Latest news with #BombIran
Yahoo
26-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Tulsi Gabbard Chooses Loyalty to Trump
The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. Tulsi Gabbard believed she had found her people. The Trump White House would be a place where 'America First' isolationism ruled. No one would make the hurtful suggestion that her talking points sounded suspiciously like Kremlin talking points. And her decision to meet with Syria's now-deposed dictator as he bombed his own cities would not be unfairly judged. Her mission as director of national intelligence was straightforward, she told associates: to clean up America's spy agencies so they wouldn't be able to misuse intelligence in pursuit of war. But scarcely six months in the job, the onetime Democratic congresswoman and presidential candidate is confronting the limits of her sway with Donald Trump as he celebrates his decision to bomb Iranian nuclear sites, muses about regime change in Tehran, and posts footage on social media of B-2 bombers to the tune of the parody song 'Bomb Iran,' which includes the lyrics 'Time to turn Iran into a parking lot.' This isn't what Gabbard had in mind. In her public remarks, she actually appeared to undermine the case for U.S. action while diplomatic efforts were progressing. At the end of March, Gabbard told Congress that the American intelligence community 'continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon' despite having stockpiles of enriched uranium that are 'unprecedented' for a state without nuclear arms. That assessment remains unchanged, a U.S. official told us. But Trump, asked about her conclusion that Tehran had not decided to restart the nuclear-weapons program it suspended in 2003, disparaged his own spy chief, telling reporters, 'I don't care what she said.' He later said, even more bluntly, 'She's wrong.' Gabbard has so alienated Trump that she may be endangering the existence of her office altogether, which the president has mused about scrapping. 'She touched the third rail—she testified that the intelligence community doesn't assess that Iran is sprinting toward a bomb,' a former U.S. official who worked closely with Gabbard told us. 'It's hard to overstate how many people she angered by doing that, and the amount of work required to get back into their good graces.' [Read: What everyone gets wrong about Tulsi Gabbard] Gabbard, who declined our request for an interview, has sought to minimize any apparent distance with the president, writing on social media last week, 'America has intelligence that Iran is at the point that it can produce a nuclear weapon within weeks to months, if they decide to finalize the assembly.' A former intelligence official focused on the Middle East told us there are differences of opinion within Gabbard's office about how to interpret the intelligence. But career officers don't see her revised account as a reflection of new knowledge based on a second look, the former official said. Rather, the prevailing view is that she 'changed her stance to satisfy the president,' the former official said. 'And that's a big blow to her credibility within the building.' Her statements left some longtime associates and admirers marveling at how quickly she had fallen in line—a sign, they said, that voices of restraint within the administration had gone quiet and that Gabbard's peace-at-all-costs approach was a bad fit for the administration's more martial orientation. The perception that Gabbard is out of step with the president, and off message, had already eroded her influence by the time Trump confronted the most serious foreign-policy crisis of his second term so far. In an effort to prove her loyalty, Gabbard has sought to conform the analysis produced by her office with the president's policy aims, politicizing intelligence in the very way that she has promised to prevent. But even that may not be enough to return her to the president's circle of trust: The White House refused to send Gabbard to a classified Capitol Hill briefing on Iran today. After Trump announced a cease-fire on Monday, Gabbard praised him on social media for his 'herculean effort.' Yesterday, she declared that 'new intelligence' had emerged showing that Iran's nuclear facilities had been 'destroyed,' setting its program back by years. That conclusion appeared at odds with an initial assessment by the Defense Intelligence Agency, first reported by CNN and confirmed to us by two people familiar with its contents, that the bombing campaign did not dismantle key elements of Iran's nuclear program and likely set back the country's capabilities by only a matter of months. Although the finding was deemed low-confidence by the agency that produced it—and the CIA followed up by saying that Iran's program had been 'severely damaged'—the disclosure of a less-than-rosy assessment produced a furious reaction from the Trump administration, where officials have been under pressure to support Trump's insistence that the bombings he ordered had succeeded in every possible way. In fact, elements of the intelligence community had warned of an incomplete outcome ahead of the attack. It's not clear that anyone listened. By the time Trump ordered the Iranian strikes, Gabbard's influence with the president had eroded so significantly that she lacked a meaningful voice in his decision-making process. A Trump ally told us that the president appreciates Gabbard's political appeal to disaffected Democrats but doesn't look to her counsel on foreign policy or national security. 'She's a nonplayer,' the ally told us. 'When I want to call someone to influence Trump, I don't even think of her.' Earlier this month, Gabbard released a direct-to-camera testimonial after a trip to Hiroshima—a trip made for as-yet-undisclosed reasons—in which she argued that the world stands 'closer to the brink of nuclear annihilation than ever before.' She said that 'political elites and warmongers are carelessly fomenting fear and tensions' because they have access to nuclear shelters that won't be available to 'regular people' in the event of disaster. [Read: The thing that binds Gabbard, Gaetz, and Hegseth to Trump] The macabre remarks angered the president, who confronted Gabbard during a meeting in the Oval Office, someone with knowledge of the interaction told us. Trump admonished his spy chief, saying he didn't like the video and didn't understand why she would make such a depressing pronouncement. She was subdued, responding simply, 'Yes, sir.' Trump's interest in curbing the work of her office, if not outright eliminating it, is in tension with Gabbard's political aspirations. 