President-elect Donald J. Trump on Wednesday chose Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democratic congresswoman who became one of his most enthusiastic backers, to serve as the director of national intelligence.
Ms. Gabbard, a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve who served in Iraq, has been a longtime critic of the foreign policy establishment. Her nomination is another sign that Mr. Trump intends to give top foreign policy jobs to supporters who are deeply skeptical of the effectiveness of U.S. military intervention abroad.
In a statement, Mr. Trump praised Ms. Gabbard and said she would bring “a fearless spirit” to the intelligence agencies and secure “peace through strength.” The statement announcing the nomination said she was a former Democrat who had joined the Republican Party “because of President Trump’s leadership and how he has been able to transform the Republican Party, bringing it back to the party of the people and the party of peace.”
Along with John Ratcliffe, Mr. Trump’s choice to lead the C.I.A., she would be a top intelligence adviser to the White House. She would oversee 18 spy agencies and would be responsible for preparing the President’s Daily Brief, a written intelligence summary assembled each morning. In his first administration, Mr. Trump did not often read the written summary. But he held in-person intelligence briefings, often twice a week or more, engaging his briefers on world affairs, at least on topics that interested him.
Ms. Gabbard left the Democratic Party after a failed run for the presidential nomination in 2020. Her subsequent enthusiasm for Mr. Trump made her a celebrity among his supporters.
She was briefly considered by Mr. Trump as a possible running mate, before he winnowed the field down to other finalists. Ms. Gabbard helped Mr. Trump prepare his attacks against Vice President Kamala Harris while he was preparing for his September debate.
A spokeswoman for Mr. Trump said Ms. Gabbard was picked to help with the preparations in part because of her 2019 attacks on Ms. Harris during the Democratic primary debates. Ms. Gabbard attacked Ms. Harris in a July 2019 debate for enforcing marijuana laws. And in a November 2019 debate, Ms. Gabbard called out Democrats for being beholden to “the foreign policy establishment in Washington.” She went on to say Democrats were overly influenced by “the military industrial complex.”
Ms. Gabbard, a Samoan American, represented Hawaii in Congress from 2013 to 2021. While in Congress, she rose to prominence for criticizing the Obama administration for how it discussed terrorism in the Middle East and Islamic extremism.
She also expressed skepticism about the Obama administration’s intervention in Syria, which included airstrikes on Islamic State fighters and a deployment of military advisers. In 2017, Ms. Gabbard met with President Bashar al-Assad of Syria. The visit drew criticism because of Mr. Assad’s human rights record.
Her opposition to President Barack Obama’s policy in Syria began her broader critique of both the Republicans’ and the Democrats’ foreign policy, which she said wrongly believed that U.S. military power could solve overseas crises. During her own presidential campaign she criticized “counterproductive regime-change wars that make our country less safe, that take more lives and that cost taxpayers trillions more dollars.”
When Ms. Gabbard left Congress, she began taking more conservative positions and ultimately announced she was leaving the Democratic Party.
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