Tulsi has a mind of her own, opposes war, Trump displeased

Julian E. BarnesMaggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, Trump’s Rebuke of Gabbard Signals an Uneasy Moment, NYTimes, June 21, 2025.

President Trump was angry.

Earlier this month, Tulsi Gabbard, his director of national intelligence, had posted a three-and-half-minute video to social media describing her visit to Hiroshima, Japan, and outlining the horrors caused by the detonation of a nuclear weapon there 80 years ago.

Speaking directly to the camera, Ms. Gabbard warned that the threat of nuclear war remained. “As we stand here today, closer to the brink of nuclear annihilation than ever before,” she said, “political elites and warmongers are carelessly fomenting fear and tension between nuclear powers.”

Mr. Trump berated Ms. Gabbard for the video, according to two people briefed on the conversation. He said that her discussion of nuclear annihilation would scare people and that officials should not talk about it. [...]

Mr. Trump considers mounting a military strike on Iran. Ms. Gabbard, a critic of overseas entanglements, has privately raised concerns of a wider war. And on Friday Mr. Trump said “she’s wrong” when he was asked about her testimony in March that Iran had not decided to build a nuclear weapon.

After the video was posted, the president also told Ms. Gabbard that he was disappointed in her, and wished she had used better judgment, according to one of the two people briefed on the conversation. He told Ms. Gabbard that he believed she was using her time working for him to set herself up for higher office. Mr. Trump told Ms. Gabbard that if she wanted to run for president, she should not be in the administration, one of the people briefed on the meeting said. [...]

While Ms. Gabbard is a former Democrat, her credentials as a critic of America’s long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and as a skeptic of foreign military interventions appeal to Mr. Trump’s base, and her views dovetail with those of some of his other advisers. Her supporters are openly advocating that the president keep her.

There's more at the link.