Progressive lawmakers who once worked closely with former Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard are not rushing to support President-elect Donald Trump‘s nominee for director of national intelligence.
The former Democratic congresswoman-turned-Republican nominee for a key Trump administration role has worked closely with some of the Democratic senators who could decide her fate during the confirmation process.
“I did work with her, and I did like her,” said Sen. Peter Welch (D-VT), who sponsored legislation while serving in the House with Gabbard in 2017.
“The Tulsi Gabbard I worked with is Tulsi Gabbard 4.0, so I have to figure out who that is,” Welch told the Washington Examiner on Tuesday.
Welch said he would give her nomination fair consideration but had questions about whether she was the right candidate to oversee 18 intelligence agencies with a budget of about $70 billion.
“I’m going to go through the process on all these nominations, and my orientation is to give the benefit of the doubt to the president’s nominees, but not a blank check,” Welch said. “There’s a lot of significant questions about Gabbard in that job.”
Gabbard, who served in the Hawaii Army National Guard and was deployed to Iraq with a medical unit, was known for her anti-interventionist politics and populist economics during her career in the House from 2013 to 2021.
During the 2016 presidential election, she criticized the Democratic National Committee as being biased in favor of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. She earned much respect among left-wing activists when she resigned her position as DNC vice chairwoman to endorse Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) for president and became a prominent surrogate who gave a nominating speech at the 2016 Democratic convention.
She was at odds with the Obama administration in calling for the end of support for Syria’s opposition movement against President Bashar al-Assad’s authoritarian rule.
In 2017, Gabbard traveled to Syria and met Assad and accused the United States of supporting terrorists there, angering members of the Democratic Party.
“It’s true, she campaigned on behalf of many Senate Democrats when she was a young and promising House Democrat,” a Democratic Senate aide said on the condition of anonymity. “But, when she left the party, I think many became distrustful of her and her motives, even if they share some of the same views on foreign policy.”
The former 2020 presidential candidate, who dropped out and endorsed President Joe Biden, announced she was leaving the Democratic Party in 2022. Last month, she announced she was joining the Republican Party at a Trump rally in North Carolina.
Gabbard, 43, has since staked out a role as an outspoken critic of U.S. military interventions overseas and aid to Ukraine. Gabbard has been accused of parroting Russian propaganda about the war, and state-run media in Moscow have praised her and even referred to her as a Russian agent.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) came out as a “hard no” on Gabbard, pointing out that her statements have often been at odds with the U.S. intelligence community’s assessments and that her previous statements could lead to Russian sympathizing in the future.
“Do you really want her to have all of the secrets of the United States and our defense intelligence agencies when she has so clearly been in Putin’s pocket?” Warren said during an interview on MSNBC over the weekend. “That just has to be a hard no.”
Tulsi Gabbard has put her life on the line to defend this country. People can disagree on issues, but it is outrageous for anyone to suggest that Tulsi is a foreign asset.
— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) October 21, 2019
Sens. Ed Markey (D-MA) and Jeff Merkley (D-OR) declined to say whether they would back Gabbard when the Washington Examiner asked their offices.
Gabbard supporters resurfaced a social media post from Sanders in October 2019, in which he defended her and pushed back against claims that she is a foreign asset.
“Tulsi Gabbard has put her life on the line to defend this country,” Sanders wrote in the post. “People can disagree on issues, but it is outrageous for anyone to suggest that Tulsi is a foreign asset.”
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However, that past defense may not translate to votes.
When asked whether he stood by his 2019 comments and if he could vote to support her, Sanders responded with “no comment” when asked twice by the Washington Examiner on Monday and Tuesday.
