Gabbard's looking out for herself, not for America

The intelligence chief had no reason to be present at an FBI raid.

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SEN. Mark Warner (D-Va.) questioned Gabbard's presence at the Georgia raid.

(KEVIN DIETSCH Getty Images)

Tulsi Gabbard’s political journey has been anything but straightforward.

As a teenager, she worked for her father, a prominent anti-gay activist, and his political organization, which opposed same-sex marriage. In 2002, she was elected to Hawaii's House of Representatives, becoming — at age 21—the youngest person to serve in the Legislature.

Gabbard was a Democrat and remained so for two decades, as she cycled from the statehouse to Honolulu’s City Council to the U.S. House of Representatives.

In 2020, she ran for president, renouncing her anti-LGBTQ+ views and apologizing for her earlier stance. She was a Bernie Sanders acolyte and a fierce critic of Donald Trump and, especially, his foreign policy. She denounced him at one point for “being Saudi Arabia’s bitch.”

Now, Gabbard is MAGA down to her stocking feet.

Despite no obvious qualifications — save for her fawning appearances on Fox News— Trump selected her to be the director of national intelligence, the nation’s spymaster in chief. Despite no earthly reason, Gabbard was present last week when the FBI conducted a heavy-handed raid at the Fulton County elections office in Georgia, pursuing a harebrained theory the 2020 election was stolen from Trump.

Instead of, say, poring over the latest intelligence gleanings from Ukraine or Gaza, Gabbard stood watch as a team of flak-jacketed agents carted off hundreds of boxes of ballots and other election materials.

That'll keep the homeland safe.

But as bizarre and unaccountable as it was, Gabbard’s presence outside Atlanta did make a certain amount of sense. She's a longtime dabbler in crackpot conspiracies. And she'll bend, like a swaying palm, whichever way the prevailing winds blow.