One of the senior administration officials, quoted anonymously by Politico, said there is a growing perception within the West Wing that the former Hawaii Democratic congresswoman, who once ran for that party’s presidential nomination, “doesn’t add anything to any conversation.”
“I don’t think [Trump] dislikes Tulsi as a person,” said another. “But certainly the video made him not super hot on her… and he doesn’t like it when people are off message.” They added that “many took that video as trying to correct the administration’s position.”
The president’s souring on Gabbard emerged in public view on Tuesday when a reporter aboard Air Force One asked him about comments his intelligence chief had made before Congress in March in which she noted that, although Iran’s enriched uranium levels were at an all-time high, the expert opinion was that Tehran was not currently seeking to develop a nuclear bomb.
“I don’t care what she said,” Trump hit back. “I think they were very close to having a weapon.”
He has also reportedly been considering the idea of closing Gabbard’s office and integrating its responsibilities into the CIA’s leadership infrastructure. However, this could have a significant impact on oversight of the U.S. intelligence community and affect how information is relayed to the commander-in-chief.
Gabbard, who has previously stirred controversy by entertaining conspiracy theories regarding the wars in Ukraine and Syria, has long been an advocate of keeping the U.S. out of “forever wars,” a position Trump himself has taken in the past, and earlier this year visited Hiroshima in Japan to see the site devastated by an American nuclear blast at the close of the Second World War, a trip the White House questioned.
In opposing U.S. involvement with Benjamin Netanyahu’s Operation Rising Lion, the intelligence director is by no means alone among Trump’s MAGA movement, with leading voices such as Tucker Carlson speaking out and Marjorie Taylor Greene warning that interventionism only serves to “put America last, kill innocent people, [is] making us broke, and will ultimately lead to our destruction.”
