President Donald Trump singled out Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard while taking a victory lap with Republican lawmakers at the White House on Tuesday night.
“Oh, where’s Tulsi?” Trump asked while introducing people at the East Room reception. “She’s, like, hotter than everybody. She’s the hottest one in the room right now.” Even hotter than House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), Trump added with a laugh.
Trump quickly elaborated on why Gabbard had catapulted to the top of his favorites list. “She found out that Barack Hussein Obama led a group of people and they cheated in the elections,” he said. “And they cheated without question.”
“The witch hunt that you should be talking about is they caught President Obama absolutely cold. … They tried to rig the election and they got caught — and there should be very severe consequences for that,” Trump told reporters earlier in the day.
Or as Gabbard put it in her own words on social media late last week in what is now her pinned post on X, “Americans will finally learn the truth about how in 2016, intelligence was politicized and weaponized by the most powerful people in the Obama Administration to lay the groundwork for what was essentially a years-long coup against [Trump], subverting the will of the American people and undermining our democratic republic.”
Gabbard’s contention is not only was there no collusion between Russia and Trump or his campaign on the Kremlin’s 2016 election interference, a conclusion reached by past GOP-led congressional intelligence committees and acknowledged by Trump-Russia special counsel Robert Mueller in his widely anticipated report, but that the finding that it was Russia’s intention to help elect Trump rather than just damage Hillary Clinton or sow general discord was a politically motivated reading of the intelligence.
It’s a weighty allegation and a big moment in the Trump administration’s spotlight for Gabbard. Most everyone involved has denied her allegations, which drew a rare public rebuke from Obama, albeit through a spokesman. Democrats have been quick to point out that one of the Republican-controlled committees that endorsed the view that Russia sought to help Trump was chaired at the time by Marco Rubio, who is now Trump’s secretary of state.
Gabbard was viewed as an unconventional pick for DNI. Republicans were initially cool to her usually dovish foreign policy views, which some characterized as too accommodating of dictators. However, the Senate voted to confirm her 52-48, with only Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) dissenting on the GOP side.
But not long after Gabbard was confirmed, her standing in the administration was questioned. She appeared to be at odds with Trump over the Iranian nuclear program. “She’s wrong,” Trump said when a reporter cited a Gabbard intelligence assessment on Iran’s progress toward a nuclear weapon. NBC News reported she was sidelined on Israel and Iran while journalists strained to find her in photographs of Trump’s national security team in the Situation Room after he ordered strikes on Iranian nuclear sites.
The White House denied Gabbard was marginalized on policy or missing from the Situation Room, posting an image of her sitting next to CIA Director John Ratcliffe. Allies also maintained that the press were exaggerating the discrepancy between Trump and Gabbard on the intelligence about Iran.
Gabbard was brought into the administration to do two things: represent the breadth of the Trump coalition and push back against politicized intelligence that she has long maintained led to U.S. wars such as the invasion of Iraq.
On the first point, Gabbard was a nontraditional Trump supporter, similar to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and podcaster Joe Rogan. On the second, the combat veteran’s star turn may be pushing back on the bipartisan intelligence consensus on Trump-Russia.
Formerly a progressive Democratic congresswoman, she supported socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination, which she sought in the 2020 election cycle. While Gabbard didn’t get very far, she did badly damage Kamala Harris in a 2019 debate. That made Gabbard all the more valuable when she endorsed Trump for president in 2024 rather than Harris, who was then the vice president and then-President Joe Biden’s replacement at the top of the Democratic ticket. Gabbard had also previously stepped down from a leadership position at the Democratic National Committee after accusing party leaders of rigging the 2016 primary process against Sanders.
Gabbard is taking the lead on the Trump-Russia reappraisal, which could lead to a criminal investigation, as Attorney General Pam Bondi and others in the administration are being criticized for insufficient transparency on the sex trafficking case against disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein. The White House and the Justice Department have been playing cleanup on Epstein ever since the DOJ essentially declared the matter closed on July 7 after teasing more information for weeks.
A strangely sourced Wall Street Journal article about an alleged bawdy birthday gift from Trump to Epstein rallied the MAGA troops behind the president but hasn’t put the issue to rest. House Republicans are skipping town before a bipartisan group of lawmakers can preempt the administration by voting to force the release of Epstein-related files. Reps. Thomas Massie (R-KY), a frequent Trump foil, and Ro Khanna (D-CA) have been pushing a discharge petition on the matter.
Gabbard, by contrast, won plaudits for her role in releasing thousands of FBI documents related to the investigation of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. But Trump-Russia is a much more hotly disputed political topic, especially if Gabbard is going to use the t-word about Obama’s team: treason.
TRUMP STRUGGLES TO CONVINCE MAGA EPSTEIN FILES A RUSSIA-LIKE ‘HOAX’
The Epstein fiasco will only increase the appetite within MAGA to see powerful figures held accountable for any Trump-Russia malfeasance. Democrats and much of the press will dismiss it as a distraction from Epstein at best or an unhinged conspiracy theory at worst. “Trump rehashes years-old grievances on Russia investigation after new intelligence report,” an Associated Press headline read.
But Gabbard could also greatly increase her standing with Trump and influence in the administration by slaying the beast that haunted his first term. Tulsi’s time could be now.