In a departure from the standard operating procedure in Washington D.C., Donald Trump nominated two lifelong Democrats to key positions in his cabinet: RFK Jr as Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, and Tulsi Gabbard as the Director of National Intelligence.
Interestingly enough, Senate Democrats seem determined to block these two nominations, even more so than Trump’s republican appointments.
Gabbard’s hearing began this week, and it is uncertain whether she will be confirmed at the time of this writing. In the run-up to the hearing, an intensifying smear campaign based on complete lies and intentional misrepresentation of facts has been waged against Gabbard.
The first to attack Gabbard came from none other than former CIA director John Brennan:
This is great PR for Tulsi Gabbard, considering that Obama's CIA Director John Brennan—a trained serial liar—is one of the primary strategists, scuttling around in the shadows like a greasy vampire, plotting to undermine the will of the people to the benefit of the deep political establishment. This is the same John Brennan who had his security clearance revoked and was banned from entering federal buildings.
What’s particularly interesting about Brennan’s assault on Gabbard is the Snowden connection.
Edward Snowden was a huge part of the smears leveled against Tulsi during the hearings, but it was Edward Snowden who revealed that both James Clapper and John Brennan lied before the Senate Intelligence Committee back in 2014. (#,#)
So you have John Brennan on MSNBC on the one hand, and then on the other, you have one of the last vestiges of Bush-era neoconservatism in the National Review doing the same over the weekend.
Any long-time reader of this publication knows that when the establishment factions of both political parties unite against someone, there’s good reason to believe that individual threatens the Washington consensus. I’m referring to the same Washington consensus that routinely endorses every conflict and perpetual war that the big foreign policy think tanks determine the United States should engage in. It’s the same consensus whose sole purpose is to maintain the status quo in Washington rather than advocate for the much-needed changes in government that the American people voted for.
Several attack lines have been launched against Gabbard since Trump appointed her as DNI: her support for Edward Snowden, her criticism of 702 warrantless surveillance, her (accurate) commentary on how U.S. foreign policy facilitated Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, and finally, the audacity to meet with Bashar al-Assad while serving as a U.S. Representative for Hawaii.
In her opening statement, she poignantly outlines exactly why Americans have lost faith in the various intelligence institutions of the United States.
You can say what you want about Tulsi Gabbard, but testifying before the Senate and outlining the litany of falsehoods and abuses committed by the intelligence community against the American people requires a strong sense of conviction.
This specific part of Gabbard’s opening statement is particularly relevant:
This short segment of her statement foreshadows what happened throughout the rest of the hearing. We saw Senate Democrats and Republicans alike demanding that she read from the Washington Consensus script.
‘Say Snowden is a traitor! Say that you support 702! Say that Putin is just a mad dog!’
She went the whole day without bending to the establishment orthodoxy, and that is what—in my opinion—makes her uniquely qualified to be the Director of National Intelligence.
The full statement can be seen here:
Of course, immediately after her statements, both Democrats and Republicans began to put her through the wringer for not bending the knee throughout the hearing.
Colorado Senator Michael Bennet addressed all of the major lines of attack during his infuriating tirade.
Let's unpack each of these criticisms, and provide the context that Senator Bennet didn’t think was relevant.
Edward Snowden
“Why can’t you say that Edward Snowden is a traitor?”
Well, probably because she doesn’t believe that.
Legality aside, Edward Snowden was never charged with treason, and there is substantial debate around the constitutionality of what he did, as it was proven through his leaks that the government itself was not adhering to the Constitution by spying on its citizens.
Consider this perspective:
During the early 2000s, as the Senate's political elite enthusiastically supported the deployment of thousands of U.S. soldiers to their deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan, Tulsi Gabbard and Edward Snowden were actively enlisting to serve their country. The idea that some waspy, silver-spoon lackey of establishment Washington is casting judgment on Gabbard and Snowden is so disgusting that it’s almost nauseating.
Tulsi Gabbard has served in the U.S. military for more than 2 decades, and continues to serve as a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army. Conversely, Senator Bennet hails from one of many establishment political families, the son of Douglas J. Bennet who attended the 1994 Bilderberg meeting as Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs. Bennet was also an "American Council on Germany/Young Leaders" alongside a litany of spooks and deep politicians who’d be right at home in Davos.
To provide the necessary background context—something these Senate hearings seldom do—I think it’s worth revisiting the Snowden disclosures, because there seem to be two different realities that people live in regarding what they were and how they should be perceived.
The Snowden leaks not only led to multiple Pulitzers for the organizations and journalists who worked with him, but also led to surveillance reforms around the world.
In the U.S., the Snowden leaks prompted the passage of the USA Freedom Act in 2015, which ended the NSA's bulk collection of Americans' phone records.
