Exclusive: Fact checking the attacks on Tulsi Gabbard

There are lots of attacks being leveled against Tulsi Gabbard; we fact checked a lot of them...

Democrats are trying to delay and sink Tulsi Gabbard’s nomination, after President Donald Trump picked her to serve as Director of National Intelligence (DNI).

Attacks on Gabbard, who has spent decades in the military, have focused on everything from her religion, to her views on Israel and Iran, to her meeting with Bashar al-Assad. The Washington Reporter’s reviews of several of the attacks against her are below.

Claim: Gabbard is unqualified to be DNI

Reality:

According to U.S. Code, it is “desirable” for the DNI to be “a commissioned officer of the Armed Forces in active status; or have, by training or experience, an appreciation of military intelligence activities and requirements.” Gabbard has served on active duty and in the Army Reserves for over two decades, served on the House Foreign Affairs and Armed Services Committees, and deployed to multiple war zones.

Claim: Gabbard is sympathetic towards Bashar al-Assad

Reality:

While Gabbard did meet with Syria’s now-deposed dictator in 2017, her visit followed a similar one undertaken by Democrats like Nancy Pelosi and John Kerry; in the years since, she has been critical of Assad, whose usage of chemical weapons on his own civilians went infamously unpunished by President Barack Obama. In 2019, Gabbard called Assad a “brutal dictator. Just like Saddam Hussein. Just like Gadhafi in Libya.”

Claim: Gabbard doubts that Assad used chemical weapons against his own people

Reality:

On multiple occasions in 2019, in 2020, and beyond, Gabbard confirmed that she believes that Assad used chemical weapons against his own population.

Claim: Gabbard is soft on Iran

Reality:

While Gabbard did vote for a 2015 resolution in support of the Iran Deal, she was anti-nuclear Iran before and has remained so in the years since. In 2013, she co-sponsored the Nuclear Iran Prevention Act, which would impose harsher sanctions on Iran. In the years since the Iran Deal was implemented, she has called it “a disaster for Israel and a disaster for the world [that] allowed Iran to continue its path toward obtaining nuclear weapons and gave them billions of dollars that they are using to fund terrorism.”

Claim: Gabbard is a Russian asset

Reality:

Dating back to at least Vladimir Putin’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, Gabbard has pushed back on Russian aggression. At the time, she called for “meaningful American military assistance for Ukrainian forces” and for “stiffer, more painful economic sanctions for Russia.” In 2019, she called Putin an American adversary, and following his 2022 invasion of Ukraine, she called his moves “reprehensible,” demanding that he “pull [his] forces out now.”

Claim: Gabbard is anti-Israel

Reality:

While Gabbard is now a Republican, she regularly stood out among those in her former political party for her defense of Israel. Gabbard opposes a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas-run Gaza, stating that “as long as Hamas is in power, the people of Israel will not be secure and cannot live in peace.” Gabbard criticized then-President Joe Biden and then-Vice President Kamala Harris in November 2023 for skipping the national March for Israel.

She has also been a fierce critic of the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divest, and Sanction (BDS) movement; in addition to supporting legislation that would neuter the United Nations’s one-sided attacks on Israel, she also called anti-Israel protesters “puppets” of a “radical Islamist organization.”

Claim: Gabbard is a member of the Science of Identify Foundation

Reality:

Gabbard is not a member of this group, according to her team.