Vice President J.D. Vance hit back at CBS anchor Margaret Brennan for trying to use cherry-picked headlines to smear Tulsi Gabbard.
During an interview on CBS, Vance spoke in favor of Gabbard’s nomination for Director of National Intelligence and said conservative publications criticizing her have “lost relevance.”
“Both the Wall Street Journal and the National Review, conservative publications, as you know, have been critical of Tulsi Gabbard. The Review called her ‘an atrocious nominee who deserves to be defeated.’ They compared her defense of Edward Snowden, the fugitive who stole U.S. secrets, to an attorney general who thinks the mob gets a bad rap. Her refusal to accept U.S. intelligence findings that Assad gassed his own people, they said was “like a nominee for OMB Director not being able to count.” Does any of this give you pause putting her in charge of the U.S. intelligence community? Yes or no?” Brennan asked.
“No, Margaret look, these are publications that attacked Donald J. Trump obsessively, but those publications don’t determine who the president is, the American people do, and Donald J. Trump is the person who determines who his cabinet is, not these publications that I think, frankly, have lost relevance,” Vance shot back.
“The Senate will ultimately decide,” Brennan smugly said.
“Well, the Senate will provide advice and consent, as is its constitutional obligation, but I feel confident that Tulsi Gabbard will ultimately get through. Two things that are important to know about Tulsi. First of all, she is a career military servant who’s had a classification at the highest levels for nearly two decades,” Vance responded.
“She has impeccable character, impeccable record of service, and she also is a person who I think is going to bring some trust back to the intelligence services. The bureaucrats at our intelligence services have gotten completely out of control. They’ve been part of the weaponization of our political system, the weaponization of our justice system. We need to have good intelligence services who keep us safe, but part of that is restoring trust in those services, and we think Tulsi is the right person to do it,” Vance added.
“She doesn’t trust those intelligence services,” Brennan replied, again taking a shot at Gabbard.
“She recognizes the bureaucrats have gotten out of control, and we need somebody there who’s going to rein them in and return those services to their core mission of identifying information that’s going to keep us safe,” Vance hit back, again defending Gabbard.
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Gabbard appears to have the votes to be confirmed on Wednesday.
Both Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Bill Cassidy (R-La.) said they would vote to confirm Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence.
On Monday, Murkowski, Cassidy, and the other Republican senators who voted chose to move forward with the confirmation process by supporting cloture. The Democratic senators who voted, on the other hand, were against cloture.
“I will vote to confirm Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence,” Murkowski declared in a post on X.
“While I continue to have concerns about certain positions she has previously taken, I appreciate her commitment to rein in the outsized scope of the agency, while still enabling the ODNI to continue its essential function in upholding national security. As she brings independent thinking and necessary oversight to her new role, I am counting on her to ensure the safety and civil liberties of American citizens remain rigorously protected,” Murkowski added.
“President Trump chose Tulsi Gabbard to be his point person on foreign intelligence,” Cassidy said in a statement. “I will trust President Trump on this decision and vote for her confirmation.”
Gabbard was in Congress from the beginning of 2013 to the beginning of 2021. In 2022, she said she was leaving the Democratic Party.
She backed Trump for president in 2024 and said she was joining the Republican Party last year.