Overseas, the European Court of Justice ruled against the U.S.-EU Safe Harbor Agreement in 2015, which had allowed data transfers between the EU and the U.S., citing privacy concerns. [#]
Additionally, tech companies—particularly those based in the U.S.—faced a backlash from international customers wary of U.S. surveillance. This led to increased implementation of encryption technologies and a push for more privacy-focused services. Google, Apple, and others responded by enhancing encryption in their products, which was seen as part of the "Snowden effect".
This all occurred over a several-year period, between 2013 and 2015, and during that period, there were all kinds of misrepresentations and even flat-out lies about Edward Snowden, but over time, enough evidence had come out to debunk those lies, to the point where even the U.S. government—while still seeking to arrest him—has renounced many of the most glaring lies, such as the idea that he was a Russian spy and that he shopped his information around to adversarial governments.
Despite this debunking, so many commentators and now members of the Senate are spouting the very same misrepresentations ten years later, not only showcasing that they have no real understanding of what happened back then, but also using the same debunked lies to argue against Tulsi’s confirmation.
Author’s note - I am aware of the arguments claiming that Edward Snowden was part of a CIA operation to undermine the NSA. I’m aware that he previously worked at the CIA, the arguments that he leaked documents selectively, etc. Seeing as, to my knowledge, there’s no way to prove or disprove these claims, I’ve chosen to simply acknowledge them without advocating one way or another. In the context of Tulsi’s confirmation hearing, whatever was actually in Snowden’s heart is of little consequence.
Section 702
Similar to the Snowden leaks, long-debunked claims cloud the discussion around Section 702 of the US Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).
As a refresher, Section 702 was a law passed in 2008 designed to give the U.S. government the right to spy on and surveil the communications of regular Americans without the need for a warrant. The evidence of the government's abuse of this law has been mounting for years, and while bipartisan consensus usually vows to end these overreaching powers, every three years, both parties in Congress decide to renew Section 702 without any reform.
The central taboo on which the U.S. security state was constructed is that their wide-reaching and unchecked powers can never be turned inward and used against the American people.
Frank Church, a former senator from Idaho and the namesake of the infamous Church Committee—which uncovered everything from COINTELPRO to MKULTRA to CIA assassination plots—once warned,
"That capability at any time could be turned around on the American people, and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn't matter. There would be no place to hide. If a dictator ever took over, the NSA could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back." [#]
Commentary on Russia
Bennet and others also brought up Gabbard’s comments on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the exchange represents everything rotten and deceitful in Washington.
It’s important to note that everyone on these committees—both Democrat and Republican—is in lockstep with the same tired messaging and groupthink that ‘the U.S. is so noble and justified in its involvement in conflicts around the globe to support democracy’; and essentially, what Bennet and others are saying in these attacks is that ‘if you’re not with us, then you’re with THEM.’
Here’s the tweet that was referenced in the hearings:
The reality is that what Tulsi Gabbard so accurately pointed out in those tweets is exactly what people in the highest levels of Government have been saying for years; that NATO expansion up to Russia’s Southern Border was seen as an existential threat by everyone in Moscow—not just Vladimir Putin, but also his liberal opposition.
There’s a long-form article on Badlands Media called, “A Bright Red Line,” showing how a memo from Biden’s CIA Director William Burns in 2008 called “Nyet Means Nyet” (leaked by Wikileaks) mirrored exactly what Tulsi Gabbard said in the now-famous tweet.
Here is what William Burns wrote in that secret cable back in February of 2008 after his assessment of the situation:
Ukraine and Georgia's NATO aspirations not only touch a raw nerve in Russia, they engender serious concerns about the consequences for stability in the region. Not only does Russia perceive encirclement, and efforts to undermine Russia's influence in the region, but it also fears unpredictable and uncontrolled consequences which would seriously affect Russian security interests.
Experts tell us that Russia is particularly worried that the strong divisions in Ukraine over NATO membership, with much of the ethnic-Russian community against membership, could lead to a major split, involving violence or at worst, civil war.
Consequences of a premature MAP offer, especially to Ukraine. Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all redlines for the Russian elite (not just Putin).
In my more than two and a half years of conversations with key Russian players, from knuckle-draggers In the dark recesses of the Kremlin to Putin's sharpest liberal critics, I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in NATO as anything other than a direct challenge to Russian interests. — “Nyet Means Nyet” William Burns, 2008
Additionally, last month, the Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas suggested that Russia should be broken up into smaller states.
How can any fair-minded person perceive that as anything but a legitimate security concern?
Meeting with Assad
Gabbard faced significant controversy over her 2017 visit to Syria, where she met with President Bashar al-Assad. She described her trip as a "fact-finding mission" to better understand the Syrian conflict, which she argued was necessary for effective peacemaking and diplomacy.
She met with Assad twice during her visit, which was highly controversial due to Assad's international condemnation for alleged human rights abuses, including the use of chemical weapons against civilians during the Syrian Civil War.
