Trump may seek to change that, however, based on suggestions contained in Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s blueprint for a second Trump presidency. In the chapter on the intelligence community, the document suggests that the ODNI should be the only agency drafting the daily intelligence briefing for Trump and should have full oversight of the entire intelligence community’s budget.
Since Gabbard was announced as the ODNI nominee, many Democratic lawmakers have criticized the decision, pointing out Gabbard’s lack of experience in the intelligence community and her questionable views on Russia and Syria.
Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger, a member of the House Intelligence Committee from Virginia, wrote on X she was “appalled at the nomination of Tulsi Gabbard,” adding: “Not only is she ill-prepared and unqualified, but she traffics in conspiracy theories and cozies up to dictators like Bashar-al Assad and Vladimir Putin.”
Gabbard has a long history of embracing controversial viewpoints on foreign policy as well as being connected to conspiracy theories.
Gabbard has been linked for years with an extremist offshoot of Hare Krishna, called the Science of Identity Foundation. The group, which some former members have described as a cult, is led by Chris Butler, who is worshipped by some of his followers as a deity and whom Gabbard has described as her “guru.”
She gained a level of national notoriety in 2017 when she met in person with Syrian president Bashar al-Assad during what her office called a “fact-finding” mission to the Middle East. She later raised doubts about the US intelligence agencies’ assessment that the Assad regime had used chemical weapons against civilians, and called US airstrikes against Syrian targets in response to the chemical attacks “reckless and short-sighted.”
Upon leaving the Democratic Party in 2022, she criticized it using phrasing reminiscent of the coded language used by followers of QAnon, labeling her former party an “elitist cabal of warmongers” driven by “cowardly wokeness.”
In 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine, Gabbard made comments that some interpreted as justifying Putin’s decision, claiming that if the US “had simply acknowledged Russia’s legitimate security concerns” in relation to Ukraine seeking to join NATO, the war could have been avoided.
She also made comments that were used to fuel the Russian-backed conspiracy theory that US-funded biolabs in Ukraine would be used to launch biological weapons. When Trump announced that Gabbard was his pick for DNI, Russian state TV presenters celebrated the news.
In 2022 Gabbard also campaigned for Kari Lake in her failed gubernatorial race in Arizona. Lake was at that point one of the most vocal proponents of election denial conspiracy theories about Trump’s election loss in 2020 and would spend years claiming, without evidence, that her own loss in 2022 was caused by election fraud.
Gabbard did not respond to repeated requests for comment about her links to Willis, but in an interview last April, she did mention the fact that she was visiting the border and making a documentary—though she did not mention Willis’ involvement.
“I just got back last night from a few days on the border in California. It’s a part of the border in our country that just hasn’t gotten much attention,” Gabbard told the Kelsi Sheren Perspective podcast. “I’m putting together a short documentary. I went there and brought my husband, who’s a cinematographer, and a few cameras specifically, because most people in America don’t know what’s happening.”
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