The Tulsi Gabbard I know
Her experience and her character make her an excellent choice for Director of National Intelligence

I first met Tulsi Gabbard a few years ago when I was working as a producer for Tucker Carlson Tonight on the Fox News Channel.
At the time, my boss Justin Wells was searching for potential guest hosts to fill-in for Tucker on one of the rare days he took off work. Wells had already rattled off a few different names as he passed by our work stations throughout the day, but none of these options seemed like a great fit for Tucker’s show or audience.
At one point when Wells was again listing new names to a few senior producers who sat near me, I finally just blurted out, “how about Tulsi?”
“Yes! Tulsi,” Wells said as he snapped his fingers. He quickly rushed away to his office, presumably to sort out the details.
The next thing I knew, I was on a flight to Los Angeles. Tulsi was set to host the show there, as it was the closest city with a Fox News bureau to her native Hawaii.
The night before the show, Tulsi asked to meet with me. I honestly didn’t know what to expect. Politics and media are full of inflated egos. If you’ve worked in television news, you have likely heard the stories. For every genuinely kind, down-to-earth personality like Tucker, there were seemingly two or three times as many prima donnas.
It didn’t take long for me to find out Tulsi was nothing of the sort.
During our brief initial meeting, I saw firsthand that Tulsi was different. She was kind and expressed real interest, not just in the show, but about me as a person. She asked for honest feedback and valued my input, even though I was “just” a producer. Tulsi showed a rare humility in wanting to know the ins and outs of producing what was then the #1 show in cable news.
In the months that followed, Tulsi and I remained in touch. She was a resource and a friend during a tumultuous period for our show; Fox News canceled the show and fired Carlson in April 2023. We, his staff, didn’t last at the company much longer.
After I left Fox, Tulsi reached out about working with me again as she looked to launch her own show, Tulsi X Truth on X.
Although the show was short-lived because of Tulsi’s involvement in Donald Trump’s reelection campaign, Tulsi never shied away from tackling important subjects—often at great personal risk. In one of her early episodes, for example, she revealed the Transportation Security Administration had placed her on a terror watch list just one day after she had publicly criticized the Biden administration.
In every episode, she prioritized honesty and getting the facts right in every story we worked on, knowing that credibility with her audience was paramount.
Now, Tulsi is being asked to serve in a far more important role: President Trump’s Director of National Intelligence.
While it’s true that hosting a news show is far different than serving as DNI, in my time knowing Tulsi, I have seen her work ethic, her character, and her commitment to and love of this country in ways most Americans—especially her detractors—have not.
These qualities are the very traits we should want from leaders who serve and represent us.
Yes, one’s work history and track record are important—Tulsi Gabbard obviously checks those boxes. She served in Congress, has more than twenty years of experience in our armed forces, and she risked her life deploying to Iraq and Kuwait to defend American freedom abroad.
But we’ve seen time and again that resume qualifications alone don’t guarantee competence or character. Some of the “most qualified” national security and foreign policy officials bear the greatest responsibility for the most disastrous decisions of the last century.
Wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria, to name a few, were all orchestrated by so-called experts and careerists—the very same people who now slander Tulsi’s record, question her ability, and grossly question her loyalty.
The only thing they can claim expertise in is failure. Their actions often lead to promotion in the establishment, the media, and nonprofit think tanks. There are never apologies or admissions of wrongdoing. Not for the lies about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, nor the false promises of regime change or nation building.
Permanent Washington has allowed these individuals to double down on their failures, even they cost trillions in taxpayer dollars and thousands of American lives. Maintaining the foreign policy status quo—even if the results are devastating—is unfortunately not disqualifying in Washington.
Ironically, had Tulsi spent her career endorsing any of these regime change wars, her nomination wouldn’t even be in question.
So when you hear criticisms about Tulsi’s “lack of experience,” remember that they’re coming from the same individuals who spent the last two decades orchestrating these failed policies and eroding public trust in the national security institutions.
Somehow, being the antithesis of men like former CIA Director John Brennan, former DNI James Clapper, and former Secretary of State Antony Blinken, for example, makes Tulsi “unqualified.”
Each of these men, along with dozens of other so-called intelligence experts, deliberately played politics and lied to the American public by advancing false intelligence about the origins of Hunter Biden’s laptop. Brennan lied to before Congress when he denied that the CIA was spying on the U.S. Senate, and possibly perjured himself when he denied knowing about the infamous Steele dossier during the phony Russian collusion investigation into Trump. Clapper also lied under oath, when he claimed the NSA was not surveilling American citizens.
The American people did not vote for Donald Trump to continue this cycle of corruption and deceit. Americans elected him to end it—and they deserve a DNI who embodies that commitment.
Not only does Tulsi have the skill and intellect to take on this challenge, but having personally been targeted by politicized intelligence agencies, she is one of the few leaders with the experience and conviction to restore public trust in these institutions.
Even more importantly, Tulsi Gabbard has the wisdom and humility to concede our national intelligence is not infallible, that the consequences of American foreign policy are often unpredictable, and that American power does, in fact, have limits.
That is why the Senate must confirm Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence.
Unlike the “intelligence officials” who have served our nation for the past two decades, Tulsi won’t allow hubris to destroy any more American lives.