The fall of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad immediately triggered conversation about Tulsi Gabbard, the former Democratic congressman and President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to be Director of National Intelligence — and not just among everyday citizens. Adam Kinzinger, the former Republican congressman, joked on X/Twitter as news broke that Gabbard could offer the deposed Syrian president “safe harbor” in her home.
Gabbard met with the Syrian dictator in 2017, and she did so in her capacity as a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. In one particularly shocking moment, The Independent reported last month that when she met with young girls from Syria who had survived airstrikes from Assad’s military, she allegedly asked them how they knew it was Assad who bombed them. It was a question so insulting that the translator present said he refused to translate it.
During her time in Congress, Gabbard also praised Vladimir Putin for bombing Isis in Syria, while the Obama administration would not. She also spread the conspiratorial idea that “biolabs” funded by the United States across the world — which do not exist — could unleash “dangerous pathogens.”
But despite all this, most Republican senators did not seem bothered by Gabbard’s past when The Independent asked them about it this week.
Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma stressed that Gabbard had met not only with Assad but also opposition leaders in the past.
“I don’t agree with that trip. I do understand what she was trying to accomplish, trying to be able to research,” Lankford, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told The Independent. “She also is pretty clear that she doesn’t like Assad.”
Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a military hawk who has since come to embrace Trump, also added that he was not too worried about Gabbard after the fall of Assad.
“I’m concerned that we come up with a rational policy to prevent Isis from coming back,” Graham told The Independent.
“There are lots of times in which members of Congress have met with foreign leaders,” said Senator Mike Rounds of South Dakota. “That part, as I shared with her, does not concern me. So I look forward to working with her as she prepares for the open and closed hearings.”
Senator Chuck Grassley, the longest-serving Republican Senator, told The Independent: “I think if she can tell me she’s going to cooperate with us on Oversight and make things transparent, it’d be difficult for me not to vote for her. But I never make up a judgment on who I’m voting for till after the hearing.”
But Senator Susan Collins told The Independent she worried about some of Gabbard’s past statements.
“I do not know her at all, so I need to do more research on her visit to Assad, her comments about Putin, Russia,” she said. “All of those are issues that need to be further dealt with.”
Clearly, Republicans have largely shifted from being anxious about nominating some of Trump’s more controversial picks to mostly falling in line.
Democrats, for their part, have made their concerns about Gabbard’s past work in Syria well-known. Senator Martin Heinrich of New Mexico said simply, “Yes” when The Independent asked if he had any worries about Gabbard.
One person who is glad to not have to comment? Senator Mitt Romney, who is retiring at the end of the year and who previously clashed with Gabbard, whom he accused of spreading Russian propaganda.
“I’m just not commenting on the Trump nominees,” he told The Independent. “But I trust my colleagues to take that responsibility seriously.”
That’s the sound of a man unburdened by what has been.
