How Tulsi Gabbard became a favorite of Russia’s state media

In 2017, when she was still a Democratic member of Congress, Tulsi Gabbard traveled to Syria and met the country’s authoritarian president, Bashar Assad. She also accused the United States of supporting terrorists there.

The day after Vladimir Putin began a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, 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.

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 Trump, who last week picked her to oversee the nation’s 18 intelligence agencies and departments.

Her selection to be 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, Gabbard seems to simply share the Kremlin’s geopolitical views, especially when it comes to the exercise of American military power.

In Russia, the reaction to her potential appointment has been gleeful, even if Putin’s government remains wary of American policies, even under a second Trump administration.

“The CIA and the FBI are trembling,” Komsomolskaya Pravda, a Russian newspaper, wrote Friday in a glowing profile of Gabbard, noting, positively, that Ukrainians consider her “an agent of the Russian state.” Rossiya-1, a state television channel, called her a Russian “comrade” in Trump’s emerging Cabinet.

Russian media has emphasized Gabbard’s desire to improve relations with Moscow, according to FilterLabs, a firm that analyzes social media, state-run news organizations and other internet postings to track public sentiment in Russia.

“Gabbard fits an overall pattern of Trump breaking with much of the post-Cold War consensus,” said Jonathan Teubner, the CEO of FilterLabs. “She is, for Russia, the one that perhaps most perfectly embodies the changes they were hoping for from the U.S.”

Trump’s critics called the choice a dangerous one that would undermine national security and that signaled a deference to Putin’s worldview.

“Nominating Gabbard for director of national intelligence is the way to Putin’s heart, and it tells the world that America under Trump will be the Kremlin’s ally rather than an adversary,” Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a professor of history at New York University and the author of “Strongmen,” a 2020 book about authoritarian leaders, wrote Friday. “And so we would have a national security official who would potentially compromise our national security.”

Asked for comment on Gabbard’s pro-Russia stances and her amplification of Moscow’s messaging, Trump transition officials sent a copy of the president-elect’s comments when he announced his pick: “I know Tulsi will bring the fearless spirit that has defined her illustrious career to our intelligence community.”

If confirmed, she would have responsibility to oversee the very agency that monitored and called out Russian disinformation and influence efforts throughout the 2024 campaign.

She faces an uphill battle for confirmation in the Senate.

Among members from both parties, her tacit support of Russia’s war aims in Ukraine and her repetition of Kremlin disinformation have raised doubts about whether she should be given oversight of the intelligence agencies, including the responsibility of preparing the highly classified daily intelligence briefings for the returning president.

In choosing her, Trump signaled his deep distrust of those agencies. During his first administration, he publicly rebuked senior intelligence officers when their assessments differed from his own. Gabbard’s iconoclastic views over the years suggest that she shares that distrust, especially when it comes to Russia and the war in Ukraine.

In several public appearances and in social media posts, she has outlined a policy not different from the views of Vice President-elect JD Vance, who has also emerged as a critic of American support for Ukraine.

If confirmed, Gabbard would not be the only voice on intelligence matters. John Ratcliffe, Trump’s final director of national intelligence in his first administration, has been chosen to be CIA director. Gabbard would, however, still be influential in determining what intelligence Trump and other top officials see in the daily intelligence briefing, and would be in a position to highlight intelligence that reinforces Trump’s views.

For Gabbard, the invitation to join Trump’s administration represents a stunning political evolution. Only four years ago, she sought the Democratic presidential nomination, albeit as an anti-establishment candidate, and endorsed President Joe Biden when he won the nod.

Since then, however, she has broken with the Democratic Party and drifted toward a conspiratorial view of the world and American power in it.

“This war and suffering could have easily been avoided if Biden Admin/NATO had simply acknowledged Russia’s legitimate security concerns regarding Ukraine’s becoming a member of NATO, which would mean US/NATO forces right on Russia’s border,” she wrote on Twitter, now known as X, when the war began in February 2022.

Her willingness to criticize the Biden administration has made her, like other prominent critics of the government, a favorite source of anti-American content on Russia’s state television networks.

