Tulsi Gabbard Has Nothing to Say

Trump’s intelligence chief bombs in her first speech

Tulsi Gabbard made her debut this week looking less like the lion of her fans’ imagination than a lamb being shepherded by the mighty Washington bureaucracy. Her first speech as the country’s top intelligence officer was packed with the kind of say-nothing national security drivel that President Trump hates.

Gabbard’s dud of a speech at the Munich Security Conference on Friday comes at a time when Trump, Vance and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth have been ripping away at any vestiges of procedure, decorum, and tradition. The contrast couldn’t be more stark. Presumably Gabbard would have bothered to read her debut speech beforehand. Perhaps she just has nothing to say.

About the only thing Gabbard’s speech did say was how much she cared about “working together” with foreign partners, an obsession of the Biden administration’s and one which J.D. Vance would take an unceremonious leak on in his own speech later that evening. 

In just 679 words, Gabbard manages to reference the theme of cooperation over half a dozen times:

• “I’m here to meet you because I value the importance of enduring relationships,”

• “Terrorism remains a persistent threat, requiring a coordinated global response,”

• “This effort necessitates close cooperation to share intelligence, coordinate law enforcement activities,”

• “I look forward to strengthening our relationships, allowing us to partner when it comes to exchanging critical information,”

• “The challenges presented by Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea … demand a united front,”

• “the importance of the relationships we have with all of you,”

• “a strong America is better positioned to lead, work with, and support our allies and partners around our shared interests of peace, security, and prosperity,” and,

• “I thank you again for the invitation to be here today and look forward to working together.”

Phrases like “shared interests of peace, security, and prosperity” sound like they’re cribbed from the pages of a Biden speech on the rules based international order. This is the person Washington said was the Russian agent of influence who was going to imperil our intelligence sharing with Europe! Mileage may vary, I guess.

The newly confirmed Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence thus emerges as the most conventional of all of Trump’s high-level national security appointments. The same week as her model U.N. worthy speech at Munich, other administration officials were breaking the china. Hegseth laid out in shockingly blunt terms the administration’s view that ending the war in Ukraine would necessitate territorial concessions to Russia, going as far as calling it “unrealistic” and “illusory” to think otherwise. (The media and the Europeans flipped out, but since then Trump has pretty much shown complete support for what Hegseth said.)

Meanwhile, Vance’s Munich speech delivered tough love to the Europeans in language that shocked not just the continent but also Washington. Castigating Europe for being more interested in defending censorship than democracy, he suggested that the United States and Europe were no longer tied in a common endeavor. He then called on “Europe to step up in a big way to provide for its own defense,” a full-on assault on the entire post-World War II international system.

One example Vance cites is Romania canceling an election following suspicions of a Russian influence operation. “If your democracy can be destroyed with a few hundred thousand dollars of digital advertising from a foreign country,” Vance said, “then it wasn't very strong to begin with.”

Agree or disagree, statements like these leave no question as to where the Trump administration stands. They say something.

Gabbard’s speech had a perfunctory nod to Trump’s “America First” worldview and to ending the “killing and brutality” of the war in Ukraine. But far more common was the national security babble about the need to “deter aggression,” “maintain stability” and “disrupt” terror groups, the exact same foreign policy of the Biden and Obama administrations. 

A former Democratic representative from Hawaii and Vice Chair of the Democratic National Committee, many liberals have come to dislike Gabbard when she switched parties and became a vociferous supporter of Donald Trump. It looks like her next transformation from MAGA warrior to “Deep State” hack is now well underway.

Of course, we don’t really know what Tulsi Gabbard believes. Evidently, neither does she.

— Edited by William M. Arkin