Trump picks Tulsi Gabbard, Iraq veteran who called Democrats ‘elitist warmongers,’ as intelligence director | 10 points

US President-elect Donald J Trump has selected Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democratic congresswoman turned Republican, as the new director of national intelligence. Trump praised Gabbard's experience as a veteran and her “broad support in both Parties” when announcing her appointment.

Along with John Ratcliffe, Donald Trump’s choice to lead the CIA, Tulsi Gabbard would be a top intelligence adviser to the White House.

Gabbard is set to oversee 18 spy agencies and be responsible for preparing the President-elect Donald Trump's Daily Brief, when he assumes office for a second term. A Daily Brief is a written intelligence summary assembled each morning.

A spokeswoman for Trump said Gabbard was picked to help with the preparations in part because of her 2019 attacks on Kamala Harris during the Democratic primaries. In a debate that July, Gabbard accused Harris of hypocrisy in how she had helped enforce marijuana laws.

What To Know About Tulsi Gabbard

• Tulsi Gabbard had briefly ran for president as a Democrat in 2020—endorsed Donald Trump in August and joined his transition team shortly after. Gabbard was briefly considered by Trump as a possible running mate for US Presidential Elections. 
• Tulsi Gabbard, a Samoan American, represented Hawaii in Congress from 2013 to 2021
• While in Congress, Tulsi Gabbard rose to prominence for criticizing the Barack Obama administration for how it discussed terrorism in the Middle East and Islamic extremism.

• Tulsi Gabbard left the Democratic Party in 2022 to become an independent, saying at the time that Democrats were an “elitist cabal of warmongers driven by cowardly wokeness,” before joining the Republican Party this October.
• Tulsi Gabbard has long been a critic of US foreign policy—recently criticizing US aid to Ukraine—and The New York Times reported her selection as director of intelligence indicates Trump’s intention to give foreign policy roles to those “deeply skeptical of the effectiveness of US military intervention abroad.”

• Tulsi Gabbard called out both Democratic and Republican administrations for what she saw as failed foreign policies rooted in aggressive military tactics. “Counterproductive regime-change wars that make our country less safe,” she said, “take more lives and cost taxpayers trillions more dollars.”
• Tulsi drew criticism in 2017 after she quietly visited Syria and met with President Bashar al-Assad, saying at the time she 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.”

• Two years later, during her presidential run, Tulsi Gabbard refused to call him a war criminal and said he was “not the enemy of the United States because Syria does not pose a direct threat to the United States.”
• Tulsi Gabbard never gave a direct answer when asked if she would trust the US intelligence community if she were elected, saying, “We have, in our recent past, a situation where our own government told lies to the American people, and to the United Nations for that matter, to launch a war,” referencing the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

• Gabbard was a member of the Hawaii National Guard and was deployed to Iraq in 2005, and said she endorsed Trump in part because she said he sees “war as a last resort” and “understands the grave responsibility that a president” bears for the lives of those serving their country.”