If one read only the legacy press and listened to Democrats, one would think that president-elect Donald Trump has just nominated a Kremlin stooge to oversee America’s intelligence community.
Trump’s choice to be his director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democratic congresswoman, has been tarred as “likely a Russian asset” by Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL). The New York Times last week devoted a feature-length story to how Gabbard has become a “favorite of Russia’s state media.” Hillary Clinton once claimed Moscow was “grooming” her to run for president. Former congressman Adam Kinzinger, writing in The Bulwark, called her “outright disloyal.”
Gabbard certainly has very different views than Clinton and Kinzinger on foreign policy and the intelligence community. But her neutrality on Ukraine’s war for survival and her openness to diplomacy with despots also places her out of step with the mainstream of the Republican majority (not to mention most Democrats) in the Senate. She will have some explaining to do in her nomination hearing.
I happen to think Gabbard is far too credulous when it comes to some of the world’s most despicable tyrants. Her past remarks about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine were horrendous. Consider her video message from February 27, 2022, three days after Russia unilaterally invaded Ukraine. “It’s time to put geopolitics aside and embrace the spirit of aloha, respect and love, for the Ukrainian people by coming to an agreement that Ukraine will be a neutral country.”
She uttered those words when Ukraine was at risk of extinguishment by the Russian army. There was no room for both sides at that moment. The Ukrainians were the victims; the Russians were the aggressors. And yet Gabbard believed Russia should be rewarded by preemptively closing off Ukraine’s prospect of joining NATO’s defensive alliance, even after the country had historically been invaded and starved by its powerful neighbor. No thanks.