Ever since Donald Trump openly questioned Tulsi Gabbard’s assessment of a nuclear Iran, she has been MIA.
That changed this week, however, as Gabbard blasted the Washington Post for allegedly harassing staffers in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
It is the first time she has really spoken to the media after defending herself against the intelligence assessment attacks, which were completely misrepresented by the media, and to be honest, Donald Trump.
One of the moves that Gabbard made very early on that I loved was finding leaks within her department and taking legal action against them.
In March, Gabbard stated that her department was "aggressively pursuing recent leakers from within the Intelligence Community and will hold them accountable."
After locating several leaks, Gabbard announced that the individuals suspected of the leaks were having their cases referred to the DOJ for possible prosecution.
She added, "Politicization of our intelligence and leaking classified information puts our nation's security at risk and must end. Those who leak classified information will be found and held accountable to the fullest extent of the law.”
After Gabbard’s intelligence assessment was misrepresented in the media, Trump fed that narrative by saying Gabbard did not know what she was talking about, and he disagreed with her.
Gabbard’s assessment, as far as I can tell, was actually in line with what Trump believed, but the media had cherry-picked a quote out of context and fed it to Trump, and he bit.
When Gabbard was then missing from an intelligence briefing, rumors started to swirl that she was on her way out, but the Trump administration pushed back, stating, “The media is turning this into something it’s not.”
The heat really got turned up when there was an early “low-confidence” report leaked regarding the strike against Iran, with Donald Trump biographer Michael Wolff commenting, “It's always important in the Trump script, the fallback is always who to blame, who to blame. Just have to have someone to blame. Tulsi is in the line of fire.”
Over the July 4 weekend, Gabbard finally appeared, now pushing the narrative that the Washington Post was harassing staffers in her office. She stated, "It has come to my attention that Washington Post reporter @nakashimae appears to be actively harassing [Office of the Director of National Intelligence] staff. Instead of reaching out to my press office, she is calling high level Intelligence Officers from a burner phone, refusing to identify herself, lying about the fact that she works for the Washington Post, and then demanding they share sensitive information.
“Apparently, publishing leaked classified material wasn't enough for the Washington Post, so now they’ve decided to go after the Intelligence professionals charged to protect it."
Gabbard later posted, "This kind of deranged behavior reflects a media establishment so desperate to sabotage @POTUS’s successful agenda that they’ve abandoned even a facade of journalistic integrity and ethics. The Washington Post should be ashamed, and they should put an end to this immediately.”
It was not so much the allegations as the fact that Gabbard was publicly making a statement that I found a bit reassuring in terms of her remaining with the administration. I think Gabbard being relieved or quitting will do more harm than good at this point, especially over what was essentially a fake news report about her position. I would really like to see Gabbard and Trump meet, and Trump to come out to defend Gabbard on this, but that would mean that Trump would have to publicly admit he got it wrong, and I don’t see that happening.
