By Alex Samuels Daily Kos Staff Tulsi Gabbard, the onetime Democrat who is Donald Trump’s pick to be the country’s next director of national intelligence, was a faithful consumer of Kremlin-controlled media, three of her former congressional aides told ABC News.
According to ABC’s report, the aides said that the failed presidential candidate regularly read and shared stories from RT—a state-run media outlet formerly known as Russia Today—even after being told that it wasn’t a credible news source. Gabbard’s former staffers suggested that they didn’t buy some claims from Democrats that their former boss is a “Russian asset.” But they do believe she’s become a staunch advocate for one of the United States’ chief adversaries thanks to her routine consumption of pro-Russia propaganda.
It’s unclear just how much consuming news from these outlets shaped Gabbard’s worldview. In fact, her former aides said that Gabbard read news from a plethora of outlets, ranging from stories peddled by far left factions to articles from extreme-right sources. But Gabbard’s views on Russian aggression in Europe, specifically, have become increasingly eyebrow-raising since her days as a Democratic House member representing Hawaii.
The aides provided ABC News with an internal memo that Gabbard sent to staff in 2017, for instance, which showed her extending unwarranted sympathy to the Kremlin. Among many other damning things, the former Bernie Sanders loyalist-turned-MAGA apologist complained about the United States’ “hostility toward Putin” and bemoaned the fact that “there isn’t any guarantee to Putin that we won’t try to overthrow Russia’s government.”
“In fact, I’m pretty sure there are American politicians who would love to do that,” she added.
These fresh allegations against Gabbard have heightened some Democrats’ fears about her securing a spot in Trump’s Cabinet. Ivo Daalder, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO during the Obama administration, told ABC News that the thoughts outlined in Gabbard’s 2017 memo were “basically the Russian playbook.” He also expressed anxiety that she could soon be charged with overseeing America’s most sensitive intelligence assets.
Trump's
cabinet picks have, for the most part, emerged from the netherworld
traitors and idiots - often a combination of the two.
Her sympathy toward the Kremlin only grew after 2017. During her unsuccessful presidential run in 2020, Gabbard criticized America’s involvement in Syria’s civil war as a “regime change war” on President Bashar Assad, a key Russian ally. And in 2022, Gabbard defended Russia’s aggression toward Ukraine and went so far as to blame the United States and NATO for provoking the war by ignoring Russia’s security concerns.
And she didn’t stop there. In October, Gabbard baselessly suggested that Vice President Kamala Harris was the main instigator of the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine.
Gabbard’s pro-Russia takes have not gone unnoticed by the senators who will determine whether she earns a spot in the Trump administration. Even before ABC News’ bombshell report, some Republicans indicated that they were nervous about Gabbard’s worrisome positions on foreign policy issues, as well as her promotion of Russian propaganda.
“Behind closed doors, people think she might be compromised. Like it’s not hyperbole,” one Republican Senate aide told The Hill. “There are members of our conference who think she’s a [Russian] asset.”
These latest revelations certainly aren’t good news for Trump, who has already had two of his nominees drop out (see: Matt Gaetz and Chad Chronister, his picks to head up the Department of Justice and the Drug Enforcement Administration).
The good news for Gabbard, at least for now, is that another one of Trump’s potential appointees, defense secretary nominee and Fox News host Pete Hegseth, is now in the hot seat for a series of scandalous revelations and accusations about his own past. That means Gabbard’s troublesome views and actions have flown mostly under the radar.
But who knows how long that will last.
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