'She doesn't want to be like Linda McMahon, the last one to turn off the lights at her own office,' another former U.S. official told us, referring to the secretary of education, who is dismantling her own department. In fact, Gabbard's associates have said that she wants to be the most powerful and consequential DNI in the office's short history, according to the former official, and sees the role as a stepping stone to a second run for the presidency after her failed attempt as a Democrat in 2020. Given the limited influence that most DNIs have had, that path to power strikes many within the intelligence community as unusual. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence was created to improve coordination among U.S. spy agencies after the September 11 attacks. But many senior administration officials at the time resisted its creation, predicting that the new office would add another layer of bureaucracy without effectively corralling the loose federation of intelligence agencies. Today, the DNI is nominally the top intelligence officer in the government, but the CIA and the Defense Department maintain their own centers of power over operations and budgets. The creation of the office that Gabbard now oversees coincided with the intensification of the American-led war on terrorism and the occupation of Iraq, a period that Trump, despite having supported the invasion, now argues diminished America's international credibility. As president, he has portrayed himself as a victim of a career national-security bureaucracy that doesn't share his values and that he claims has used the powers of the intelligence community against him. It's fitting, then, that Trump would lock arms with Gabbard, whose service in Iraq and Kuwait is a touchstone of her criticism of American foreign policy. Renouncing her partisan loyalties in 2022, she reached for the kind of rhetoric that is common among online extremists on the left and the right, calling the Democratic Party an 'elitist cabal of warmongers.' When she endorsed Trump last year, she vowed that he would 'walk us back from the brink of war.' And when, in January, she came before the Senate for confirmation as Trump's spy chief, she presented herself as a bulwark against the distortion of intelligence to justify war. 'For too long, faulty, inadequate, or weaponized intelligence have led to costly failures and the undermining of our national security and God-given freedoms enshrined in the Constitution,' she said. Before she became a Cabinet official, Gabbard found it easy to lob those kinds of critiques at the 'deep state.' Now she's the president's principal intelligence adviser, struggling to reconcile the conclusions of career experts with the aims of the president she serves. In meetings, Gabbard is prepared, follows a script or bullet points, and often asks pointed questions of her aides and advisers, people who have worked with her told us. She has dropped much of the critical rhetoric that characterized her time in Congress. But occasionally, she expresses ideas that some described to us as 'conspiratorial,' such as her persistent belief that the U.S. government routinely violates the privacy of its citizens through intrusive surveillance, said one person, who was surprised that her time as DNI had not convinced Gabbard that intelligence authorities are highly constrained by law and regulation. [Read: Isn't Trump supposed to be anti-war?] When they're together, CIA Director John Ratcliffe often defers to Gabbard, given that she at least nominally oversees his agency. This makes for an awkward dynamic, people who have observed them told us. Ratcliffe did Gabbard's job in Trump's first term and has more experience managing the intelligence process. When Mike Waltz was still the national security adviser, he brought Gabbard and Ratcliffe together in a regular Thursday conference that they called the 'secret-squirrel meeting,' a tongue-in-cheek reference to clandestine discussions. In White House meetings, Gabbard often relies on Joe Kent, a former CIA officer who has been acting as her No. 2 while he awaits confirmation as director of the National Counterterrorism Center. Kent, like Gabbard, is a fervent critic of military intervention. In a podcast interview last year, he criticized U.S. policy toward Israel's war in Gaza and left no doubt where he stood on the question of confrontation with Iran. 'This idea that we're going to escalate the war further by directly going to war with Iran, like Lindsey Graham and some of the other neocons are advocating, that's incredibly dangerous,' Kent said. Opposition to military confrontation with Iran is also the long-held stance of William Ruger, an Afghanistan veteran and a former vice president of the Charles Koch Institute whom Gabbard tapped to coordinate intelligence gathering and analysis across agencies. Ruger, who most recently led a libertarian think tank based in Massachusetts, told associates when he was named to his post that he worried about risking his credibility as a voice of military restraint if the administration went in a different direction. He also expressed doubt, a person who spoke with him told us, about how long Gabbard would last in the role. In response to questions for this story, a Gabbard spokesperson, Olivia Coleman, emailed us a statement saying, in part, that the U.S. spy chief is 'fearlessly implementing needed change across the intelligence community, rooting out weaponization, and challenging the darkest parts of the deep state in the process, which is why they are using their tired tactic of spewing flat-out lies through tabloid outlets like The Atlantic.' As a Cabinet official, Gabbard has not focused on some of the issues that preoccupied her in Congress, such