1 month ago
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Tulsi Gabbard, the former Democrat and Hawaii representative who is now US president-elect Donald Trump’s pick for director of national intelligence, is facing ridicule online following the fall of the regime of Bashar al-Assad – the Syrian president she met in 2017 and for which she has repeatedly expressed support and defended.
Assad fled the country on Sunday (8 December) after Islamist rebels seized Damascus a week after they took control of Syria’s second city of Aleppo.
Despite his regime committing numerous – and well-documented – human rights abuses, in 2019 Gabbard declined to say whether Assad was a war criminal and dodged a question on whether she would accept assessments and conclusions from American intelligence agencies if she were president.
In 2017 – the same year she met with the Syrian president – Gabbard said she was “sceptical” that Assad was behind a deadly chemical weapons attack in Ltamenah, instead claiming: “Standing here pointing fingers does not accomplish peace for the Syrian people. It will not bring about an end to this war.”
Three years later, the Office for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons published a report from its Investigation and Identification Team which concluded that units of the Syrian Arab Air Force deployed chemical weapons in the area.
Gabbard was also put on a flight watchlist by the Transportation Security Administration for a brief period over her foreign connections.
Explaining the aforementioned visit to see Assad seven years ago, the politician told CNN at the time: “I felt it’s important that if we profess to truly care about the Syrian people, about their suffering, then we’ve got to be able to meet with anyone that we need to if there is a possibility that we could achieve peace.”
Now, though, what with Assad’s regime being toppled in the Middle Eastern country, social media users have been ruthlessly mocking Gabbard over the news and imagining her reaction to Assad’s downfall:
Like all top presidential appointments, the Senate will scrutinise and vote on those floated to take senior roles in Trump’s administration, with Republican senator and Senate Intelligence Committee member James Lankford confirming to CNN last month the committee will have “lots of questions” over Gabbard’s meeting with Assad.
Awkward.
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