Trump picks Tulsi Gabbard for Director of National Intelligence

(CNN) — President-elect Donald Trump said Wednesday he’s selected former Democratic congresswoman-turned Trump supporter Tulsi Gabbard as his pick to be director of national intelligence.

The selection of Gabbard is sure to set off a major confirmation fight.

Gabbard, an Army National Guard veteran, unsuccessfully ran for president in 2020 as a Democrat but said she was leaving the Democratic Party in 2022. She campaigned with Trump and served on his transition team.

In many ways, the transformation of Gabbard from isolationist, Democratic iconoclast to MAGA darling has been a gradual evolution, culminating in her announcement before the November election that she was joining the Republican Party after she had endorsed Trump.

She has long espoused the same seemingly contradictory attitude towards the US military as Trump: reverent of its might but skeptical of its use.

And like Trump, she has frequently appeared to take positions more favorable to foreign leaders widely considered not just American adversaries, but in some cases, murderers, including the presidents of Syria and Russia.

How influential Gabbard will be, however, remains an open question. The institutional impact of the director of national intelligence — nominally the top post overseeing the 18 agencies that make up the Intelligence Community but which has existed only since 2005 — has varied between administrations. Intelligence officials say that the CIA — with its vast collection and analysis capabilities — remains the heavyweight inside the IC. Trump has tapped a former director of national intelligence, John Ratcliffe, to run the CIA.

Trump praised Gabbard in a statement announcing her selection, saying: “I know Tulsi will bring the fearless spirit that has defined her illustrious career to our Intelligence Community, championing our Constitutional Rights, and securing Peace through Strength.”

Gabbard helped Trump in his debate prep before his September debate with Vice President Kamala Harris.

“If I can be helpful to President Trump in any way, it really is just sharing the experience that I had with her on that debate stage in 2020, and frankly helping to point out some ways that Kamala Harris has already shown that she’s trying to move away from her record, move away from her positions,” Gabbard said in an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union.”

She has ties to Trump allies like Steve Bannon, who said in a statement to CNN: “I brought Colonel Gabbard to meet President Elect Trump in November 2016 for a role in the Administration. It did not work out then, but now we have one of the strongest America First proponents nominated to take charge of an out of control and destructive intelligence community.”

When Gabbard ran for president in the 2020 campaign, she touted herself as an Iraq War vet with an anti-interventionist foreign policy. Gabbard and Harris had several notable exchanges during the 2020 Democratic primary debates, where Harris criticized Gabbard for her foreign policy views while Gabbard challenged Harris’ record on criminal justice.

The former Hawaii congresswoman has taken stances that have been at odds with US foreign policy, including meeting with Syrian President Bashar Assad in Syria in 2017, and saying in 2019 that he was “not an enemy of the United States.”

“When the opportunity arose to meet with him, I did so because I felt that it’s important that if we profess to truly care about the Syrian people, about their suffering, then we’ve got to be able to meet with anyone that we need to if there is a possibility that we can achieve peace,” she said after her 2017 meeting.

Even as a Democrat, Gabbard shared some of Trump’s isolationist instincts, supporting a withdrawal of US troops from Syria — even as she declared during one of the Democratic primary debates that “Donald Trump is not behaving like a patriot.”

In early 2022, she parroted Russian President Vladimir Putin’s rationale for its invasion of Ukraine, pinning the blame not on Moscow but on the Biden administration’s failure to acknowledge “Russia’s legitimate security concerns regarding Ukraine’s becoming a member of NATO” — a popular strain of thought in some right-wing circles.

“This war and suffering could have easily been avoided if Biden Admin/NATO had simply acknowledged Russia’s legitimate security concerns regarding Ukraine’s becoming a member of NATO, which would mean US/NATO forces right on Russia’s border,” Gabbard wrote on X in February 2022.

During Gabbard’s presidential bid in the Democratic primary in 2019, Hillary Clinton suggested in an interview that the Russians were “grooming” her to run as a third-party candidate.

CNN’s Sara Murray contributed reporting.

This story has been updated with additional details.

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