as the fate of the former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden. But one of the former U.S. officials we spoke with said that Gabbard has been outspoken on a number of foreign-policy dilemmas, including aid to Ukraine and U.S. policy toward Syria. She was among those who favored suspending assistance to Ukraine, including intelligence sharing, after Trump's dramatic Oval Office confrontation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. She argued that Zelensky had grown too confident about U.S. assistance and that Washington needed to demonstrate its leverage, according to the former official. In wrestling with a U.S. presence in Syria after the toppling in December of Bashar al-Assad, the dictator whom she'd met during a trip to the country in 2017, Gabbard was among those advocating for the withdrawal of U.S. forces. [Read: Trump's trouble with Tulsi] Ruger, the senior intelligence official installed by Gabbard, has been busy calling experts for input on how to manage the National Intelligence Council (NIC), a central hub for assessments of crucial policy issues. He has sought out advice about the composition of the council and its relationship with policy makers, two people who have spoken with him about the matter told us. The NIC has been battered by the perception of political interference. Last month, Gabbard removed two veteran intelligence officers leading the NIC after Kent sought to rewrite the council's assessment that the Venezuelan government wasn't directing the activities of the Tren de Aragua gang—a finding that contradicted Trump's justification for deporting Venezuelan immigrants. Kent wrote that the original assessment 'could be used against the DNI or POTUS.' The two veteran officers have been in limbo since, prevented from returning to their former roles at the CIA but required to update the agency regularly about their whereabouts, people familiar with the dynamic told us. Gabbard's associates maintain that the career officials were dismissed for legitimate reasons; her chief of staff went so far as to accuse the longtime analysts of politicizing intelligence, calling them 'Biden holdovers' on social media. The episode has cast a pall over the council, ordinarily a sought-after destination for analysts because of its relevance to high-profile policy decisions. 'My impression is one of great disorientation and anxiety in the workforce,' a former intelligence official told us. John McLaughlin, who was the deputy director of the CIA in the early 2000s, told us that Gabbard is now carrying out the 'weaponization of intelligence in the name of combatting weaponization—without a persuasive case that wrongdoing occurred in the first place.' 'This is Alice in Wonderland territory,' McLaughlin said. 'We're through the looking glass.' The perception that Gabbard's office is toeing a political line extends beyond the NIC. People being considered for senior positions within her office have been quizzed by White House personnel about how they voted in previous elections and rebuffed after revealing that their preference hadn't been for Trump. (A senior intelligence official told us, 'At ODNI, we do not ask about political preference when hiring.') Gabbard has declassified documents and falsely crowed on social media that they show that the Biden administration equated COVID skepticism with violent extremism. Gabbard has also sought to carry out DOGE's agenda internally; an ODNI official told us that Gabbard has 'identified efficiencies that will result in saving approximately $150 million annually in contracts,' including a purported $20 million in DEI-costs savings. Gabbard's performance is satisfying senior Republicans on the Hill. A spokesperson for Senator Tom Cotton, the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, sent us a statement from the Arkansas Republican saying, 'I appreciate the work that Director Gabbard has done to advance President Trump's agenda, depoliticize intelligence analysis, and eliminate duplication and burdensome bureaucracy at ODNI.' She also has some important allies around the president. Vice President J. D. Vance, sensing that Gabbard lacked some of the connections to the White House benefiting other Cabinet members, made a point of forging a relationship with the intelligence director, current and former officials told us. In a statement provided to us by Gabbard's office, the vice president stressed her MAGA bona fides, calling her 'a veteran, a patriot, a loyal supporter of President Trump, and a critical part of the coalition he built in 2024.' [Read: Trump changed. The intelligence didn't.] Democrats see her track record differently. 'If you just look at her social media, which is what most of America sees, she's working very hard to defend the United States from the threat of the Biden administration,' Representative Jim Himes of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, told us. 'You know, it's Epstein files, and it's mischaracterizing the risk of domestic violent extremists.' An outside White House adviser told us that Gabbard is resorting to theatrics because she lacks substantive priorities for her office. 'In the absence of something real, she's struggling to be relevant,' the ally said. A better approach, this person added, would be to 'strip her office down to the studs—to get rid of duplicative offices and fulfill the promise made at her confirmation hearing to really downsize the ODNI.' A senior intelligence official told us that announcements about additional reform will be 'coming soon.' Downsize too much, however, and she could be out of a job. Article originally published at The Atlantic
France 24
26-06-2025
- Entertainment
- France 24
Yes, Trump posted a ‘Bomb Iran' and ‘Daddy's home' parody video
US President Donald Trump posted a 'Bomb Iran' parody clip, of The Beach Boys 1965 song, showing the B-2 bombers that carried out the American strikes on Iranian nuclear sites on June 22. Then, in reference to Mark Rutte's viral remarks calling Trump 'daddy,' The White House embraced the nickname while posting a montage of Trump at the NATO Summit set to Usher's 'Daddy's home.' We explain in this edition of Truth or Fake.
