SCOOP: Tulsi Gabbard touts Donald Trump's record as a peacemaker to Manama Dialogue in Bahrain
Gabbard is one of the administration’s top point people on addressing world leaders at conferences like the one in Bahrain. The Reporter previously met with her on site in New Delhi at a similar forum
Tulsi Gabbard, President Donald Trump’s Director of National Intelligence (DNI), helped kick off the annual Manama Dialogue in Bahrain, bringing the White House’s message of peacemaking with her to the prestigious global conference.
Gabbard greeted her “fellow peacemakers” who convened at what she described as a “pivotal time in global history,” and she reminded her international audience that Trump’s America First vision does not mean America alone.
During Trump’s second term, Gabbard has emerged as one of the administration’s top point people on addressing world leaders at conferences like this one; the Washington Reporter was on site with Gabbard in New Delhi, earlier this year when Gabbard addressed the legendary Raisina Dialogue, which is India’s flagship conference on geopolitics and geoeconomics.
During that conference, Gabbard sat for an interview with the Reporter in which she laid out her thoughts on the U.S.-India relationship, the future of Afghanistan, and the Trump administration’s work with her agency to declassify documents from throughout American history.
This time, Gabbard’s speech at a global forum came as her Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) has scored a series of high-profile wins against narcoterrorists, several of which required high-level coordination between American authorities and their partners across the world. In one instance, The ODNI’s National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), for example, recently touted the success of a joint operation carried out by Mexican authorities that led to “the arrest of a Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG)-affiliated baby trafficking ringleader, Martha Alicia Mendez Aguilar, also known as ‘La Diabla,’ in Juarez, Mexico.”
Thousands of miles from Juarez, Gabbard told the assembled crowd that America’s intelligence community is eager to work with partners across the world. “We’re reminded that true security, true stability, and peace cannot be forged in isolation, but in the common collection of peacemakers working towards that common purpose,” she said. “I want to speak plainly for myself as a veteran and a soldier who has seen firsthand the high cost of war. As someone who serves under President Trump’s leadership, I have experienced the promise of peace. His vision is about delivering real wins, not just for America, but for our collective cause of peace and prosperity, and doing so through a very principled realism, rooted in shared goals, interests, and values.”
While Gabbard’s remarks came shortly after the Nobel Peace Prize selection committee snubbed her boss and awarded the once-prestigious prize to a Venezuelan democracy activist (who dedicated the award in part to the 45th and 47th president), she laid out the White House’s historic record of bringing conflicts around the world to a close at a record pace.
“We’ve heard President Trump and Vice President Vance speak just last week about their hope that the Abraham Accords will continue to grow and expand to allow for a true lasting regional stability and peace,” she said, starting off with a success from Trump’s first four years in office.
“This is what President Trump’s America First policy looks like in action,” she said of the Abraham Accords: “building peace through diplomacy, with an understanding that there cannot be prosperity without peace.”
In his first term, she added, “President Trump de-escalated tensions on the Korean peninsula through direct talks…he opened lines of communication with North Korea that had been frozen for generations. He did what no other president had been willing to do: engage directly to speak about peace. He restored American leadership abroad. He brokered economic normalization between Serbia and Kosovo, promoting stability and peace in the Balkan region.”
Trump’s first term focused on international relations that were “pragmatic [and] deal-driven with a very realistic approach: focus on protecting American security and prosperity while engaging with the world on terms that actually make sense.” That helped lead to the Abraham Accords; Gabbard built on her praise of the accords, by describing them as a “historic pact between Israel, the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan that came from staying laser-like focused on shared interests, economic prosperity, counter-terrorism, and technological innovation. These countries that had eyed each other, perhaps warily at times for decades, found common ground in trade routes, joint ventures, and a mutual stake in both regional and global stability.”
But Trump’s second term stands out even more for what he accomplished in “just nine months,” she said. “President Trump’s America First agenda is supercharging these efforts and securing peace on a scale that we haven’t seen in decades,” Gabbard continued. “He secured ceasefires between India and Pakistan, Israel and Iran, a peace agreement between Rwanda and the DRC, a peace deal between Armenia and Azerbaijan, Cambodia and Thailand, and averted conflict between Egypt and Ethiopia over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam.”
Trump also “negotiated the release of all living hostages from Hamas,” Gabbard added. “While fragile, a historic ceasefire and peace plan is moving forward. It is doing so with integral support from many of our partners here in this room.”
The president, Gabbard said, has scored these wins by rejecting what she described as an “old Washington way of thinking.”
“For decades, our foreign policy has been trapped in a counterproductive and endless cycle of regime change or nation-building,” Gabbard — herself a decorated military veteran — continued. “It was a one-size-fits-all approach of toppling regimes, trying to impose our system of governance on others, intervening in conflicts that were barely understood, and walking away with more enemies than allies. The result: trillions spent, countless lives lost, and in many cases, a creation of greater security threats, the rise of Islamist terrorist groups like ISIS.”
While America’s DNI acknowledged that “President Trump understands that not everyone shares our exact values or our system of governance,” she said “that’s okay.”
“What’s most important is finding where our shared common ground exists and building those partnerships and progressing on those common grounds,” Gabbard explained. “Things like energy independence that stabilizes global markets, things like countering terrorism, something that continues to grow in different parts of the world, strengthening trade partnerships to boost economic growth and innovation. These are the components, the glue of enduring partnerships and friendships. So, America First is not about isolating ourselves. As President Trump has shown, it’s about engaging in direct diplomacy, being willing to have conversations that others are not willing to have, and finding that path forward where our mutual sovereign interests are aligned.”
“That’s,” Gabbard concluded, “really why we’re all gathered here today in Manama. We can commit to this path ourselves and put it into action with Bahrain’s own leadership. Year after year, hosting these critical dialogues shows us the way forward, convening nations from around the globe, amplifying shared stakes and strengthening partnerships and lines of communications that allow us to resolve our differences and deliver results for our respective people.”