President-elect Donald Trump’s cabinet nomination woes have grown as his pick for Director of National Intelligence faces a rocky confirmation.
Former Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard has managed to avoid the large scale public scrutiny plaguing fellow Trump nominees Pete Hegseth, who faces a litany of bombshell allegations regarding his conduct with women and alcohol, and Kash Patel, a controversial anti-establishment figure who the president-elect tapped to lead the FBI.
Despite remaining under the radar, several aides and senators reportedly see Gabbard’s path to confirmation as the most difficult of those three.
“I think Gabbard, out of the three, still has the toughest path,” one Senate GOP aide told The Hill. “[She] is the most at risk.”
The aide’s comments echo concerns broached by former Trump national security adviser John Bolton who compared Gabbard to a “a hand grenade ready to explode” in November.
“Behind closed doors, people think she might be compromised. Like it’s not hyperbole,” the aide continued. “There are members of our conference who think she’s a [Russian] asset.”
A number of GOP senators specifically noted skepticism about her foreign policy history and her trustworthiness. If confirmed, she would lead the nation’s intelligence apparatus.
Some Republican senators are reportedly eager to see the FBI file on Gabbard, especially information connected to her support of leaker turned Russian citizen Edward Snowden. Her sympathy for Snowden, according to Punchbowl, is especially concerning because of the danger his actions posed to national security.
While Gabbard is well liked in Trump’s orbit, she must still win over a number of longtime Republican defense hawks and supporters of Ukraine, a task complicated by her past remarks.
The former congresswoman’s sympathetic comments toward Moscow have been regurgitated and promoted by Russian state media, an entity which also hailed Gabbard as a “superwoman” and praised Trump’s selection of her for the cabinet position.
She has also secretly met with Syrian President Bashar Assad, a staunch Putin ally, whom she claimed was not an enemy of the U.S., breaking with the nation’s approach to Middle East diplomacy.
Gabbard, however, later called Assad a “brutal dictator.”
Regardless of her backtracking, fellow Republican Nikki Haley cited Gabbard’s diplomatic entanglements when snubbing her nomination for DNI, claiming the role is “not a place for a Russian, Iranian, Syrian, Chinese sympathizer.”
Republican senators have dismissed the idea that Gabbard is untrustworthy. Still, given that she is not expected to win any Democratic votes in her confirmation, Gabbard can only afford to lose three GOP votes.
