ICYMI: Leader Schumer Floor Remarks Urging Senate Republicans To Reject Tulsi Gabbard As Director Of National Intelligence

Washington, D.C. – Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) yesterday spoke on the Senate floor urging Senate Republicans to reconsider their support for Trump nominee Tulsi Gabbard, warning that her confirmation as Director of National Intelligence would pose significant risks to U.S. national security due to her lack of qualifications and history of spreading Russian propaganda and conspiracy theories. Below are Senator Schumer’s remarks, which can also be viewed here:

This week, Senate Republicans will force a pair nominees through the Senate they know perfectly well do not merit confirmation.

But Republicans will confirm them anyway, because Donald Trump is strong-arming them into submission.

Today, Senate Democrats are here on the floor to oppose one of those nominees, Tulsi Gabbard.

She’s been nominated by the president to serve as Director of National Intelligence, the number one intelligence officer of the entire federal government.

By now, there’s no question about whether or not Ms. Gabbard is qualified to lead America’s intelligence agencies.

Because by any objective measure and by every objective measure as well, she is not qualified.

From the moment she was nominated, both Democrats and Republicans were puzzled by this choice.

Of all people Donald Trump could have picked to oversee national intelligence, he picked someone known for repeating Russian propaganda and getting duped by conspiracy theories.

Do Republicans honestly think this is the best person for the job? Out of all the other so many qualified people?

Fifty-two Republicans voted last night to advance her, but I know both sides of the aisle still remained troubled by this nominee.

I hope – I pray, for the sake of our country our security – my Republican colleagues think very carefully before casting their vote.

I hope they think about the safety of our people, the concerns of our allies, and the threats posed by the likes of Putin and Xi and others before casting their vote.

Every single Democrat, I am proud to say, will oppose the nomination of Tulsi Gabbard because we simply cannot, in good conscience, trust our most classified secrets to someone who echoes Russian propaganda and falls for conspiracy theories.

It’s alarmingly dangerous – dangerous, not just bad but dangerous – to trust someone like that.

The job of Director of National Intelligence is a matter of life and death.

The job is to oversee all 18 of the nation’s intelligence agencies.

The DNI would be the top intelligence advisor to the president of the United States.

It would be their job to decide what intelligence reaches the president’s desk, and what does not.

Few positions in government carry the burden that the DNI will carry every single day.

The person who serves as DNI therefore cannot be someone controversial. They cannot be someone who has to literally convince Senators to ignore their checkered past, to ignore their conspiratorial views, and essentially ask Senators to hold their nose while they support her. And that is what Tusli Gabbard has had to do with many Senate Republicans.

Who is kidding who? Who are our Republican colleagues kidding when they talk about that she's a good choice? It's incredible. It's incredible given her long list of frailties and dishonesty and conspiracies.

There should never, never be a shred of doubt that the DNI is qualified and informed and shows sound judgment.

Ms. Gabbard wouldn’t meet a low bar, but this job has a very high bar because it is so important to our security.

The Director of National Intelligence must be fluent in the truth.

But Ms. Gabbard speaks the language of falsities and conspiracy theories.

Shortly after – listen to this, America, this is who Donald Trump wants to put in charge – Russia invaded Ukraine, Ms. Gabbard infamously spread a false conspiracy theory.

She suggested that the U.S. was supporting bioweapon laboratories in Ukraine, without a shred of evidence.

You know where this myth came from, Donald Trump?

From Russia. It was spread to justify Putin’s invasion.

That alone is more than enough to be disqualified from becoming the top intelligence adviser to the president of the United States.

But the world is inside out, turned topsy-turvy, upside down by Donald Trump. And it is confounding that America is at this point, and even more confounding that our Republican colleagues, at this point, are going along with someone they know is so patently bad for this agency.

They should be ashamed of themselves. There are certain times that you have to buck, and with Ms. Gabbard, this is one of them.

The Director of National Intelligence must be strong against America’s adversaries.

But Ms. Gabbard has spent years sympathizing not with America’s allies, oh no, but with the likes of Vladimir Putin and Bashar al-Assad.

Nobody who plans a secret face-to-face meeting with Bashar al-Assad while he was in the middle of slaughtering his own people should be in this job and can possibly claim to be strong against America’s adversaries.

I mean this list goes on and on. It is almost fictional it’s so bad.

So, after Assad used chemical weapons against his own people in 2017 and 2018, Tulsi Gabbard turned against U.S. intelligence and sided with fringe conspiracy theorists to cast doubt on these two specific incidents.

I want to be clear on how strange and troubling this episode was: on the one side, you had the entire U.S. intelligence ecosystem and the intelligence of the French Government and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons all saying the same thing: Assad used chemical weapons against his own people in both 2017 and 2018.

These findings were not just conjecture, they were based on satellite imagery, witness accounts, medical experts. In other words, the kind of intelligence data that Ms. Gabbard would be responsible for evaluating on this important job.

And then, on the other side of all these intelligence experts and all of this evidence, you have Ms. Gabbard relying on the judgment of an individual who had appeared on Russian funded propaganda outlets.

That's who she relied on – someone who appeared on Russian propaganda outlets and puts out a crazy theory against every intelligence agency in the U.S. And other countries and Ms. Gabbard go for it.

She was trying to shield Assad for his inhumane conduct because she met with him. She supported Assad.

I have to say, I have never heard of a nominee for any intelligence agency who was so ready and willing to question the findings of America’s own intelligence operations, yet accept Russian disinformation so easily, without the same kind of skepticism. 

And, of course, I am deeply troubled by Ms. Gabbard’s long record showing weakness against Russia when it comes to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

On the night Russia invaded Ukraine – a horrible night – and launched the first full-scale invasion of a sovereign nation in Europe since World War II, what was Ms. Gabbard doing?

She was on Twitter, at 11:30 p.m., blaming NATO and the US for starting the war. This is the nominee for head of national intelligence? Give me a break. She was saying that the war could have been avoided had NATO and the U.S. just accommodated Putin! That’s who we are going to have as the DNI when we deal with our adversary, Vladimir Putin.

Russian TV of course aired Ms. Gabard’s comments shortly thereafter.

And now, with all this evidence, Republicans want to make this person the top U.S. intel chief?

Who could believe it? Where's all our right-wing friends in the hawkish community? Where are the editorial pages of these right-wing newspapers?

When Ms. Gabbard had the opportunity to repair her image before the Senate Intel Committee and ease the deep worries Senators from both sides had, Ms. Gabbard only exacerbated those worries.

She refused to state the very obvious truth about Edward Snowden: that he is a traitor who stole sensitive intelligence and now lives in Russia under the watchful eye of the Russian security services.

I can’t imagine what our allies were thinking watching Tulsi Gabbard testify and refuse to do something as simple as condemning Edward Snowden.

I fear the great erosion of trust between the US and our allies – whose intelligence we rely on to keep Americans safe, we have a good arrangement with them – should Ms. Gabbard be confirmed.

Senate Republicans know very well that Ms. Gabbard has no business advising the president on matters of classified intelligence.

They know her judgment is way off the mark. Way off the mark.

They know her troubling history of pushing conspiracies and repeating Russian propaganda.

So deep down, this nominee is about one simple question: what do Senate Republicans care more about?

Do they care more about doing the right thing for national security? Do Republicans care more about doing the right thing for national security or doing whatever is necessary to keep Donald Trump happy?

The American people will know the answer tomorrow.

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