, in a job overseeing 18 spy agencies, with responsiblity for preparing the president’s daily intelligence briefing. Gabbard did not respond to inquiries on Wednesday.
Gabbard’s nomination was announced Wednesday by longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone, who read Trump’s press release on the pick aloud on Alex Jones’ conspiracy-mongering InfoWars minutes before the release went public.
Gabbard, a former lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve, is a one-time middle-of-the-road Democratic member of Congress who has evolved into a Trump supporter. She moved leftward in 2016—endorsing Sen. Bernie Sanders that year—and ran for the party’s presidential nomination in 2020 on a campaign that blasted the Democratic foreign policy establishment, before endorsing Trump this year.
Along the way, Gabbard has demonstrated excessive credulity about claims of autocrats hostile to the United States. In 2017, she drew fire for meeting with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad during a secret trip to Syria. Later that year, she said she was skeptical of US intelligence findings that led then–Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to say US officials had “a very high level of confidence” that chemical weapons attacks that killed dozens of people in Syria were carried out under Assad’s direction.
Gabbard’s position aligned with arguments from Russian officials, who provided key backing to Assad and argued that the 2017 attack was staged by agents of the United Kingdom.
Gabbard again bolstered Russian propaganda in 2022, when she tweeted a video repeating Kremlin claims that US-funded labs in Ukraine were developing biological weapons. The Russian claims appeared to be largely made-up justifications for Russia invading its neighbor.
Gabbard’s comments drew widespread criticism. “Tulsi Gabbard is parroting false Russian propaganda,” Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) tweeted at the time. “Her treasonous lies may well cost lives.”
Gabbard has defended her various statements as examples of her willingness to buck a hawkish Washington foreign policy establishment too eager to drop bombs. “I am here to help prevent World War III,” she told Fox News on Monday.
But in defying what she dubs conventional views, Gabbard has demonstrated a high tolerance for conspiracy theories and disinformation: that is, she seems wide-open to bullshit.
That’s a particularly problematic penchant for someone tasked with advising the president on US intelligence findings—but it appears to be a quality this particular president desires.