Atlantic
26-06-2025
- Politics
- Atlantic
Tulsi Gabbard Falls in Line
Tulsi Gabbard believed she had found her people. The Trump White House would be a place where 'America First' isolationism ruled. No one would make the hurtful suggestion that her talking points sounded suspiciously like Kremlin talking points. And her decision to meet with Syria's now-deposed dictator as he bombed his own cities would not be unfairly judged. Her mission as director of national intelligence was straightforward, she told associates: to clean up America's spy agencies so they wouldn't be able to misuse intelligence in pursuit of war. But scarcely six months in the job, the onetime Democratic congresswoman and presidential candidate is confronting the limits of her sway with Donald Trump as he celebrates his decision to bomb Iranian nuclear sites, muses about regime change in Tehran, and posts footage on social media of B-2 bombers to the tune of the parody song 'Bomb Iran,' which includes the lyrics 'Time to turn Iran into a parking lot.' This isn't what Gabbard had in mind. In her public remarks, she actually appeared to undermine the case for U.S. action while diplomatic efforts were progressing. At the end of March, Gabbard told Congress that the American intelligence community 'continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon' despite having stockpiles of enriched uranium that are 'unprecedented' for a state without nuclear arms. That assessment remains unchanged, a U.S. official told us. But Trump, asked about her conclusion that Tehran had not decided to restart the nuclear-weapons program it suspended in 2003, disparaged his own spy chief, telling reporters, 'I don't care what she said.' He later said, even more bluntly, 'She's wrong.' Gabbard has so alienated Trump that she may be endangering the existence of her office altogether, which the president has mused about scrapping. 'She touched the third rail—she testified that the intelligence community doesn't assess that Iran is sprinting toward a bomb,' a former U.S. official who worked closely with Gabbard told us. 'It's hard to overstate how many people she angered by doing that, and the amount of work required to get back into their good graces.' Gabbard, who declined our request for an interview, has sought to minimize any apparent distance with the president, writing on social media last week, 'America has intelligence that Iran is at the point that it can produce a nuclear weapon within weeks to months, if they decide to finalize the assembly.' A former intelligence official focused on the Middle East told us there are differences of opinion within Gabbard's office about how to interpret the intelligence. But career officers don't see her revised account as a reflection of new knowledge based on a second look, the former official said. Rather, the prevailing view is that she 'changed her stance to satisfy the president,' the former official said. 'And that's a big blow to her credibility within the building.' Her statements left some longtime associates and admirers marveling at how quickly she had fallen in line—a sign, they said, that voices of restraint within the administration had gone quiet and that Gabbard's peace-at-all-costs approach was a bad fit for the administration's more martial orientation. The perception that Gabbard is out of step with the president, and off message, had already eroded her influence by the time Trump confronted the most serious foreign-policy crisis of his second term so far. In an effort to prove her loyalty, Gabbard has sought to conform the analysis produced by her office with the president's policy aims, politicizing intelligence in the very way that she has promised to prevent. But even that may not be enough to return her to the president's circle of trust: The White House refused to send Gabbard to a classified Capitol Hill briefing on Iran today. After Trump announced a cease-fire on Monday, Gabbard praised him on social media for his 'herculean effort.' Yesterday, she declared that 'new intelligence' had emerged showing that Iran's nuclear facilities had been 'destroyed,' setting its program back by years. That conclusion appeared at odds with an initial assessment by the Defense Intelligence Agency, first reported by CNN and confirmed to us by two people familiar with its contents, that the bombing campaign did not dismantle key elements of Iran's nuclear program and likely set back the country's capabilities by only a matter of months. Although the finding was deemed low-confidence by the agency that produced it—and the CIA followed up by saying that Iran's program had been 'severely damaged'—the disclosure of a less-than-rosy assessment produced a furious reaction from the Trump administration, where officials have been under pressure to support Trump's insistence that the bombings he ordered had succeeded in every possible way. In fact, elements of the intelligence community had warned of an incomplete outcome ahead of the attack. It's not clear that anyone listened. By the time Trump ordered the Iranian strikes, Gabbard's influence with the president had eroded so significantly that she lacked a meaningful voice in his decision-making process. A Trump ally told us that the president appreciates Gabbard's political appeal to disaffected Democrats but doesn't look to her counsel on foreign policy or national security. 'She's a nonplayer,' the ally told us. 