President Donald Trump chosen Tulsi Gabbard as his prime intelligence official because of her non-interventionist, “America First” ideology that had pushed her away from the Democratic Party and into the MAGA fold.
But as Trump’s director of nationwide intelligence, Gabbard’s isolationist tendencies rapidly put her at odds together with his navy actions in Iran and Venezuela. Months earlier than announcing her resignation Friday, citing her husband’s analysis of a uncommon type of bone most cancers, Gabbard was routinely sidelined from a number of the administration’s largest overseas coverage choices of Trump’s second time period.
When Trump’s nationwide safety crew gathered at Mar-a-Lago on New Year’s Day to observe the US operation in Venezuela unfold, Gabbard was hundreds of miles away posting photos on social media from a seaside in her dwelling state of Hawaii.
Ahead of Trump’s resolution to strike Iran’s nuclear websites final summer time, Gabbard posted a video warning that the world is “closer to the brink of nuclear annihilation than ever before,” which angered Trump and the White House and put her on the sidelines.
And in February, when Trump launched joint strikes on Iran with Israel, Gabbard was in Washington with Vice President JD Vance and different cupboard members. Trump was in Mar-a-Lago with prime nationwide safety officers, together with CIA Director John Ratcliffe, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Dan Caine.
Before the strikes, Trump and Gabbard had a dialog about his potential navy motion in Iran, and he requested if the rumors about her resigning over it had been true — whether or not she would depart if he determined to go ahead, a supply aware of the matter advised NCS. She mentioned that the rumors weren’t true and she wouldn’t resign if he took navy motion, the supply mentioned.
While Gabbard was sidelined when it got here to worldwide deliberations, she shared Trump’s suspicions of the so-called “deep state.” Rooting out these perceived as being in opposition to Trump’s pursuits within the intelligence group turned a principal focus of her time as DNI.
“It’s scorched earth for anyone who they feel crossed Trump,” a supply aware of the matter advised NCS.
Gabbard rapidly turned remoted inside even her own workplace, the supply mentioned, surrounding herself with a small circle of advisers and — in a transfer many seen as a symptom of paranoia — objecting to CIA officers serving as part of her safety element as a result of she didn’t belief that company.
Another supply pushed again on this notion and mentioned Gabbard solely eliminated one member of her element for incompetence and lack of professionalism.
“She is extremely grateful for her protective team and trusts them with her life,” a spokesperson for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence advised NCS.
Gabbard and CIA director Ratcliffe have had a fraught relationship, in response to a number of sources. Gabbard felt Ratcliffe at instances was going round her on to the president, regardless of the companies historically working hand in hand. This prompted Gabbard to start speaking to the president immediately about numerous points, one thing one supply speculated saved her job.
Gabbard met with Trump within the Oval Office on Friday to current him with her resignation letter. A supply near Gabbard advised NCS on Friday that regardless of her turbulent tenure at DNI, a key motive she stayed within the job so long as she did was merely that the president nonetheless likes her personally.
Another supply near Gabbard mentioned she had been wrestling with the choice to resign since her husband was identified roughly three weeks in the past.
Trump praised Gabbard on social media Friday after she introduced her departure, saying she’d achieved an “incredible job” — a message that didn’t reference his earlier clashes together with his intelligence chief on Iran and Venezuela.
But whereas she discovered some frequent floor with Trump, Gabbard gave the impression to be largely on the surface trying in throughout her tenure.
“She’s just not in sync with this administration,” Beth Sanner, a former deputy director of nationwide intelligence, mentioned Friday on NCS’s “The Lead.”
“This is why her initials DNI became ‘do not invite,’” Sanner added. “In this administration, Tulsi was put in a position where I think that she just was such a bad fit that it became absolutely nothing. And she then turned to other endeavors.”
Gabbard’s 18-month tenure within the job, which ends subsequent month, is outlined as a lot by her lack of involvement in Trump’s navy actions as it’s for her willingness to pursue a few of Trump’s largest grievances.