While the story of Assad and Syria is multifaceted and complex, Washington D.C. often simplifies the intricacies of diplomacy and foreign policy into two distinct narratives: either the leader is friendly with the U.S. and CIA, or they are a brutal dictator with whom no one should ever interact. I'll let you guess which narrative best fits Assad.
For further context on the recent ousting of Assad, I recommend reading Assad Day in Damascus.
It was Senator Martin Heinrich from New Mexico who grilled Tulsi Gabbard about her 2017 trip to Syria:
I want to highlight that last statement, where she said,
“I believe leaders, whether you be in Congress or the POTUS, can benefit greatly by going and engaging, boots on the ground, learning and listening and meeting directly with people, whether they be adversaries or friends.”
Isn't it fascinating that, after countless unnecessary wars, the United States would prefer to cut off all communications with its perceived adversaries rather than engage in productive dialogue?
If it was such a sin to meet with Assad, then why wasn’t Nancy Pelosi lambasted for the rest of her career after meeting with him back in 2007?
Oh, because back then, the Democratic Party still maintained a modicum of traditional liberal sentiment.
In 2008, during a primary debate, then-candidate Barak Obama argued for the importance of diplomacy, saying,
"I would meet with leaders of countries like Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, Syria, and North Korea, if it advances our interests…we should not rule out meetings with any country, but there has to be preparation."
I think if you were to ask the average American, more often than not they would prefer that their leaders maintain communications with conflicted or hostile nations. How else are you supposed to engage in diplomacy or statecraft if your position is to remain outwardly adversarial and stubbornly noncommunicative?
It’s almost as if there’s some kind of military-industrial complex that thrives on conflict, and it’s almost as if they fund the campaigns of career senators who never seem too worried about losing their seats.
Although Tulsi's meeting with Assad is no different from Nancy Pelosi's, bottom-shelf commentators like Bari Weiss have depicted it as some kind of reprehensible, career-ending act.
It was while Gabbard was being grilled by Arizona Senator Mark Kelly that something amazing happened. He was haranguing her for opposing the Obama-era CIA dirty war to remove Assad from power, and in her response, she took the opportunity to school these detached vampires on Operation: Timber Sycamore.
In a nutshell, Timber Sycamore, led by the Obama/Clinton CIA, aimed to arm Sunni Islamist mercenary rebels, such as the Free Syrian Army, the Syrian branch of Al Qaeda-Al Nusra Front, and ISIS. It included an alliance with Gulf Arab allies like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, in addition to Turkey and Jordan. These rebels were armed by Saudi intelligence and the CIA's Special Activities Division.
Over the course of four years, nearly 100,000 Syrian Army (SAA) soldiers were killed or injured, which prompted Russia to intervene in the Syrian war in the fall of 2015 and bomb the NATO-backed Al Qaeda mercenaries.(#)
She lays this out, and Mark Kelly doesn’t even try to contest it; he even agrees with her, but then says he’s concerned that those same criticisms have been reported by both Russian and Chinese state media. So, never mind that it’s true; apparently, it’s more concerning that she’s referencing something that was previously also referenced by a competing superpower, so by acknowledging it, she’s now aiding our enemies.
Do you see how deceitful and how much of a stretch that was?
They will throw out any potential attack line they can find against her because a Gabbard DNI is likely an existential threat to the Deep State holdouts in government, and even those outside of government.
Tulsi Gabbard, Kash Patel, and RFK Jr.—Trump’s three most controversial picks—have something important in common: they were all selected because both Trump and his voter base believe the agencies they were chosen to lead are fundamentally broken and require a certain level of deconstruction to make them once again work for the American people and not Washington’s political class.
The election made clear that the American people are radically dissatisfied with how Washington operates. Despite that, these out-of-touch senators are willing to not only disregard their constituents’ wishes, but they’re actively working to counteract them.
The Director of National Intelligence, the Director of the FBI, and the Health Secretary featuring competent anti-establishment figures in these positions will be key to dismantling the political establishment as we currently know it, so of course these archaic swamp things are desperately trying to fight against their confirmations. That is why so many of them ended up screaming at the top of their lungs in completely unhinged displays. They’re not really that angry at the appointees; they are angry about this idea of change and that a majority of the country voted for it.
There’s clearly a significant disparity between what the people want and what the permanent political class in Washington wants, and I think that this hearing really put that into perspective.
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Mr. Bennet doesn't want to hear any answer from Tulsi, he only wants to hear himself talk.
Very well described analysis! You are absolutely correct (and we’ve known to prepare for this) that the swamp creatures are truly screeching at the fact we voted to:
1) drain the swamp and remove all their Marxist agenda items
2) return the power to the people
3) return to our constitutional republic roots
4) remove ALL illegal aliens from the country and ensure NO illegal alien votes OR is counted in the census
5) completely remove our country from the globalist agenda
6) ensure the traitors within face justice
7) restore pride to our nation and her peoples!
Screeching banshees will likely be seen next at their tribunals.
God bless you, Ryan🇺🇸🙏