'When I want to call someone to influence Trump, I don't even think of her.' Earlier this month, Gabbard released a direct-to-camera testimonial after a trip to Hiroshima—a trip made for as-yet-undisclosed reasons—in which she argued that the world stands 'closer to the brink of nuclear annihilation than ever before.' She said that 'political elites and warmongers are carelessly fomenting fear and tensions' because they have access to nuclear shelters that won't be available to 'regular people' in the event of disaster. The macabre remarks angered the president, who confronted Gabbard during a meeting in the Oval Office, someone with knowledge of the interaction told us. Trump admonished his spy chief, saying he didn't like the video and didn't understand why she would make such a depressing pronouncement. She was subdued, responding simply, 'Yes, sir.' Trump's interest in curbing the work of her office, if not outright eliminating it, is in tension with Gabbard's political aspirations. 'She doesn't want to be like Linda McMahon, the last one to turn off the lights at her own office,' another former U.S. official told us, referring to the secretary of education, who is dismantling her own department. In fact, Gabbard's associates have said that she wants to be the most powerful and consequential DNI in the office's short history, according to the former official, and sees the role as a stepping stone to a second run for the presidency after her failed attempt as a Democrat in 2020. Given the limited influence that most DNIs have had, that path to power strikes many within the intelligence community as unusual. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence was created to improve coordination among U.S. spy agencies after the September 11 attacks. But many senior administration officials at the time resisted its creation, predicting that the new office would add another layer of bureaucracy without effectively corralling the loose federation of intelligence agencies. Today, the DNI is nominally the top intelligence officer in the government, but the CIA and the Defense Department maintain their own centers of power over operations and budgets. The creation of the office that Gabbard now oversees coincided with the intensification of the American-led war on terrorism and the occupation of Iraq, a period that Trump, despite having supported the invasion, now argues diminished America's international credibility. As president, he has portrayed himself as a victim of a career national-security bureaucracy that doesn't share his values and that he claims has used the powers of the intelligence community against him. It's fitting, then, that Trump would lock arms with Gabbard, whose service in Iraq and Kuwait is a touchstone of her criticism of American foreign policy. Renouncing her partisan loyalties in 2022, she reached for the kind of rhetoric that is common among online extremists on the left and the right, calling the Democratic Party an 'elitist cabal of warmongers.' When she endorsed Trump last year, she vowed that he would 'walk us back from the brink of war.' And when, in January, she came before the Senate for confirmation as Trump's spy chief, she presented herself as a bulwark against the distortion of intelligence to justify war. 'For too long, faulty, inadequate, or weaponized intelligence have led to costly failures and the undermining of our national security and God-given freedoms enshrined in the Constitution,' she said. Before she became a Cabinet official, Gabbard found it easy to lob those kinds of critiques at the 'deep state.' Now she's the president's principal intelligence adviser, struggling to reconcile the conclusions of career experts with the aims of the president she serves. In meetings, Gabbard is prepared, follows a script or bullet points, and often asks pointed questions of her aides and advisers, people who have worked with her told us. She has dropped much of the critical rhetoric that characterized her time in Congress. But occasionally, she expresses ideas that some described to us as 'conspiratorial,' such as her persistent belief that the U.S. government routinely violates the privacy of its citizens through intrusive surveillance, said one person, who was surprised that her time as DNI had not convinced Gabbard that intelligence authorities are highly constrained by law and regulation. When they're together, CIA Director John Ratcliffe often defers to Gabbard, given that she at least nominally oversees his agency. This makes for an awkward dynamic, people who have observed them told us. Ratcliffe did Gabbard's job in Trump's first term and has more experience managing the intelligence process. When Mike Waltz was still the national security adviser, he brought Gabbard and Ratcliffe together in a regular Thursday conference that they called the 'secret-squirrel meeting,' a tongue-in-cheek reference to clandestine discussions. In White House meetings, Gabbard often relies on Joe Kent, a former CIA officer who has been acting as her No. 2 while he awaits confirmation as director of the National Counterterrorism Center. Kent, like Gabbard, is a fervent critic of military intervention. In a podcast interview last year, he criticized U.S. policy toward Israel's war in Gaza and left no doubt where he stood on the question of confrontation with Iran. 'This idea that we're going to escalate the war further by directly going to war with Iran, like Lindsey Graham and some of the other neocons are advocating, that's incredibly dangerous,' Kent said. Opposition to military confrontation with Iran is also the long-held stance of William Ruger, an Afghanistan veteran and a former vice president of the Charles Koch Institute whom Gabbard tapped to coordinate intelligence gathering and analysis across agencies. Ruger, who most recently led a libertarian think tank based in Massachusetts, told associates when he was named to his post that he worried about risking his credibility as a voice of military restraint if the administration went in a different direction. He also expressed doubt, a person who spoke with him told us, about how long Gabbard would last in the role. In response to questions for this story, a Gabbard spokesperson, Olivia Coleman, emailed us a statement saying, in part, that the U.S. spy chief is 'fearlessly implementing