She declassified paperwork from the intelligence group’s evaluation on 2016 Russian election interference with the intention to declare President Barack Obama was behind a “treasonous conspiracy” in opposition to Trump. She took voting machines in Puerto Rico to attempt to show baseless claims of election rigging. And in January, photos of Gabbard on the scene in Fulton County, Georgia, as FBI brokers seized ballots from the 2020 election raised critical questions over why Trump would need his prime spy chief current — provided that the DNI is barred from home regulation enforcement operations.
Gabbard’s resolution to take on a distinguished position in election-related investigations was described by some Trump officers as an indication of simply how a lot she had been sidelined on the extra urgent points like Iran and Venezuela.
One supply aware of the matter mentioned the 2 had been unrelated — noting that Trump referred to as Gabbard immediately and requested her to supervise the election-related investigations as a result of he knew she was already trying into 2020 on his behalf.
Gabbard was at all times an unconventional alternative as director of nationwide intelligence, a task created after 9/11 to facilitate info sharing and coordination throughout the 18 companies that make up the US intelligence group. A Hawaii congresswoman who ran for president as a Democrat in 2020, Gabbard had previously expressed sympathy towards whistleblowers who leaked labeled info and criticized Trump’s navy actions in opposition to Iran throughout his first time period.
But after a falling out with Democrats through the Biden administration — together with Gabbard’s opposition to US assist to Ukraine to combat Russia — Gabbard turned a Republican and endorsed Trump in 2024.
It didn’t take lengthy, nonetheless, for Gabbard’s anti-war views to run afoul of Trump. In March 2025, she testified to Congress that Iran was not actively pursuing a nuclear weapon — a direct contradiction of claims from US and Israeli officers that Iran was quickly working to acquire a bomb.
“She’s wrong,” Trump said of Gabbard in June 2025, days earlier than he launched missile strikes in opposition to Iran’s nuclear websites.
NCS reported on the time that Trump thought of Gabbard “off message,” pushed by her video warning in regards to the risks of nuclear proliferation and blaming “political elite and warmongers” for stoking “fear and tensions between nuclear powers.”
After the joint US-Israeli strikes on Iran this February, Gabbard was once more put within the awkward place of being pressed on the premise behind the strikes throughout congressional testimony.
“It is not the intelligence community’s responsibility to determine what is and is not an imminent threat,” Gabbard mentioned in her testimony earlier than the House and Senate Intelligence Committees in March.
If Gabbard didn’t see eye-to-eye with Trump on navy intervention, she was ready flip the web page rapidly final 12 months to a subject he was absolutely behind.
Last July, Gabbard declassified and launched a sequence of paperwork she claimed had been proof of the Obama administration “manufacturing” proof in opposition to Trump in its 2017 intelligence evaluation that Russian President Vladimir Putin had interfered within the 2016 election and tried to assist Trump.
Many of Gabbard’s claims that the intelligence was manufactured were dubious, nonetheless. A Republican-led Senate report in 2020 agreed with the intelligence group’s conclusions on Russia’s election interference and Putin’s position directing the trouble.
Last August, Gabbard revoked the security clearances of a minimum of 37 present and former nationwide safety officers, a listing that included individuals concerned within the Russia evaluation and members of President Joe Biden’s National Security Council.
In January, Gabbard took the extraordinary step of going to the scene after FBI brokers executed a search warrant for the Fulton County elections workplace, close to Atlanta.
Gabbard’s presence turned heads, given her purview typically concerned coordinating US intelligence companies and their efforts abroad, not home issues or regulation enforcement.
While there, Gabbard put Trump on the cellphone with a number of the FBI brokers who searched the elections workplace, NCS reported on the time.
She advised prime Democrats on the House and Senate Intelligence committees in a letter that her presence through the search “was requested by the President.”
Several former senior intelligence officers and election regulation specialists advised NCS that Gabbard had no authorized authority over the FBI search and that her presence in Fulton County risked eroding an important line between overseas and home intelligence actions instituted after Watergate.
After the Trump administration provided conflicting explanations for Gabbard’s presence, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt mentioned Trump had “tapped” Gabbard “to oversee the sanctity and the security of our American elections” and that she was “working directly alongside the FBI director.”