Inside the clashes between Trump and Gabbard

Politico

5 hours ago

As President Donald Trump privately mulled joining Israel's campaign against Iran this month, one member of his Cabinet sent what he viewed as an audacious attempt to steer him in the opposite direction.
At 5:30 a.m. on June 10, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard tweeted a cryptic, three-minute video warning that 'political elite and warmongers' are 'carelessly fomenting fear and tensions between nuclear powers' — and that the world is 'on the brink of nuclear annihilation.'
Trump saw the unauthorized video and became incensed, complaining to associates at the White House that she had spoken out of turn, according to three people familiar with the episode — two of them inside the administration and all granted anonymity to describe sensitive dynamics.
Her post came a few days after Israel hawks met with Trump at the White House to lobby him to support Israel's attacks on Iran. In the eyes of Trump and some close to him, Gabbard was warning him not to greenlight Israel attacking Iran. Trump even expressed his disapproval to her personally, the three people said.
'I don't think he dislikes Tulsi as a person … But certainly the video made him not super hot on her … and he doesn't like it when people are off message,' said one of the people, a senior administration official. The official added that Trump also doesn't appreciate it when people appear to be correcting him and that 'many took that video as trying to correct the administration's position.'
Trump's reaction to the video — which has not been previously reported — underscores a widening gap between a president on the brink of potentially joining Israel's war, and his anti-interventionist intelligence chief, who in the past has been adamantly against the U.S. engaging in new foreign conflicts.
Indeed, the man Gabbard endorsed on the campaign trail — who spoke of ending the Ukraine-Russia War on Day 1 and ushering in a new era of peace — is striking a different tone from her now that he's sitting behind the Resolute desk.
Those tensions came to the forefront early Tuesday when a reporter aboard Air Force One asked Trump about Gabbard's declaration before Congress in March that Iran was not seeking to build a nuclear weapon. Trump appeared to dismiss her assessment.
'I don't care what she said,' Trump replied. 'I think they were very close to having a weapon.'
It's a remarkable change in tone from the way the president once talked about the former Democratic representative from Hawaii-turned-Trump supporter. Last fall, Trump touted Gabbard's backing on the campaign trail. He added her — as well as Robert F. Kennedy — to his Cabinet in part to highlight the ideological diversityof the MAGA coalition.
But in recent months, Trump has increasingly mused about nixing Gabbard's office completely, an idea he floated when he gave her the job. In the White House there have been discussions about folding its mandate into the CIA or another agency, according to one of the people familiar with his response to the video and two others familiar with the matter — though it's unclear what that would mean for Gabbard. The Director of National Intelligence serves as the president's principal intelligence adviser and oversees the sprawling U.S. spy community.
Gabbard's tweet about nuclear war may have spurred those conversations along. Citing a recent trip to Hiroshima, Japan — where she visited the blast site from one of the two atomic bombs the U.S. dropped to end World War II — the DNI warned in graphic terms of weapons potentially 'vaporizing entire cities.'
Her statements were in keeping with the sentiment of many MAGA leaders that deeper U.S. involvement in the Israel-Iran clashes could pull America into a regional and even worldwide conflict. But ever since then there's been simmering frustration with Gabbard in the West Wing.
The president, after all, notably called former President Barack Obama 'pathetic' in 2016 for visiting Hiroshima, and argued that people shouldn't apologize for anything the U.S. did during WWII.
And Trump has 'just been kind of down on her in general,' said one of the people familiar with Gabbard's interactions with the White House, adding that Trump thinks she 'doesn't add anything to any conversation.'
Gabbard insisted to reporters Tuesday that she and the president are 'on the same page' on Iran, and a person close to Gabbard denied any tensions between her and the president. As recently as Tuesday, the two were meeting with other top officials in the Situation Room at the White House, and the administration even changed the time of the briefing to accommodate her schedule to ensure she could attend, the person said.
The Gabbard ally added that she is fully on board with what Trump is trying to do with Iran, and said she has never let her personal views color the advice she provides to the president — nor has she tried to sway Trump to her own point of view.
Asked for comment, White House spokesperson Steven Cheung said the president 'has full confidence in his entire exceptional national security team' and insisted that 'efforts by the legacy media to sow internal division are a distraction that will not work.'
Vice President JD Vance's team also reached out unprompted Tuesday night to defend Gabbard in a statement, arguing that she is 'an essential member' of the team.
'Tulsi Gabbard is a veteran, a patriot, a loyal supporter of President Trump, and a critical part of the coalition he built in 2024,' he said in a statement.
