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President-elect Donald Trump has named former Democratic Representative Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii as the next director of national intelligence.
A lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserves, Gabbard will oversee the nation’s vast intelligence apparatus, and likely find out just how much it is spying on Americans and causing mischief abroad.
Helping run Spook World is John Ratcliffe, a former congressman from Texas and former DNI, who will move to the CIA.
Gabbard Background
The 43-year-old Hawaiian, who left the Democratic Party in 2022 and endorsed Trump in August, is a longtime critic of U.S. military and foreign policy.
Speaking to Fox talker Laura Ingraham in July, Gabbard said that President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris were not running those policies.
“Our foreign policy decisions are being made by unelected people in the military-industrial complex, who are profiting from us being in a constant state of war, and the national security state that has more power to undermine our freedoms and liberties when we are in a state of war,” she said.
She also explained the difference between Harris and Trump, which led to her endorsement:
Kamala Harris does not have the strength to stand up to the military-industrial complex and national security state. So she’s going to continue being a figurehead like Joe Biden has been. And … this is where the clear choice is in this election. Donald Trump is strong. As commander in chief, he will take charge. He will stand up to the military-industrial complex and national security state. He will prevent us from getting into unnecessary wars and make decisions that actually serve the best interests of the American people and our own security.
After that commentary, Gabbard learned that federal air marshals were tracking her movements under the government’s Quiet Skies surveillance program, which is meant to monitor terrorists.
Thus, as DNI she will likely put the government domestic surveillance under a microscope to find out just who is being watched and why.
Gabbard served four terms in Congress and wrote a bestselling book, For Love of Country: Leave the Democrat Party Behind.
She also is an accomplished surfer.
Ratcliffe’s Story
As for Ratcliffe, whom Trump named yesterday, when top Democrats denounced the Hunter Biden laptop as “Russian disinformation,” DNI Ratcliffe said that wasn’t true.
From the beginning, in October 2020, when the New York Post published its first stories about it, Ratcliff said it wasn’t “Russian disinformation.” And he fingered Congressman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) for pushing the disinformation lie.
“It’s funny that some of the people who complain the most about intelligence being politicized are the ones politicizing the intelligence,” Ratcliffe told Maria Bartiromo of Fox News in 2020. “Unfortunately, in this case, it is Adam Schiff, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, who … said that the intelligence community believes that Hunter Biden’s laptop and emails on it are part of a Russian disinformation campaign.”
Let me be clear: The intelligence community doesn’t believe that because there is no intelligence that supports that. And we have shared no intelligence with Chairman Schiff, or any member of Congress, that Hunter Biden’s laptop is part of some Russian disinformation campaign.
It’s simply not true.
Hunter Biden Laptop Lies
Ratcliffe stated the obvious: Schiff claimed it was “Russian disinformation” to protect Biden’s campaign.
“Hunter Biden’s laptop is not part of some Russian disinformation campaign,” Ratcliffe reiterated.
The far-left, pro-Biden media didn’t listen and repeated the lie. So did 51 former intelligence officials.
And, famously, so did Biden in his third debate against Trump, saying:
There are 50 former national intelligence folks who said that what [Trump is] accusing me of is a Russian plant. Five former heads of the CIA, both parties, say what he’s saying is a bunch of garbage.
But it wasn’t “garbage.”
Just before Trump’s astonishing victory in last week’s election, Vice President-elect J.D. Vance told podcaster Joe Rogan that the media-Big Tech lie about the laptop swung the election in Biden’s favor:
If they had not done what they did, Donald Trump would have won another term as president of the United States. You’re never going to be able to convince me that if millions upon millions of swing voters knew the evidence of Joe Biden’s corruption and it was staring them in the face, that we would not have been able to pull that one out.
But Vance also said the intelligence and other officials who lied about the laptop will lose security clearances. That should effectively end their careers.
With Gabbard and Vance in charge of intelligence, maybe change is coming.
But crucial to the new administration’s success will be replacing other key officials known to have undermined Trump in his first term.
Another of Trump’s appointments is immigration hawk Kristi Noem, governor of South Dakota, to head the Department of Homeland Security. Florida Congressman Mike Waltz will be national security advisor. GOP New York Congresswoman Elise Stefanik will be the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
Today, Trump named U.S. Senator Marco Rubio of Florida to become secretary of state.
