Tulsi Gabbard made a career out of 'just asking questions.' Now she will have to answer them

Tulsi Gabbard, the former Democratic congresswoman turned MAGA conspiracy theorist, is set to be confirmed as director of National Intelligence after overcoming a key hurdle on Tuesday.

If Gabbard is confirmed by a full Senate vote, as expected, she will oversee 18 U.S. intelligence agencies, acting as principal adviser to President Donald Trump on America’s secrets and national security.

Her appointment will mark the conclusion of a remarkable journey from a quixotic outsider who regularly found common cause with dictators and tyrants against her own country’s intelligence agencies to the ultimate insider.

If there is such thing as a Deep State, Gabbard will sit atop it.

The combat veteran and Hawaii native was able to overcome concerns raised by both Democrats and Republicans about her fitness for the role.

She faced questions about her fondness for repeating Kremlin talking points, about her visit to now-deposed Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad at the height of his brutal killing spree, and her susceptibility to conspiracy theories found on the darker and dumber corners of alternative media.

The Independent documented her embrace of both Putin and Assad, including one incident when Gabbard asked young victims of a Russian or Syrian airstrike how they could be sure it wasn’t the Islamic State who bombed them — apparently unaware that ISIS does not have fighter jets.

But those concerns, and concerns about her lack of experience, were brushed aside.

As has been the case for all of the controversial cabinet nominations since Inauguration Day, the only thing that mattered in the end was that Donald Trump had picked her.

The Democrats fumbled their attacks on Gabbard, too. Recycling the playbook they used against Trump, they accused her of being a Russian “asset,” literally in the pay of the Kremlin.

The simpler truth is not that Gabbard works for Putin, but that she agrees with him.

That is no less worrying for anyone concerned about her fitness for the role, but that taboo was broken long ago by the man who nominated her. How could any Republican senator refuse Gabbard’s nomination because of her affinity for Putin when the president himself was guilty of the same?

And so they were left to press Gabbard on issues that made her look like the speaker of truth to power that she had always claimed to be. She refused to outright condemn Edward Snowden for revealing secrets about a deeply unpopular surveillance program, which eventually led to major reform of the National Security Agency by Barack Obama.

As she told the senators, Snowden “released information that exposed egregious, illegal and unconstitutional programs within our government.”

Gabbard also faced questions about her recent opposition to a warrantless electronic surveillance program that allows U.S. intelligence agencies to collect communications from foreigners outside the country.

She recently backtracked, calling it a “vital national security tool” — but the line of questioning allowed her to stay on comfortable ground.

Perhaps the closest Democrats came to getting to the heart of Gabbard’s weakness as a nominee came with Senator Mark Kelly’s questioning of her promoting the conspiracy theory that Syrian rebels staged a false flag operation framing Assad for using chemical weapons.

There were more than enough images, videos, analysis and witness testimony for a reasonable person with more than a passing interest to come to the same conclusion as U.S. intelligence agencies did — that Assad gassed his own people.

Throughout that entire episode, Gabbard displayed a shocking inability to digest intelligence — the very purpose of the role she is about to take up.

“You started from a place of doubting the conclusions of the U.S. intelligence community and then you sought out information that confirmed your viewpoint,” Kelly said during her Senate Intelligence Committee confirmation hearing.

“I raised those questions, given conflicting information and evidence that was presented at that time,” Gabbard told Kelly.

The same is true regarding her bizarre statements about biolabs in Ukraine, just days after Russian officials made similar claims.

Gabbard has made a career out of ‘just asking questions,’ without really worrying too much about the answers — the asking was the point.

It allowed her to ingratiate herself with the notoriously conspiratorial MAGA crowd, and to Donald Trump.

They became kindred spirits, in many ways. They both faced accusations of sympathy for Russia and lived to tell the tale. They both see intelligence and facts as things to be overcome, rather than understood. A post-truth president and a post-truth intelligence director.

It remains to be seen whether Gabbard’s appointment will have a moderating effect on her. Will she be able to maintain her image as a critic of U.S. intelligence when she is the one distributing it?

She certainly won’t be able to strategically just ask questions with the same sincerity — not when she has access to the most sophisticated intelligence operation the world has ever seen.

Now, she will have to answer those questions.