Dem
47
GOP
53
The political evolution of DNI Tulsi Gabbard's has been quite a thing. It's not totally crazy, and is not as obviously opportunistic as Robert F. Kennedy's "reinventing" himself. Basically, she was a left-wing populist who became a right-wing populist. There isn't all that much daylight between those two groups, particularly if you are a religious left-wing populist, and she is (she's not an evangelical Christian, but she is a pretty fundamentalist Hindu, and there's a fair bit of overlap there).
Still, just because her rightward shift might be honestly come by, Gabbard isn't really a great fit in the Trump administration. First of all, some of her ideas just don't align with MAGA. Second, there is still plenty of reason to believe she's a Russian asset, either knowingly or not. Third, she's not buddy-buddy with the true Trump insiders, like Stephen Miller and Stephen Cheung (maybe if she changed her name to Stephen Gabbard?). Fourth, and finally, having been a Democrat, and in particular a Democratic officeholder, for many years is an apostasy that some MAGA types will never forget or forgive.
This is why Gabbard, particularly at a time when some high-profile heads are likely to roll, has been desperately trying to save her job by cooking up a new Obama scandal. Actually, if that's the metaphor we're going with, it's more like reheating an old Obama scandal. She's trying desperately to squeeze just a bit more juice out of the Russia collusion story, and the fact that Obama is hated by Trump and by the MAGA crowd, by asserting that claims made by Obama and others about Russian involvement in the 2016 elections constituted some sort of crime.
Gabbard's efforts are... not going well, to say the least. On the left, people remember that she was not only a Democrat at one time, but also that she often spoke out forcefully about the issues of the day. After all, she did fancy herself a candidate for president in 2020, and so she needed to make a name for herself (she eventually won 2 whole delegates, by collecting a total of 103 votes in American Samoa). And while she was trying to establish a lane for herself, in 2018, she appeared on Joe Rogan's podcast to explain that, of course the Russians interfered in the 2016 election. That clip has been going viral on social media for the last couple of weeks. It would seem that some people think she's a hypocrite (or, that she also should have herself arrested as a criminal).
On the right, people don't care so much about consistency. What they DO care about is being able to tote Donald Trump's water effectively, in hopes of selling the story to at least some voters. However, Gabbard has been unable to do that. The DNI appeared on Fox this week to take some batting practice against softball questions lobbed by Fox entertainer Laura Ingraham. Gabbard was asked to present her evidence for her claims—and, on that channel, that is basically an invitation to deliver a free, 2-minute political ad. And Gabbard directed viewers' attention to the 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment ordered by Obama, implying that the existence of this document has not been made public before.
The first problem is that it has been made public. The second is that it was made public in the report on Russian involvement in the 2016 election prepared by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. The third is that the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, at that time, was run by Republicans, and yet the Committee agreed with the conclusions of the intelligence community. The final problem is that one of the Republican senators who took a key role in preparing that report was Marco Rubio, who is now: (1) Secretary of State, and (2) a Trump insider. Needless to say, it is not great for Gabbard to involve Rubio here in any way, if she's trying to keep from being canned. It is even worse for her, very likely, that she tried to go on Fox to promote the Obama conspiracy theory, and she fell flat on her face. That will not please Fox Viewer #1.
So, Gabbard is having a rough week. And, let's be honest, she deserves it after her shady behavior. (Z)