The fall of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad immediately triggered conversation about Tulsi Gabbard, the former Democratic congressman and President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to be Director of National Intelligence — and not just among everyday citizens. Adam Kinzinger, the former Republican congressman, joked on X/Twitter as news broke that Gabbard could offer the deposed Syrian president “safe harbor” in her home.
Gabbard met with the Syrian dictator in 2017, and she did so in her capacity as a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. In one particularly shocking moment, The Independent reported last month that when she met with young girls from Syria who had survived airstrikes from Assad’s military, she allegedly asked them how they knew it was Assad who bombed them. It was a question so insulting that the translator present said he refused to translate it.
