The obvious sympathy that Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democratic consultant and Republican President-elect Donald Trump’s decide for nationwide intelligence director, has expressed for now-deposed Syrian President Bashar Assad continues to path her as she tries to spherical up help amongst senators for her affirmation.

“I’ve received a whole lot of questions,” Senator Mark Warner stated on Monday at The Wall Avenue Journal’s CEO Council Summit.

Warner stated he needed to find out about Gabbard’s “interchange with Assad and seeming affinity for [Russian President Vladimir] Putin,” in addition to her help for intel whistleblowers Edward Snowden and Julian Assange.

The Assad linkage is so extensively mentioned that Marc Quick, who served as chief of workers to Mike Pence throughout his vice presidency, made a chopping joke on a Sunday morning political discuss present, saying that the three folks most apprehensive by Assad’s current downfall had been “Putin, the ayatollah [of Iran] and Tulsi Gabbard.”

Gabbard, who was a member of Congress from 2013 to 2021, traveled to Syria in 2017 to fulfill with Assad in a visit that raised eyebrows.

After inheriting management of his nation from his father, Assad was recognized for being a very brutal and corrupt dictator, even by Center East requirements. In 2013, his forces had been accused of utilizing sarin gasoline in an assault killing 1,400 folks and of utilizing barrel bombs — explosives that may be made out of empty barrels and different scrap, together with gasoline and shrapnel — towards civilians. His authorities’s experience in torture led the US to outsource interrogations of some terrorism suspects there throughout President George W. Bush’s “international warfare on terror.”

Within the wake of Assad’s fall, a number of the prices of his rule have come to mild, with journalists documenting his fancy automotive assortment and the launch of individuals stored within the brutal Saydnaya jail.

Freedom Home, a democracy advocacy group, gave Syria a rating of only one out of 100 in its 2024 rating of nations by how free they’re, forward of solely Tibet and Nagorno-Karabakh (which Freedom Home contains as disputed territories).

After her 2017 journey, Gabbard defended herself, saying any peace deal amid Syria’s civil warfare would wish Assad’s sign-off.

“No matter you concentrate on President Assad, the very fact is that he’s the president of Syria,” she stated then.

That modified over the weekend, when Assad fled the nation and obtained asylum in Russia beneath the safety of fellow strongman Putin. His fall ended greater than 50 years of household rule after a surprising 11-day insurgent advance.

Throughout her time within the Home of Representatives, Gabbard typically justified a light-weight contact with Assad by citing the specter of victory by Islamic militants, who had been among the many rival factions difficult his governance within the civil warfare. That stance additionally appeared to conveniently diminish Assad’s culpability for possible warfare crimes.

“Let the Syrian folks themselves decide their future, not the US, not some overseas nation,” she informed CNN in 2017.

Whereas the group that led the insurgent coalition to take down Assad, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, is listed as a terrorist group by the U.S. authorities and has been affiliated with al Qaeda prior to now, the opening days of post-Assad Syria haven’t seen the fundamentalist Islamic crackdown some had feared.

On Monday, Gabbard informed reporters that her views now aligned with Trump’s, who’s commented on Assad’s fall by saying that the U.S. shouldn’t become involved — an choice that just about nobody had steered.

“I stand in full help and wholeheartedly agree with the statements that President Trump has revamped these previous few days close to the developments in Syria,” Gabbard acknowledged.

Listed here are a number of the issues Gabbard had stated on the ground of the Home, or later inserted as written statements within the Congressional Report, on the necessity to preserve Assad from being toppled and what would occur after his fall:

In advocating for eradicating language in an annual protection coverage invoice that accredited growing a method to counter Iran, Gabbard stated, “It’s clear that, if left unchecked, warfare hawks within the Trump administration will drag our nation into extra Center East wars, leaving destruction in its wake all over the world and right here at dwelling.”

She added: “So what’s the target of this authorization for warfare? Is it regime change in Iran? Regime change in Syria? Extra warfare towards Iran and Syria? Yemen?”

Speaking about her invoice to ban the federal government from supporting overseas terror teams, Gabbard stated the U.S. had for years been “instantly and not directly supporting allies and companions of teams like al Qaeda and ISIS with cash, weapons, intelligence and different help of their struggle to overthrow the Syrian authorities.”

“The Wall Avenue Journal stories that insurgent teams are, quote, ‘doubling down on their alliance’ with al Qaeda. This alliance has rendered the phrase ‘average rebels’ meaningless. We should cease this insanity,” she stated.

Talking of a provision to equip and prepare insurgent Syrian teams in a protection funding invoice, Gabbard stated the teams remained centered on overthrowing Assad, which might find yourself “creating a fair worse humanitarian disaster and a fair better risk to the world.”

“We’re waging two wars in Syria, offering arms and help to teams which have opposing goals,” she stated. “The primary warfare is a counterproductive one to overthrow the Syrian authorities of Assad, which should finish. And the second is our warfare to defeat ISIS, al Qaeda and different jihadist teams, which we should win. By serving to teams combating to overthrow Assad, we’re primarily serving to ISIS and al Qaeda obtain their goal of taking on all of Syria.”

In discussing one in all two Syria-related resolutions, Gabbard known as it “a thinly veiled try to make use of the rationale of humanitarianism as a justification for overthrowing the Syrian authorities of Assad.”

“If the U.S. is profitable in its present effort to overthrow the Syrian authorities of Assad, permitting teams like ISIS and al Qaeda and different terrorist organizations to take over all of Syria, which is what’s going to occur, together with these Assad-controlled areas the place Christians and different spiritual minorities stay protected, the US will probably be morally culpable for the genocide that can happen in consequence,” she stated.

“That is precisely what occurred after we overthrew Saddam Hussein in Iraq. It’s what occurred in Libya after we overthrew Muammar Gaddafi. To do the identical factor again and again and anticipate a unique result’s the definition of madness.”

In discussing one other decision, Gabbard stated she objected particularly to language saying that “Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s violence towards the Syrian folks has attracted overseas fighters from all over the world, who’ve supported and dedicated ISIL [Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant] atrocities.”

“I absolutely reject this modification to the decision which provides ethical legitimacy to the actions of ISIS, al-Qaeda, and others who’re committing genocide towards Christians, Yazidis, and different spiritual minorities in Syria,” she stated.

In debating an annual protection coverage invoice, Gabbard stated a provision to coach what had been described as “average” Syrian rebels “significantly polluted this important piece of laws.”

“I couldn’t in good conscience vote to help the so-called average forces who typically work hand in hand with al Qaeda or ISIS, and whose personnel and weapons typically find yourself within the arms of these terrorists,” she stated. “This invoice continues the identical failed practices of undeclared warfare, regime change and nation-building which have held us mired within the Center East for over a decade.”

In debating an modification to a stopgap spending invoice to assist Syrian opposition, Gabbard stated, “Voting to help this proposal is definitely a vote to overthrow Assad as a result of overthrowing Assad is the first goal of the so-called Free Syrian Military.”

She added: “If we mix the missions of destroying ISIL and of overthrowing Assad, this isn’t a sensible or efficient technique for numerous causes. We should concentrate on one mission — to destroy ISIL and different Islamic extremists who’ve declared warfare on us. Our mission shouldn’t be to topple the Assad regime, which might make the state of affairs within the area even worse and extra unstable than it’s immediately.”