Tulsi Gabbard

Tulsi Gabbard was born on April 12, 1981, in Leloaloa, American Samoa, the daughter of a state senator and a Hindu mother. She grew up in Hawaii and became the first American Samoan and the first Hindu elected to the United States Congress when she won Hawaii's 2nd congressional district in 2012. She was also the first member of Congress to take her oath of office on the Bhagavad Gita rather than the Bible. She served four terms in the House (2013–2021) and simultaneously served as an Army National Guard officer, deploying to Iraq in 2004–2005 and Kuwait in 2008–2009. She holds the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. Her military background shaped her anti-interventionist foreign policy views, which put her frequently at odds with the Democratic foreign policy establishment.

Within the Democratic Party, Gabbard occupied an unusual position from early on. She resigned as DNC vice chair in February 2016 to endorse Bernie Sanders — an act of open defiance against DNC leadership that cost her standing in the party establishment but burnished her progressive credentials. She launched a 2020 presidential campaign in January 2019, positioning herself as a foreign policy realist and war critic. Her campaign peaked with a viral debate moment in July 2019 when she attacked Kamala Harris's record as California attorney general on criminal justice, causing a significant drop in Harris's polling. Despite the viral moment, Gabbard never broke through to the top tier and withdrew in March 2020, endorsing Joe Biden. She chose not to seek re-election to her House seat in 2020.

In October 2022, Gabbard announced she was leaving the Democratic Party, citing what she described as its domination by an “elitist cabal of warmongers” and woke ideology. She endorsed Donald Trump in August 2024 and registered as a Republican. Trump nominated her as Director of National Intelligence in November 2024. Her confirmation hearings were contentious: Democratic senators questioned her national security bona fides, her past statements about Syria and Russia, and concerns about her security clearance history. She was confirmed by the Senate 52–48 in January 2025 along largely party-line lines and was sworn in as DNI — the head of the 18-agency US Intelligence Community.

Gabbard's Syria policy generated the most sustained controversy of her congressional career. In January 2017, she made an unannounced trip to Syria and met privately with President Bashar al-Assad, whose government the US had accused of using chemical weapons against civilians and had placed under sanctions. She described Assad as “not the enemy of the United States” and questioned whether he was responsible for the chemical attacks attributed to his forces by US intelligence. The visit drew condemnation from both parties. Assad's government eventually collapsed in December 2024 after a rebel offensive, ending a 54-year family dynasty.

During and after her 2020 presidential campaign, Gabbard was accused by critics — including Hillary Clinton, who suggested without naming her that she was a “Russian asset” — of amplifying Russian government disinformation narratives about Syria and Ukraine. Gabbard sued Clinton for defamation in 2022; the lawsuit was later dismissed. US intelligence assessments cited her as an unwitting amplifier of Russian narratives without alleging knowing cooperation. The accusations shaped the confirmation debate over her DNI nomination, with Democratic senators raising concerns about whether she could oversee intelligence on Russia objectively.

Her net approval among the general public is near zero — high name recognition combined with near-equal intensity of positive opinion among Trump supporters and negative opinion among Democrats. Her military record as a combat-deployed Army officer — genuinely unusual for a senior civilian appointee — has been cited by supporters as a credential that adds operational credibility to the intelligence community role that most DNI appointees lack.