How Tulsi Gabbard Became a Favorite of Russia’s State Media
President-elect Donald J. Trump’s pick to be the director of national intelligence has raised alarms among national security officials.
By Steven Lee Myers Jim Rutenberg and Julian E. Barnes
Steven Lee Myers reports on Russian disinformation; Jim Rutenberg reports on politics and media; Julian E. Barnes reports on U.S. intelligence agencies.
In 2017, when she was still a Democratic member of Congress, Tulsi Gabbard traveled to Syria and met the country’s authoritarian president, Bashar al-Assad. She also accused the United States of supporting terrorists there.
The day after Vladimir V. Putin began a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Ms. Gabbard blamed the United States and NATO for provoking the war by ignoring Russia’s security concerns.
She has since suggested that the United States covertly worked with Ukraine on dangerous biological pathogens and was culpable for the bombing of the Nord Stream gas pipeline from Russia to Germany in September 2022. European prosecutors and U.S. officials say that sabotage was carried out by Ukrainian operatives.
Ms. Gabbard’s comments have earned her sharp rebukes from officials across the political spectrum in Washington, who have accused her of parroting the anti-American propaganda of the country’s adversaries. Her remarks have also made her a darling of the Kremlin’s vast state media apparatus — and, more recently, of President-elect Donald J. Trump, who this week nominated her to oversee the nation’s 18 intelligence agencies and departments.
Her nomination as the director of national intelligence has raised alarms among national security officials, not only because of her lack of experience in intelligence but also because she has embraced a worldview that mirrors disinformation straight out of the Kremlin’s playbook.
No evidence has emerged that she has ever collaborated in any way with Russia’s intelligence agencies. Instead, according to analysts and former officials, Ms. Gabbard seems to simply share the Kremlin’s geopolitical views, especially when it comes to the exercise of American military power.
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