needed change across the intelligence community, rooting out weaponization, and challenging the darkest parts of the deep state in the process, which is why they are using their tired tactic of spewing flat-out lies through tabloid outlets like The Atlantic.' As a Cabinet official, Gabbard has not focused on some of the issues that preoccupied her in Congress, such as the fate of the former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden. But one of the former U.S. officials we spoke with said that Gabbard has been outspoken on a number of foreign-policy dilemmas, including aid to Ukraine and U.S. policy toward Syria. She was among those who favored suspending assistance to Ukraine, including intelligence sharing, after Trump's dramatic Oval Office confrontation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. She argued that Zelensky had grown too confident about U.S. assistance and that Washington needed to demonstrate its leverage, according to the former official. In wrestling with a U.S. presence in Syria after the toppling in December of Bashar al-Assad, the dictator whom she'd met during a trip to the country in 2017, Gabbard was among those advocating for the withdrawal of U.S. forces. Ruger, the senior intelligence official installed by Gabbard, has been busy calling experts for input on how to manage the National Intelligence Council (NIC), a central hub for assessments of crucial policy issues. He has sought out advice about the composition of the council and its relationship with policy makers, two people who have spoken with him about the matter told us. The NIC has been battered by the perception of political interference. Last month, Gabbard removed two veteran intelligence officers leading the NIC after Kent sought to rewrite the council's assessment that the Venezuelan government wasn't directing the activities of the Tren de Aragua gang—a finding that contradicted Trump's justification for deporting Venezuelan immigrants. Kent wrote that the original assessment 'could be used against the DNI or POTUS.' The two veteran officers have been in limbo since, prevented from returning to their former roles at the CIA but required to update the agency regularly about their whereabouts, people familiar with the dynamic told us. Gabbard's associates maintain that the career officials were dismissed for legitimate reasons; her chief of staff went so far as to accuse the longtime analysts of politicizing intelligence, calling them 'Biden holdovers' on social media. The episode has cast a pall over the council, ordinarily a sought-after destination for analysts because of its relevance to high-profile policy decisions. 'My impression is one of great disorientation and anxiety in the workforce,' a former intelligence official told us. John McLaughlin, who was the deputy director of the CIA in the early 2000s, told us that Gabbard is now carrying out the 'weaponization of intelligence in the name of combatting weaponization—without a persuasive case that wrongdoing occurred in the first place.' 'This is Alice in Wonderland territory,' McLaughlin said. 'We're through the looking glass.' The perception that Gabbard's office is toeing a political line extends beyond the NIC. People being considered for senior positions within her office have been quizzed by White House personnel about how they voted in previous elections and rebuffed after revealing that their preference hadn't been for Trump. (A senior intelligence official told us, 'At ODNI, we do not ask about political preference when hiring.') Gabbard has declassified documents and falsely crowed on social media that they show that the Biden administration equated COVID skepticism with violent extremism. Gabbard has also sought to carry out DOGE's agenda internally; an ODNI official told us that Gabbard has 'identified efficiencies that will result in saving approximately $150 million annually in contracts,' including a purported $20 million in DEI-costs savings. Gabbard's performance is satisfying senior Republicans on the Hill. A spokesperson for Senator Tom Cotton, the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, sent us a statement from the Arkansas Republican saying, 'I appreciate the work that Director Gabbard has done to advance President Trump's agenda, depoliticize intelligence analysis, and eliminate duplication and burdensome bureaucracy at ODNI.' She also has some important allies around the president. Vice President J. D. Vance, sensing that Gabbard lacked some of the connections to the White House benefiting other Cabinet members, made a point of forging a relationship with the intelligence director, current and former officials told us. In a statement provided to us by Gabbard's office, the vice president stressed her MAGA bona fides, calling her 'a veteran, a patriot, a loyal supporter of President Trump, and a critical part of the coalition he built in 2024.' Read: Trump changed. The intelligence didn't. Democrats see her track record differently. 'If you just look at her social media, which is what most of America sees, she's working very hard to defend the United States from the threat of the Biden administration,' Representative Jim Himes of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, told us. 'You know, it's Epstein files, and it's mischaracterizing the risk of domestic violent extremists.' An outside White House adviser told us that Gabbard is resorting to theatrics because she lacks substantive priorities for her office. 'In the absence of something real, she's struggling to be relevant,' the ally said. A better approach, this person added, would be to 'strip her office down to the studs—to get rid of duplicative offices and fulfill the promise made at her confirmation hearing to really downsize the ODNI.' A senior intelligence official told us that announcements about additional reform will be 'coming soon.'
