Tulsi Gabbard’s history with Russia is even more concerning than you think
Tulsi Gabbard’s history with Russia is even more concerning than you think
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One expert says her views are ‘so wildly fringe that her potential appointment as DNI is genuinely alarming’, Richard Hall and Andrew Feinberg write. In the summer of 2015, three Syrian girls who had narrowly survived an airstrike some weeks earlier stood before Tulsi Gabbard with horrific burns all over their bodies.
![[Gabbard on a congressional fact-finding mission to southern Turkey in June 2015]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2024/11/23/18/WhatsApp-Image-2024-11-19-at-15.37.57.jpg)
Gabbard, then a US congresswoman on a visit to the Syria-Turkey border as part of her duties for the foreign affairs committee, had a question for them. “How do you know it was Bashar al-Assad or Russia that bombed you, and not Isis?’” she asked, according to Mouaz Moustafa, a Syrian activist who was translating her conversation with the girls.
![[Gabbard at a campaign rally for Donald Trump during the 2024 election campaign]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2024/11/14/23/SEI226722428.jpg)
It was a revealing insight into Gabbard’s conspiratorial views of the conflict, and it shocked Moustafa to silence. He knew, as even the young children did, that Isis did not have jets to launch airstrikes. It was such an absurd question that he chose not to translate it because he didn’t want to upset the girls, the eldest of whom was 12.
![[Fire rises following a Syrian government airstrike in Aleppo in 2016]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2022/06/28/12/Syria_Civilian_Deaths_43258.jpg)
“From that point on, I’m sorry to say I was inaccurate in my translations of anything she said,” Moustafa told The Independent. “It was more like: How do I get these girls away from this devil?”. Even before Gabbard left the Democratic Party, ingratiated herself with Donald Trump and secured his nomination to become director of National Intelligence, she was known as a prolific peddler of Russian propaganda.
![[Gabbard has repeatedly defended Vladimir Putin and has been accused of using Kremlin talking points]](https://static.independent.co.uk/s3fs-public/thumbnails/image/2019/08/01/05/tulsi-gabbard-democratic-debate-detroit.jpg)
Her journey from anti-war Democrat to Moscow-friendly Maga warrior began in Syria. The devastating conflict was sparked by pro-democracy uprisings in 2011, which were brutally crushed by the Assad regime. It descended into a complex web of factions that drew extremist Islamists from around the world and global powers into the fray.
![[Gabbard has taken the side of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad as well as the Russian president]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2024/07/25/10/RUSIA-SIRIA_20196.jpg)
