The NPR Politics Podcast - Why Some In Congress Are Skeptical Of Trump's National Intelligence Pick

Episode Date: December 12, 2024

Tulsi Gabbard doesn't have the typical background for a director of national intelligence, but the former Hawaii congresswoman has made a name for herself: she is a Democrat-turned-Republican who staunchly backed Trump in 2024, and she holds controversial foreign policy views. Will she get the job? This episode: political correspondent Susan Davis, national security correspondent Greg Myre, and congressional correspondent Claudia Grisales.The podcast is produced by Jeongyoon Han and Kelli Wessinger, and edited by Casey Morell. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey, this is the Brazzans and we're on our way up to Washington DC to renew our Swedish Passports at the Swedish Embassy. This podcast was recorded at 1134 AM on Thursday, December 12th. Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but we will be enjoying museums and great restaurants and the pool in our nation's capital. Okay, here's the show. Hey, doll. Hey, doll.

So cute. You know, it doesn't surprise me that we have some Swedish friends in the podcast because I have met people from Sweden and they are so informed about U.S. politics. It's really pretty mind blowing. Amazing. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. I'm Greg Myrie. I cover national security. And I'm Claudia Grisales. I cover Congress.

And today, a look at former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard and the challenges she faces in her path to become the next director of national intelligence under incoming President Donald Trump. Greg, I want to start with a very basic question on behalf of our listeners and that's what exactly does the Director of National Intelligence do? The Director of National Intelligence is part of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. It was established in 2005, very much a reaction to the 9-11 attacks in 2001 when US national security agencies failed to connect the dots, didn't talk to each other in the way that they should have. So now the director of national

intelligence oversees all 18 intelligence agencies, some very well known like the CIA and the FBI, others much less so like the Treasury Department has an intelligence office and that keeps track of things like money laundering and drug trafficking around the world. So the director of national intelligence and that office is sort of a traffic cop, makes sure all these 18 agencies work together. And Greg, for a lot of our listeners I think they might have some idea of this because you see it play out sometimes in the movies but that it's the office of the director of national Intelligence that provides the President with that daily intelligence briefing. Yeah, that's a really important thing

that we should note. So every day this office, ODNI, puts together something called the President's Daily Brief, noting the top say half dozen or so national security issues that he should be dealing with. So this very much sets the agenda. And that's why this office is considered very important. It has the president's ear every day and the director of national intelligence is often someone who's briefing the president or is among a small group of national security advisors who are in the room when the biggest questions are being discussed. I think one of the reasons why Gabbard's nomination has raised some eyebrows is just her biography. She isn't someone that actually comes steeped inside the intel world and I think, you know,

historically this is a job that usually brings in people that have a deep policy understanding of the issues. Yeah, let's just consider the incumbent, Avril Haines. Previously, during the Obama administration, she served as deputy national security advisor, the number two person at the CIA, and has had other jobs in the national security field. Tulsi Gabbard has had none of this. So I think one big question is just Gabbard's lack of experience in this field, a position that has generally been filled the past 20 years since this office was created by people who had years, decades of experience in senior management positions in national security.

And Claudia, Gabbard is someone who's had, I think it's fair to say, a fascinating political evolution from the day that she first entered Congress after winning in 2012. Right. Some people would say fascinating, some would say perplexing. It's not clear how she got from being this four term member of the House as a Democrat and then leaving the House, becoming an independent and more recently becoming a Republican endorsing President-elect Donald Trump before the election. And this comes after she endorsed folks like Bernie Sanders. She had her own presidential run in 2020 for Democrats. And so that's probably what is confusing some Republicans and triggering some skepticism among them to bring her to

this moment when she is here meeting with senators to try and make her pitch that she would be the perfect next DNI despite, as Greg was mentioning, kind of this lack of expertise when we look at previous DNIs and trying to make that message clear that she's here for Trump and his vision. And Claudia, she's someone who, especially since she left Capitol Hill, has become an increasing critic of US military intervention. And while that might put her in line with someone like Donald Trump, who also shares a more isolationist worldview, there's still a lot of Senate Republicans who have a much more traditional view of how the U.S. should engage in the world.

Right. There are some that consider her a dove, if you will, not a hawk, and they're looking for a hawk in that role. And so the concern is that I've heard from some Republicans, not with their name attached to it, so not on the record, is that out of all of Trump's nominees, that this Tulsi Gabbard may perhaps be the scariest of them all because of her lack of experience, because of the hands-off approach, because of her signaling support in some ways for the regime in Syria for Bashar al-Assad who recently fell and this meeting that she had with with him previously just a lot of suspicions there because she would be the lens for the president into a lot of

these global conflicts and how to approach them. And of course it is not unusual for members of Congress to make trips abroad often referred to as codels. But what was so unusual about that Gabbard trip is she did it of her own volition. Party leaders at the time, Speaker Paul Ryan and minority leader Nancy Pelosi knew nothing about it. And that just doesn't happen. When members travel abroad, they often do it in conjunction with the foreign affairs

committees, with their party leadership, and the meetings have clear agendas and diplomatic reasons for doing it. Members of Congress don't just do this kind of thing on their own. And Greg Gabbard is a military veteran. She certainly has experience in the military arena, but as we noted she doesn't have a lot of experience in the intel arena. And I'd like to focus again more specifically on that trip to Syria because this has become an issue in her nomination. So, President Obama sent U.S. troops into Syria almost exactly a decade ago, the end of 2014, to fight against the Islamic State, and they were ultimately defeated there. But while those troops were there, Gabbard was very critical of that, sending U.S. troops into Syria. And she actually went to Syria