Yahoo
26-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump posts video with ‘Bomb Iran' song amid ceasefire
President Trump posted a new video on Truth Social featuring a compilation of videos of B-2 stealth fighter jets dropping bombs along with the 1980 song 'Bomb Iran' by Vince Vance & the Valiants. The song, a parody of the 1961 song 'Barbara Ann' by the Regents, plays over a video of various B-2 stealth fighter jets, which were used to drop 14 GBU-57 bunker busters bombs in Iran. The jets were specifically used on the Fordow fuel enrichment plant and the Natanz Enrichment Complex, key nuclear sites in Iran. The U.S. also hit Iran's Isfahan nuclear site. The song continues with the lyrics, 'Went to a mosque, gonna throw some rocks, tell the Ayatollah, 'Gonna put you in a box!' Bomb Iran.' The Hill has reached out to the White House for comment. Trump posted the video Tuesday night on Truth Social amid rising tensions between Iran, Israel and the U.S. after the U.S. military strike on Iran's nuclear facilities. The video is just the latest post from the president on the rising conflict in the Middle East, one of which even singled out Israel in a rare move, advising them against dropping more bombs. Trump came down on the Iranians and Israelis earlier in the day at the White House, voicing his displeasure at continued fighting between the two adversaries. 'We basically — we have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don't know what the f‑‑‑ they're doing,' Trump told reporters at the White House earlier Tuesday. While Trump hailed the strikes against the nuclear facilities as a success, an early intelligence assessment reportedly found that Tehran's nuclear program was set back by only months. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
NBC News
25-06-2025
- Politics
- NBC News
Trump navigates the most complex foreign policy crisis of his presidency, one ‘Truth' at a time
As the conflict between Iran and Israel heated up, and in the wake of surprise U.S. attacks on Iran, President Donald Trump has been carrying out the delicate art of diplomacy through blunt social media posts, full of the bravado — and capital letters — that characterize much of his communications. 'There is not another military in the World that could have done this,' Trump posted to his Truth Social platform on Saturday, announcing the airstrikes on Iran's nuclear facilities. 'NOW IS THE TIME FOR PEACE! Thank you for your attention to this matter.' 'This is an HISTORIC MOMENT FOR THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, ISRAEL, AND THE WORLD,' he added in a follow-up. 'IRAN MUST NOW AGREE TO END THIS WAR. THANK YOU!' For many in the U.S. — including some elected officials — Trump's posts were the primary way to learn about what was happening. Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, said he first learned about the strikes this way. Since June 17, Trump has posted to his social media site more than two dozen times on a conflict in which he played a central role. His updates were often punctuated, "Thank you for your attention to this matter!' And, on Wednesday, he even posted footage of a few B2 stealth fighter jets dropping bombs as 'Bomb Iran,' a parody of the 1960's song 'Barbara Ann,' played in the background. Trump has also shared adulatory coverage of his handling of the conflict, frequently linking to commentary on Fox News in recent days and citing political figures like Charlie Kirk and even Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor who ran against Trump for president in 2016. Trump has for years veered from political convention in using social media to campaign, target rivals or advance his agenda. But in the most consequential foreign policy moment of his presidency, Trump's diplomacy by social media has garnered renewed attention, remarkable for its break from how past presidents have carried out such interactions. 'Any comment made by the president of the United States about America's national security is interpreted as our official policy and has impact on the world, regardless of the format in which the comment was made,' Adrienne Watson, who served as National Security Council spokesperson for President Joe Biden, said. "The language of a tweet should be treated with as much care as a diplomatic negotiation. Otherwise, the president has needlessly risked misinterpretation and miscalculation.' Trump's allies and advisers have expressed appreciation for the president's messaging, even in such a high-stakes setting. They said his seemingly off-the-cuff style has helped hammer home his message and make his position clear to all involved. And they added that the very public nature of his social media posts puts additional pressure on both Israel and Iran to go along with what the U.S. wants. 'When you reduce ambiguity in a national security or foreign policy environment, it's a good thing,' one Trump administration official, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly, said. 'The game of telephone through old models of diplomatic channels, you can still use them. But when appropriate, the commander in chief voicing his goals, his ideas, so forcefully and so clearly, is a good thing.' Kenneth Weinstein, the Japan chair of the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank, said Trump's social media strategy is about his need 'to eliminate the middleman.' 'He does not trust the bureaucracy to take his messages and transmit them, and he can transmit them very bluntly and very directly and in real time, rather than having to go up and down the chain,' Weinstein said. 'And that's what he sees: The reactions can be immediate to it, rather than setting up a meeting, and somebody has to get on an airplane.' Weinstein said he sees Trump's method as effective because other countries know these posts reflect his real thinking. 'Whether it's deceiving the Iranians, whether it's bluntly delivering a message to either our allies or partners or our adversaries, they get the message and they understand it's coming from him,' he added. 'And they don't have to scratch their heads and wonder.' But there are risks in Trump's approach, too, particularly as he speaks on nuanced diplomatic matters in absolute terms — whether it be about ' totally destroyed ' nuclear sites or a ' forever" ceasefire, results he may be trying to manifest at an early stage. Those risks were magnified Monday, when Trump was the first to announce a ceasefire agreement on Truth Social. 'It has been fully agreed by and between Israel and Iran that there will be a Complete and Total CEASEFIRE (in approximately 6 hours from now, when Israel and Iran have wound down and completed their in progress, final missions!), for 12 hours, at which point the War will be considered, ENDED!' Trump wrote. That post kicked off hours of confusion, as both Israel and Iran seemed reluctant to confirm that there was an agreement and that they would abide by it. Trump posted through it. At crucial moments when it seemed the ceasefire hung in the balance, he weighed in multiple times to exhort both sides, but especially Israel, not to do anything to set the other off. Trump also engages in more traditional diplomatic methods, like calling Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday and urging him to turn around Israeli planes set to target Iran. 