Before noon today, Tulsi Gabbard will be confirmed — on a straight party line vote — to be President Donald Trump’s Director of National Intelligence.
It’s a win that seemed far-fetched when Trump first picked the former Hawaii Democratic Congresswoman to lead the nation’s intelligence community.
Why?
Gabbard has never worked in the intelligence field. Her nomination was greeted skeptically by Republicans due to her efforts to pardon Edward Snowden when she was in Congress. She met secretly with then Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in 2017. She’s been publicly sympathetic to Russia.
And yet, Gabbard is likely to get all 53 Republican Senators to support her today.
It’s a striking testament to the iron grip that Trump has on the Republican party and its elected officials.
Another Republican president who nominated someone like Gabbard for such a critical role would almost certainly have been met with major resistance from within his or her party.
And, while there were grumbles about Gabbard — and she struggled at times during her confirmation hearing — those doubts were ultimately extinguished in the face of one blaring reality: Donald Trump wanted her and Donald Trump was going to get her.
When confirmed, Gabbard will be the 14th Cabinet pick in place for Trump. And with Robert F. Kennedy, Trump’s pick to be Secretary of Health and Human Services, also seemingly past questions of whether he will survive the process, it now looks as though the only Cabinet nominee who will be rejected is Matt Gaetz for Attorney General.
By contrast, Trump lost 4 of his Cabinet choices to the confirmation process during the early days of his first term as president.
The loyalty to him among Republican elected officials is now (almost) total. The idea of establishment resistance is a joke. As I have said before, it’s Trumpism all the way down.
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