in 2017. She met with the president, Bashar al-Assad, and at that time, Assad was already really isolated by the international community. He was blamed for the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of his own people. He had been accused by the US, the UN, and others of using chemical weapons against his own people. Gabbard met with him and then defended that meeting in years subsequent saying, Assad is not the enemy of the United States because Syria does not pose a direct threat to the United States. But the US and Syria broke off relations more than a decade ago. Syria said the US was supporting rebels there and they broke off the relations. The troops that the US has sent there were sent to fight the Islamic State, not explicitly for or against the Assad regime,

but they were not invited there, certainly by the Syrian leadership. Those US troops are still there. the Syrian leadership. Those US troops are still there. Donald Trump wanted to pull them out in his first term, and he may well want to pull them out again based on things he said recently. So Gabbard would be one of the voices in his ear discussing this. A lot of people in the national security community say those 900 US troops at this point are being very effective in preventing a resurgence of the Islamic State. So this is an issue that's going to come up, it's already come up, and we'll carry on into the Trump administration as he takes office next month. So this is why that visit from 2017 remains highly relevant and I'm sure it will be a focus of her

confirmation hearing. All right, let's take a quick break and more on this in a moment. Hey there, it's Tamara Keith. And before we get back to the show, we want to say a big thank you to our listeners. Everything we've been able to do this past year is because of your support. But our work continues. A new administration is preparing to take office with huge consequences for the country. You can count on the NPR Politics podcast to be here with reporting and analysis to tell you what's happening and explain what it all means. With your help, we can keep doing this

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even discounts at the NPR shop. You get all that with Plus, and you'll know you're supporting our mission of creating a more informed public. Go to plus.npr.org to learn more. And thank you. And we're back. And Greg, we know that there is some skepticism and a lot of questions to be answered on Capitol Hill, but I'm curious about what you hear from folks in the intel world about what impact Gabbard could have in this job or how they're looking at her, especially as someone who doesn't have a lot of connections and relationships in that world.

Yeah, so I think two points come up over and over. One is just her lack of any real broad managerial experience, especially overseeing you know 18 different agencies which would be the requirements in this job and then a lot of her comments and statements that are just outside of the mainstream. Again that may be exactly what President-elect Trump is looking for but people inside the national security community feel very uncomfortable about this. This is also an interesting point to me because this job is not just about domestic intelligence. This is a job that does information sharing with intelligence allies all over the world. I

think the term they use is the five eyes, Greg. It's what are the five eyes, the five countries? Yeah, so the US, Canada, Britain, Australia, and New Zealand, all sort of the English-speaking democracies that have shared intelligence for decades. In a lot of ways, this is an international diplomatic intelligence job as well. And I have seen concerns raised that foreign leaders and foreign intelligence agencies also don't really know what to make of this person because she doesn't have a very clear background or frankly a very clear ideology,

and there could be some hesitation to be as fulsome with intelligence sharing with someone that they're skeptical about. Yeah, that's certainly a concern. We'd have to see how that actually plays out. But you're absolutely correct in saying this sharing based on trust and long standing relationships is very critical. I think we've seen that very clearly in the past couple years in Ukraine, where the US and the Europeans in particular have worked very, very closely sharing intelligence, in many cases declassifying intelligence and putting it out in the public to make their case. And all this is based on these long-standing relationships

and figuring out how they can share information with each other without burning a source or pointing to where that information is coming from. So this would very much be a concern. Nicole Soule-Northman Claudia, in the spectrum of Donald Trump nomination fights on Capitol Hill, of which there are many we are covering simultaneously, where do you place Gabbard? Do you think that she has a really uphill battle on the Hill or is this another one of those nominees where like, look, senators might have some reservations, but generally believe that a president should get the cabinet that he wants?

Well, in terms of what I'm hearing from members when they're not speaking with their names attached to a quote. Which is how they prefer to speak about these things we should note. Right. At a moment like this, when they're really being tested by President-elect Trump, they believe she's probably one of the biggest worries in terms of these nominations that have come through and one of the more controversial nominations.

And she's benefited in a way from one other controversial nominee you already dropped out, Matt Gaetz of Florida for attorney general. And the Trump administration wants to see the Senate give these nominees a better chance and not see them all fall like dominoes. He's more controversial nominee. So that's given Gabbard a breather, a moment to meet with senators. And I talked to Tulsi Gabbard yesterday. Here's what she told me. I'm just focused on taking the opportunity to be able to engage with each of them personally and hear what's on their minds and share what President Trump's vision is

and how we look forward to working together. And that was her response to me when I asked her about all of these concerns surrounding her from Republicans and the concerns she may be a leftist or too much of a hands-off approach when it comes to dictators around the world. But when I went back to senators who had met with her, they really tried to keep their remarks limited to, we're just having initial conversations. We haven't delved into some of these complicated concerns as of yet. And so, a reminder, they're trying to vet these nominees and in Tulsi Gabbard's case, see if she can survive a public confirmation hearing and

give answers that are satisfying to some of these tougher questions about her background. All right. We're going to leave it there for today. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. I'm Greg Myrie. I cover national security. And I'm Claudia Grisales.

I cover Congress. And thanks for listening to the Empire Politics Podcast.