Vladimir Solovyov, a popular talk show host, called her “our girlfriend” in a segment in 2022. The program included an interview Gabbard did with Tucker Carlson in which she claimed that Biden’s goal was to end Putin’s control of the Russian government, according to Julia Davis, the creator of the Russian Media Monitor, which tracks Kremlin propaganda.

In fact, Gabbard honed her pro-Russia views on Carlson’s show on Fox News before his program was canceled. She became a regular guest and occasionally filled in as host when Carlson was away.

Clips from her appearances on Carlson’s show that repeated Kremlin talking points were quickly picked up by Russian state media.

In some cases, she echoed story lines that Russia’s propagandists created, which the Russians then recycled on their own media as evidence that the conspiracy theories they had manufactured were true. For the Kremlin, it was a virtuous cycle.

The frequency of her citations on Russian state television prompted sharp criticism and attention inside the U.S. government. Hillary Clinton, the former first lady, secretary of state and Democratic presidential nominee in 2016, once called her a “Russian asset.”

Gabbard, 43, has an eclectic political background, often occupying a space where the left and right overlap — such as in their opposition to foreign military intervention and a more sympathetic view of Russia.

She began in state politics in Hawaii at 21 and emerged as a talented, charismatic young Democrat, though one who often espoused the culture-war views of today’s right, taking early positions against abortion and same-sex marriage, for instance.

At the time, she was closely aligned with her father, Mike Gabbard, a leader of Hawaii’s movement against same-sex marriage. At one point, she inveighed against “homosexual activists” who were, she said, forcing “their values down the throats of the children in our schools.” (The statement came during her mother’s run for the state school board in 2000.) By the time she ran for Congress in 2012, she had expressed support for abortion rights and for same-sex marriage, later stating in a video apology that her earlier views on gay issues had been shaped by her father.

In 2003, she joined the Hawaii Army National Guard and served in Iraq in 2004 and 2005 as a specialist with a medical unit of the 29th Infantry Brigade Combat Team. After attending officer training in Alabama, she served a second tour in the region as a military police officer in Kuwait. She left the guard in 2020 to join the Army Reserve, where she continues to serve with the rank of lieutenant colonel.

In interviews, she has cited her military service as a factor in her political views about the exercise of American military might.

In 2013, she opposed President Barack Obama’s ultimately aborted plans for airstrikes against Syria. She later criticized the administration for failing to properly call out “Islamist extremists.” She also questioned evidence showing that Syrian forces used chemical weapons in an attack that killed dozens.

In 2016 she opposed the favorite for the Democrats’ presidential nomination, Clinton, becoming an ardent supporter of her chief Democratic rival that year, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

Her willingness to challenge the Democratic establishment earned her an invitation to visit Trump at Trump Tower during the 2016 presidential transition period.

It also made her an appealing figure for conservative news bookers, particularly those for Carlson’s Fox News show. On one show, the two agreed that U.S. support for Syrian rebels seeking to topple Assad was aiding terrorists — an interview that came as Russia bombed U.S.-backed rebels in the name of combating terrorism.

Gabbard ultimately became a paid Fox News contributor, as Carlson was emerging as an ardently anti-interventionist, and increasingly pro-Putin, figure in the MAGA movement.

As Russian forces gathered before their invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Gabbard joined Carlson to speak out against Biden’s move to impose new sanctions against Russia, even as she said she opposed Russia’s military operation. “The reality is that these sanctions don’t work whether they were put in before or now or later,” she said. “What we do know is that they will increase suffering and hardship for the American people, and this is the whole problem with the Biden administration.”

Her appearances were regularly picked up by Russia’s state media, including the international network RT, which promoted her critiques and lauded her with headlines such as “Tulsi Gabbard dares to challenge Washington’s war machine” and “Biden wants regime change in Russia — ex-congresswoman.”

By this year, Gabbard’s politics converged with Trump’s. In October, she joined the Republican Party and hit the campaign trail on his behalf, extolling him as a peacemaker.

“A vote for Donald Trump is a vote for a man who wants to end wars, not start them,” she said at Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden shortly before Election Day, “and who has demonstrated already that he has the courage and strength to stand up and fight for peace.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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