Washington, D.C. Tulsi Gabbard, President-elect Donald Trump’s choice for intelligence chief, was questioned again on Capitol Hill on Monday because she is close to Russia’s friend Syria and Assad’s hardline rule in that country suddenly fell apart.
Gabbard didn’t answer yelled questions about her trip to war-torn Syria in 2017 while she snuck into one of several private meetings with senators who are being asked to approve Trump’s unusual nominees.
But the former Democrat who is now a Republican Army National Reserve lieutenant colonel made a statement in which she said she still supported Trump’s “America First” approach to national security and a smaller U.S. military presence abroad.
Gabbard said as she left a Senate meeting, “I want to talk about the issue that’s in the news right now: I fully support and agree with everything that President Trump has said over the last few days about what’s happening in Syria.”
Some Republicans are unhappy with the choices the new president is making for his cabinet and top executive positions. Democrats and other groups are also worried, if not completely against them. While Gabbard was back at the Capitol, other Trump nominees, such as Pentagon pick Pete Hegseth, were also there. This was done because the approval hearings next year are expected to be very heated.
The new president is busy putting together his team for a big plan to deport a lot of immigrants, fire a lot of government workers, and cut back on U.S. support for Ukraine and NATO allies.
To welcome Gabbard to his office, South Dakota Republican Sen. Mike Rounds said, “We’re going to sit down and visit. That’s what this is all about.”
Monday, the president-elect made more appointments. His lawyer Harmeet Dhillon was named deputy attorney general for civil rights at the Justice Department, and Mark Paoletta was named back to his job as general counsel of the Office of Management and Budget.
At the same time, senators who were once skeptical seemed to be warming up to Defense Secretary nominee Hegseth. The former Army National Guard major denied sexual misconduct claims and promised not to drink alcohol if he is approved.
Kash Patel, the president-elect’s choice to lead the FBI, started his first meetings with senators on Monday. Patel has written a lot about locking up Trump’s enemies and wants to break up the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
In a tweet, Arkansas Republican Sen. Tom Cotton said, “I expect our Republican Senate is going to confirm all of President Trump’s nominees.”
A lot of people are worried about the nominees’ character and skills for jobs that are among the highest in the U.S. government, but Trump’s team is saying that the complaints are just political smears and hints.
To show how worried they are, almost 100 former top U.S. diplomats, intelligence, and national security officials have asked Senate leaders to hold secret meetings so that all of the government’s files on Gabbard can be looked over.
Trump’s supporters say that the complaints about Hegseth are similar to those made about Brett Kavanaugh, who was the former president’s choice to be on the Supreme Court. Kavanaugh denied a sexual assault claim and was approved during Trump’s first term in office.
A Republican from South Carolina named Sen. Lindsey Graham said this about Hegseth: “Anonymous accusations are trying to destroy reputations again.” This is what happened with Kavanaugh. “That’s not going to happen.”
One well-known Republican, Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa, is a former Army National Guard lieutenant colonel and sexual assault victim. Trump supporters had criticized her for being cold to Hegseth, but after their follow-up meeting on Monday, she seemed more open to him.
„I like how Pete Hegseth responded and showed respect for the process,” Ernst said in a release.
Ernst said that Hegseth had promised to choose a top official who would “prioritize and strengthen my work to prevent sexual assault within the ranks” after “encouraging conversations.” As I stand by Pete through this, I look forward to a fair trial based on facts, not rumors from unknown sources.
Ernst also said nice things about Patel and Gabbard. “He shares my passion for shaking up federal agencies,” Ernst said of Patel.
Gabbard, who used to serve Hawaii in Congress, came to Washington, D.C., with her surfboard ten years ago and joined a new group of people who could become leaders. She was once seen as a rising Democratic star. In 2020, she ran for president but lost.
Gabbard suddenly quit the party and briefly ran as an independent before becoming an enthusiastic supporter of Trump’s 2024 campaign. This was mostly because he didn’t want the U.S. to get involved in other countries’ conflicts and didn’t want to help Ukraine fight Russia.
It shocked her old coworkers and the Washington national-security establishment when she went to Syria to meet with President Bashar Assad around the time of Trump’s first inauguration. At the time, Syria was in the middle of a bloody civil war. The United States had cut off all official ties with Syria. Some people thought that her visit gave a cruel leader who was accused of war crimes more faith.
Gabbard has defended the trip by saying it’s important to start a conversation, but some people think her comments sound like they were written by someone who supports Russia.
Over the weekend, Assad fled to Moscow after Islamist rebels attacked Syria out of the blue, ending the 50 years of rule that his family had been in power.
Gabbard said that “all of my deployments and seeing firsthand the cost of war and the threat of Islamist terrorism” have shaped her views.
Gabbard said, “This is one of the many reasons I appreciate President Trump’s leadership and election: he is fully committed, as he has said many times, to ending wars.”
The nearly 100 former officials, who worked in both Democratic and Republican administrations, wrote to Senate leaders last week to say they were “alarmed” by Gabbard’s choice to be in charge of all 18 U.S. intelligence agencies.
They said that what she did in the past “raises doubts about her ability to provide fair intelligence briefings to the President, Congress, and the entire national security apparatus.”
Because of the attacks on September 11, 2001, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence was made to coordinate the U.S.’s intelligence organizations and be the president’s main source of intelligence advice.