'President Trump was exceptionally firm and direct with Prime Minister Netanyahu about what needed to happen to sustain the ceasefire,' a White House official told NBC News. 'The Prime Minister understood the severity of the situation and the concerns President Trump expressed.' Later Tuesday afternoon, an initial assessment by the Defense Intelligence Agency concluded that the U.S. airstrikes on Iranian nuclear enrichment sites did not destroy the facilities, but rather set the country's nuclear program back by only a few months, according to three people with knowledge of the report. That assessment ran counter to Trump's Truth Social posts, which talked up the ' obliteration ' of three Iranian nuclear facilities the U.S. bombed over the weekend and the ' monumental damage ' they sustained. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt disputed the DIA report as 'flat-out wrong,' adding, 'The leaking of this alleged assessment is a clear attempt to demean President Trump, and discredit the brave fighter pilots who conducted a perfectly executed mission to obliterate Iran's nuclear program.' Trump's message has at times appeared to conflict with other administration officials, like on Sunday when, after Vice President JD Vance told NBC News' 'Meet the Press' the administration's 'view has been very clear that we don't want a regime change' in Iran, Trump posted to Truth Social: 'It's not politically correct to use the term, 'Regime Change,' but if the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn't there be a Regime change???' 'MIGA!!!' he added. Trump later said he does not want regime change in Iran. Elliott Abrams, a deputy national security adviser under President George W. Bush and a special representative for Iran and Venezuela in Trump's first term, said that while there are upsides to the president's social media diplomacy — particularly the speed with which he is able to spread messages and the certainty readers have that they're getting Trump's own views — the filters that are being pushed aside 'can serve a really useful purpose.' 'There isn't anybody who knows everything and can't make mistakes,' Abrams, now a senior fellow in Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, said. 'And that includes presidents, which is why they're supposed to have and use a good staff.' 'The statement about 'obliterating' their nuclear weapons program … when he made that statement we clearly had no information,' Abrams added. 'So the danger you run into there is your remarks are discounted and everyone says well, 'He probably doesn't mean that.' So you're undermining your own impact.' Reached for comment on Trump's social media strategy amid the conflict, White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said: 'The President has proven that our Commander in Chief can remain accessible while maintaining operational security for important missions, as proven by the tremendous success and flawless execution of Operation Midnight Hammer." Trump's handling of communications around a foreign conflict is far different than that of his predecessors — though being able to message quickly under these conditions is critical under any process, said Rufus Gifford, who served as Biden's chief of protocol and ambassador to Denmark under President Barack Obama. 'You want to control the narrative,' Gifford said. 'So you have to release a statement quickly in order to make sure that people understand what just happened. Because obviously, if you drop a bomb, people are going to learn pretty quickly that that just happened. So you have to take responsibility for it.' But Gifford said that the tone leaders take in talking about the degree of success of such an operation should be similar to how they communicate during any sort of national disaster, whether it be a mass shooting or a hurricane. 'You own it, and you show that leadership,' he said. 'And then in the days and weeks to come, we'll figure out and we will provide more, but it's more important than anything else that you have that what you're reporting to the American people is 100% true, and the world is 100% true, at least to the best of your knowledge. And I think that that doesn't happen in this instance, and I think that's damaging.' 'When the United States speaks, it's very often the last word,' Gifford added. 'It's hard when diplomacy is contingent on the informality and … a degree of bad grammar and all-caps and all that ridiculousness. I understand that's a style that [others] support. But generally speaking, I find it to be largely counterproductive. And potentially even risky considering the situation.' Trump's posts also show a leader who is eager to put his own stamp on the conflict and cement his role in history alongside it. At times, he has presented himself as the only person who could stop a conflict, writing Monday evening that 'Israel & Iran came to me, almost simultaneously, and said, 'PEACE!'' 'I knew the time was NOW,' he wrote. On Tuesday, referring to the Arab-Israeli War of 1967, which Israelis refer to as the Six-Day War, Trump dubbed the recent conflict between Israel and Iran the '12 DAY WAR.' 'Both Israel and Iran wanted to stop the War, equally!' Trump wrote Tuesday. 'It was my great honor to Destroy All Nuclear facilities & capability, and then, STOP THE WAR!' A close Trump ally, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the president 'knows this is a historical event, and he wants to establish exactly what he wants the history books to be, and he doesn't trust anyone else to do that.' 'You've got three people who all want to have history written slightly different,' this person added, referring to Trump, Netanyahu and Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. 'He's trying to establish himself as the most dominant figure of the story.' The president's social media habits highlight what a second Trump administration aide said is his broader approach to governance. 'Trump doesn't think he needs to be staffed, really,' this person said, adding that Trump isn't one to require that national security decisions to go through multiple levels of policy coordination committees and then an international security cabinet meeting. 'It's just not bottom up. He's in the room with his advisers, and he makes decisions, and then he tells the whole world.' As for the impact of Trump's diplomacy-via-Truth Social posts, this person said all of the actors in the region are still trying to sort out their own positions. 'The best way to describe it is, there's probably a lot of confusion from everybody, friend and foe alike, which I think is how he likes to operate,' this person said. 'That's an uncomfortable position for most people. It's not an uncomfortable position for the president. He likes strategic ambiguity because he thinks it gives some flexibility on decision making.'