Gabbard argued to reporters on Tuesday that what Trump said about Iran's nuclear program is consistent with her March testimony before Congress. Gabbard said then that even as the intelligence community assessed that Tehran hadn't reinvigorated its nuclear weapons program — findings consistent with assessments shared by senior officials during the Biden administration — Iran's stockpiles of enriched uranium were at their highest levels.
'President Trump was saying the same thing that I said in my annual threat assessment back in March; unfortunately too many people in the media don't care to actually read what I said,' she said.
Trump's comments on Air Force One, however, suggest it's not just the media who didn't catch that nuance.
The apparent divide has been a source of gossip among people on both sides of the ideological spectrum who are closely following the rising tensions in the Middle East. Israel hawks like conservative talk show host Mark Levin have mocked Gabbard's assessment, suggesting that U.S. intelligence under her leadership has been flat-out incorrect.
Some of Gabbard's detractors are now holding up Trump's words to argue that she should get the axe.
'She shouldn't be in that job,' Trump's former national security adviser John Bolton, who had his own falling out with Trump, said Tuesday.
Video of Trump's comments about Gabbard on Air Force One have also stirred speculation on Capitol Hill that he has lost trust in her, said one senior congressional aide. Lawmakers of both parties were sharing the video widely among themselves on Tuesday morning, said the aide, who was granted anonymity to share details of private conversations.
'This is not just the hawkish camp,' the person said. 'This is every single member sending it around.'
Even people who agree with Gabbard have been worried about her influence waning: On his podcast War Room on Monday, MAGA ringleader Steve Bannon rhetorically asked his guest Tucker Carlson why Gabbard was not invited to what appears to have been a critical Camp David huddle earlier this month, where Trump and senior officials from his CIA director to chief of staff and the vice president discussed how to posture amid Israeli's looming strike.
'You know why … This is a regime change effort,' Carlson answered.
Gabbard — who has spoken of losing friends while serving in the military — has in the past been extremely outspoken against such incursions. The former lawmaker has long been 'focused on not getting ourselves into another horrible war we can't succeed in or get our way out of,' said Daniel Davis, a senior fellow at the think-tank Defense Priorities, whom Gabbard tapped to serve in a top job at ODNI but whose appointment was axed following an uproar about his past criticism of Israel's conduct in Gaza.
Gabbard's defenders have pushed back on suggestions that she's getting iced out. The intelligence chief, who is a Lt. Col. in the U.S. Army National Guard, was on Army Reserve duty the weekend of the Camp David huddle, according to one person familiar with the matter.
The Gabbard ally also said that she has been in the room with the president and vice president throughout deliberations on the Israel-Iran issue, working out of the White House rather than ODNI's office since Israel first started its bombing campaign. Trump, instructed her to reach out to her Israeli counterpart and the Gulf States to be in touch.
Gabbard isn't without allies in the administration. Even as she's been savaged by Republicans eager for Trump to enter the fighting fray, Vance took it upon himself to defend her on X on Tuesday afternoon.
But what matters, of course, is how Trump himself views her. And while Gabbard is indeed still around the White House, the senior administration official remarked that 'just because you're here doesn't mean that you're doing a great job.'
Trump's original decision to nominate Gabbard to serve as his spy chief sparked widespread concern among national security officials and Democrats — and even some hawkish Republicans privately — on Capitol Hill. She has flirted with fringe ideas about the wars in Ukraine and Syria, and has evinced a deep skepticism of the intelligence community she now oversees.
After she was confirmed in February, Gabbard carved out an unusually public role for a spy chief, eagerly carrying out the president's agenda and letting the world know about her work for Trump in regular appearances on Fox News and in social media posts and interviews with right-wing media stars.
She revoked the security clearances of dozens of the president's political enemies and critics, maligned some of the officials that work beneath her and fired two top officials who oversaw the production of an intelligence assessment that undercut Trump's justification for the mass deportation of migrants from Latin America.
But there were signs that she may be on her own path, according to some in the administration. For one, her very visit to Hiroshima perplexed the White House, according to one of the aforementioned administration officials.
The intelligence chief appears to have tacked on a trip to the city as she paid a visit to a Marine Corps air station in Iwakuni, close to Hiroshima, after attending the Shangri-La dialogue in Singapore. But the White House has questioned whether the trip was relevant to her role as Director of National Intelligence, even as the Gabbard ally said the Japan trip was coordinated and approved by the NSC.
As Gabbard navigates the politics of Trump's White House, she may also be thinking ahead to what might come next. In a recent podcast interview with former Fox News host Megyn Kelly in May, Gabbard didn't rule out running for president in 2028.
'I will never rule out any opportunity to serve my country,' Gabbard said.
If Trump decides to join Israel in attacking Iran, that could complicate her calculus of serving in the administration.
Jack Detsch contributed to this report.