As President-elect Donald Trump solidifies his Cabinet with nominations that will need to be confirmed by the Senate when he takes office in mid-January, his pick for director of national intelligence is giving one GOP senator pause.
Trump selected former Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard for the high-level intelligence position, a move that has been slammed by some including former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, who sees her as a defender of China, Russia, Syria, and Iran.
Now, Sen. James Lankford (R-OK), who serves on the powerful Senate Intelligence Committee, is expressing some concern about her 2017 visit to Syria, in which she met with Syrian President Bashar al Assad and called for the end of support for Syria’s opposition movement against Assad’s authoritarian rule, a sentiment that put her at odds with the Obama administration’s stance on the issue.
Speaking on CNN’s State of the Union Sunday, host Dana Bash asked Lankford if he would “support her to oversee America’s intelligence community.”
“We’re going to go through hearings, we’re going to get everything out, we’re going to get facts and information to get the entire story. She is somebody who has been very outspoken. She’s obviously a past member of the military, she’s a veteran herself, she’s had the opportunity to be able to travel quite a bit around the world as a member of Congress. … She’s not been afraid to be able to speak out and say, ‘Hey, I disagree on some areas.’ But that’s a very different role than saying what is your philosophy and what is President Trump’s philosophy on how we’re going to handle national intelligence,” he said.
Bash then asked him if “anything” about Gabbard “concern[s]” him, leading to a visible sigh from Lankford.
“Well, we’ll have lots of questions. She met with Bashar Assad. We’ll want to know what the purpose was and what the direction for that was as a member of Congress. We’ll want to get a chance to talk about past comments that she’s made and get them into full context,” he said.
Besides the 2017 meeting with Assad, Gabbard previously said she was “skeptical” about the U.S. Defense Department and United Nations’s assessment that the Syrian government in 2017 used chemical weapons against their own people.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
She defended that stance two years later by pointing to her military service in the Iraq War, saying, ““I served in a war in Iraq — a war that was launched based on lies, and a war that was launched without evidence. And so the American people were duped. So as a soldier, as an American, as a member of Congress, it is my duty and my responsibility to exercise skepticism any time anyone tries to send our service members into harm’s way or use our military to go in and start a new war.”
According to a new poll released Sunday, 36% said Trump’s pick of Gabbard is a “good choice,” while 27% said it is not and 36% said they “haven’t heard enough” about her.