Trump could also be attempting to alter that, nonetheless, primarily based on recommendations in Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s blueprint for a second Trump presidency. In the chapter on the intelligence group, the doc means that the ODNI ought to be the only real company compiling the every day intelligence briefing for Trump and will have full oversight of all the intelligence group’s finances.
Since Gabbard was introduced because the ODNI nominee, many Democratic lawmakers have criticized the choice, pointing to Gabbard’s lack of expertise within the intelligence group and her questionable views on Russia and Syria.
Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger, member of the House Intelligence Committee of Virginia, wrote on X she was “shocked by Tulsi Gabbard’s nomination,” including: “Not solely is she unprepared and unqualified, however she traffics in conspiracy theories and allies herself with dictators like Bashar-al Assad and Vladimir Putin.”
Gabbard has a protracted historical past of espousing controversial views on overseas coverage, in addition to being linked to conspiracy theories.
Gabbard has for years been linked to an extremist department of Hare Krishna known as the Science of Identity Foundation. The group, which some former members they described it as a cultis led by Chris Butler, who’s revered by a few of his followers as a deity and who Gabbard has described as his “guru”.
He gained nationwide notoriety in 2017 when he met in particular person with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad throughout what his workplace known as a “fact-finding” mission to the Middle East. He later raised doubts about U.S. intelligence businesses’ evaluation that the Assad regime had used chemical weapons towards civilians and known as U.S. airstrikes towards Syrian targets in response to the chemical assaults “reckless and shortsighted.”
After leaving the Democratic Party in 2022, he criticized it utilizing phrases paying homage to the coded language utilized by QAnon followers, labeling his former get together an “elitist cabal of warmongers” pushed by “cowardly cowardice.”
In 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine, Gabbard made feedback that some interpreted as justifying Putin’s choice, arguing that if the United States “had merely acknowledged Russia’s authentic safety considerations” in relation to Ukraine’s try to hitch NATO, the struggle may have been prevented.
He additionally made feedback that have been used to gas the Russian-backed conspiracy principle that U.S.-funded biolabs in Ukraine have been used to launch organic weapons. When Trump introduced that Gabbard was his alternative for DNI, Russian state TV hosts famous the information.
Gabbard additionally campaigned for Kari Lake in 2022 in her failed gubernatorial race in Arizona. Lake was by then one of the vital vocal proponents of election denial conspiracy theories about Trump’s 2020 election loss and would spend years claiming, with out proof, that his personal 2022 loss was attributable to voter fraud.
Gabbard didn’t reply to repeated requests for remark about her ties to Willis, however in an interview final April she talked about that she was visiting the border and filming a documentary, although she didn’t point out Willis’ involvement.
“I simply bought again final night time from a number of days on the California border. It’s part of the border in our nation that hasn’t gotten plenty of consideration,” Gabbard mentioned Kelsi Sheren’s perspective podcasts. “I’m placing collectively a brief documentary. I went there and introduced my husband, who’s a cinematographer, and a few cameras particularly, as a result of most individuals in America do not know what is going on on.
