SCOOP: Inside Tulsi Gabbard's multi-nation trip to "advance President Trump's America First policies across the Indo-Pacific"

Tulsi Gabbard, America’s new Director of National Intelligence (DNI), was busy in recent days, embarking on her first multinational trip as DNI.

During her trip, which included stops in Hawaii, Japan, Thailand, India, and France, Gabbard spoke with the Washington Reporter at the prestigious Raisina Dialogue in New Delhi about what she is telling world leaders.

An Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) spokesperson told the Reporter that the rest of Gabbard’s trip was in line with her goals from the India stint.

“Having been born and raised in the Indo-Pacific region, DNI Gabbard brought a nuanced understanding of the area’s crucial partnerships and complex challenges as she explored opportunities to advance President [Donald] Trump’s America First policies across the Indo-Pacific,” the spokesperson said.

According to the spokesperson, Gabbard — who represented Hawaii for years in Congress — returned home and met with U.S. Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo, NSA-Hawaii senior leaders and intelligence officers, and Naval Special Warfare sailors who “briefed her on challenges faced in the region and existing U.S. capabilities to meet them.”

Paparo, like Gabbard, addressed the Raisina Dialogue. While there, he complemented her message, saying that the interests of India and the United States are “coming together.”

Gabbard also stopped by the NSA’s Hawaii outpost where she “reiterated the importance of accurate and timely intelligence that protects Americans’ Fourth Amendment rights,” the spokesperson added.

During Gabbard’s visit to Japan and Thailand, she met with the countries’ top intelligence officials and diplomats to “strengthen existing partnerships and intelligence collaboration between our nations,” according to her spokesperson.

The spokesperson added that while Gabbard did not have a chance to visit either Hiroshima or Nagasaki, “she looks forward to doing so on her next visit to the region, to honor the lives lost, highlight the immeasurable cost of nuclear war.” The DNI office sees a future visit to those sites as a way to honor “President Trump’s commitment to counterproliferation and preventing nuclear war.”

While in India, Gabbard held multiple bilateral meetings, including a meeting with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is a longtime ally of President Trump.

“This visit highlights the decades strong U.S.-India relationship that is bolstered by the leadership of and friendship between Prime Minister Modi and President Donald Trump,” her office said.

“DNI Gabbard’s meetings in India focused on intelligence-sharing, defense, counterterrorism, and transnational threats. Further, DNI Gabbard joined the Raisina Dialogue, where she delivered keynote remarks on the collective effort to drive toward President Trump's goals of a peaceful, free, secure, and prosperous society.”

The Reporter was on-site for Gabbard’s Raisina remarks. Gabbard received a standing ovation from the crowd following her speech, and attendees told the Reporter that her address was what the region needed to hear right when it needed to hear it. One foreign diplomat praised Gabbard’s message of “aloha,” and other attendees were impressed.

Jayasimha K R, an Asian Forum on Global Governance Fellow, told the Reporter that Gabbard’s “statement ‘America First is not America alone’ resonates with India’s approach of ‘India First’ while remaining committed to global partnerships.”

“This also underscores the importance of cooperation over competition in global affairs. This is important at a time when multilateralism is facing a crisis of trust,” he continued. “Due to her Hindu faith and longstanding engagement with Indian cultural and spiritual traditions, I hope she can foster better understanding of India’s spiritual traditions in the West.”

Gabbard was America’s first Hindu member of Congress, which helped her on this and on previous visits to India.

“We have a president who has made very clear that his goal and objective, his legacy that he hopes to leave behind, is to be the president of peace and to be a unifying force,” Gabbard said in an interview. “We've already seen in the very short period of time how he is taking decisive action to that end around conflicts that have existed for a very long time, and how he is using his position to send a strong message that peace and security and freedom and stability are mutual interests that the United States has with many, if not most, other countries in different parts of the world.”

Gabbard also told the Reporter that she met with U.S. Embassy staff while in India to thank them for their work.

Finally, Gabbard stopped in France en route to Washington, D.C., where she visited U.S. personnel and French leaders “for discussions on counterterrorism and other joint efforts.”