As a Democratic candidate for president in 2020, Tulsi Gabbard built her campaign around a singular warning: No war with Iran. Six years later, as director of national intelligence under President Donald Trump, she sat in the Situation Room as the president launched military strikes on the Islamic Republic from Mar-a-Lago — and has said nothing publicly since, as a full-blown war erupted and engulfed much of the Middle East.
Even as she traveled to Dover Air Force Base with other administration officials for the dignified transfer of six service members killed in action, saluting in full military uniform, Gabbard has neither posted on her personal account nor spoken about the fallen troops or their mission.
While national security leaders in the Trump administration have publicly made the case for military action against Iran, Gabbard’s silence has been conspicuous.
According to a source familiar with Gabbard’s interactions in principal-level meetings leading up to war with Iran, Gabbard did not raise concerns with Trump, if she had them, and read “sentences off of a piece of paper” rather than brief from her own knowledge — a style that the famously unscripted president is not receptive to.
Gabbard is on the outside looking in when it comes to “serious national security matters,” the source said. That does not mean she is on the outs with the president — especially as she has undertaken a central role in his undercutting of the results of the 2020 election.
“But that status is threatened by her seeming unwillingness to go and serve that role on things like this, where she hasn’t been willing to go out and defend the president publicly on them,” the source told MS NOW. “If you’re a political tool, but you’re not willing to be out there as a political tool, that’s where she risks running afoul of him, ultimately.”
One Republican member of Congress, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly about internal dynamics of the administration, said it’s not surprising Gabbard has not had much to say since she is not the one making decisions. The member of Congress added that Gabbard is not respected by core principals within the intelligence community, including CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
“I think it’s got to be a little deflating — I wouldn’t say embarrassing — but she’s been sidelined,” the GOP member told MS NOW. “She’s been pushed aside.”
“I think she tried to think that she was going to make her way politically by appealing to the MAGA Trump,” said the member, who also noted that while Gabbard was photographed in the Situation Room during the launch of “Operation Epic Fury,” she was not at Mar-a-Lago with the commander in chief.
In a statement, Rubio dismissed MS NOW’s reporting as “ridiculous fake news.”
“Tulsi has done a fantastic job and is a respected member of the President’s national security team and has contributed a great deal to the President’s historic efforts to make America safe and strong again,” Rubio said.
‘It’s time to realize he lied to u’
Gabbard’s silence is striking given her past rhetoric on Iran.
In the hours after Trump ordered a strike to take out Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani in early January 2020, then-candidate Gabbard called the move “a blatant undermining of our Constitution” for not seeking congressional authorization.
“This puts our country at risk, it puts our troops at risk,” she told voters in a small town in New Hampshire. A few days later, she stayed on message at another stop in the key primary state, arguing Trump’s assassination of a top Iranian military official undermined national security.
“We should not have a commander in chief who makes decisions based on emotion, or revenge,” Gabbard said in Northfield, New Hampshire. “We need a commander in chief who is making decisions about what is in the best interest of our national security as a country, what is in the best interest of the safety and security of the American people.”
Gabbard also tweeted at the time, “To all who voted for Trump bc of his antiwar rhetoric, it’s time to realize he lied to u.”
Even prior to the Soleimani strike, Gabbard cautioned against walking “dangerously” down the path to war with Iran.
“A war with Iran would make the war in Iraq look like a cakewalk,” she told Fox News in May 2019. “The devastation and the cost would be far greater than anything they’ve ever experienced.”
Just a few years after co-sponsoring the “No War with Iran Act,” Gabbard endorsed Trump at an August 2024 rally. “I am confident that his first task will be to do the work to walk us back from the brink of war,” she told the cheering crowd.
Former colleagues split on Gabbard’s current role
Her evolution from selling “No War With Iran” campaign merchandise to actively participating in drawing 13 countries into a regional conflict with ripple effects around the globe is disappointing, but not surprising, to some of her former colleagues in Congress.
“This is a contradiction of everything she’s believed,” Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., who served with Gabbard in the House, told MS NOW. “The one thing that was a throughline consistent with her philosophy is that she was against these overseas wars.”
Khanna and Gabbard, who both endorsed Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., for president in 2016, have not spoken since she joined the Trump administration.
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“If I did, I would ask her, respectfully, what happened?” he said. “The core of your ideology was against these wars.”
Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., who serves on the House Armed Services Committee and ran for president against Gabbard in the 2020 Democratic primary, said it’s clear Trump administration officials are not on the same page.
“It is apparent that a lot of people in the Trump administration disagree with this war, but they’re afraid to say it, and so they’re just silent,” Moulton told MS NOW. “Tulsi has shown that she’s willing to do Trump’s bidding and provide whatever quote, unquote intelligence supports his position,” he said. “But it’s hard to see much intelligence behind what they’re doing.”
But whether Congress still has confidence in Gabbard varies depending on who you ask.
Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla., is one such Trump ally who is defending Gabbard’s muted response to the war in the Middle East.
“Tulsi is a professional,” Donalds told MS NOW. “She has a job to do as head of DNI, and I would argue that just because she’s silent doesn’t mean that she’s not doing her job in service to the nation.”
Rep. Andre Carson, D-Ind., a close friend of Gabbard’s when they served together in Congress, called her a “dedicated public servant and a patriot,” and agreed that it is not Gabbard’s responsibility to make the public case to the American people.
“That’s the president’s job,” he said. “The director of the ODNI is to provide oversight and keep us safe. It’s the president’s job to explain it to the American people, not the director of ODNI, so we can’t let Trump off the hook on this matter.”
‘A worse lie than the weapons of mass destruction’
Less than a year ago, Gabbard testified before Congress that Iran was not pursuing a nuclear weapon. “The IC continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003,” she told lawmakers in March 2025.
After Trump said in June that she was “wrong,” Gabbard accused the media of taking her testimony out of context. “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,” she wrote on X.
Khanna said that if the intelligence community has assessed whether Iran had decided to do so, it should say so publicly.
“They need to be very clear,” he said. “They haven’t gotten a rationale for why we’re there. It’s a worse lie than the weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq.
Lawmakers will soon have a chance to question Gabbard themselves. She is expected to publicly testify before the Senate for the Intelligence Committee’s worldwide threats hearing on March 18, according to a source familiar with the matter.
After this story was published, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence returned MS NOW’s request for comment. “Your story is based on lies, false allegations and salacious gossip,” a spokesperson for the ODNI said. “This is not journalism and cannot be taken seriously.”
The White House did not respond to MS NOW’s requests for comment.
Julia Jester covers politics for MS NOW and is based in Washington, D.C.
