Tulsi Gabbard has made a career of saying the quiet part out loud. Her latest claim: that Barack Obama orchestrated a “treasonous conspiracy” to weaponize the intelligence community against Donald Trump. On Fox News Sunday Morning Futures, Gabbard outlined what she called an Obama-era cabal within the CIA and FBI that allegedly undermined American democracy from the inside. She said, “This was a coup attempt. The power elite, people like Obama, Clinton, Brennan, Clapper, and others in the Obama administration, weaponized our national security state and intelligence agencies to work with the mainstream media and Big Tech to undermine our democracy and take down Trump.” These accusations are inflammatory, unsupported by hard evidence, and strategically useful to exactly one kind of audience: the kind that benefits from a collapse of faith in American institutions.
This isn’t a new pivot. I saw firsthand how these narratives move from American media to the front lines. While serving with foreign volunteer units in Ukraine, I witnessed Russian information operations echoing rhetoric that had already aired on U.S. television. It wasn’t abstract. The overlap shaped how various Ukrainian military units were perceived, how trust was distributed, and how our movements were countered. It was narrative warfare with real-world stakes.
It’s the latest escalation in a long-running pattern. In 2016, Gabbard downplayed the significance of Russia’s election interference, framing it as a “hoax” designed to smear Donald Trump. But the interference was real. Multiple investigations, including the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report and Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s findings, concluded that the Russian government interfered in the 2016 U.S. election to support Trump.
Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chairman, was convicted of financial crimes stemming from his work with pro-Russian political figures in Ukraine. He also admitted to sharing internal campaign polling data with Konstantin Kilimnik, a Russian intelligence-linked operative. These are not partisan rumors; they are facts established in court and detailed in official government reports. And yet, Gabbard continues to treat the investigation and its findings as fabricated.
In March 2022, she took it further. Gabbard publicly claimed that the United States was funding biological laboratories in Ukraine and raised concerns about the potential release of dangerous pathogens if those labs were compromised. She posted a video on Twitter and said, “I’m just asking questions the media refuses to.” The language closely mirrored narratives already seeded by Russian state media and intelligence-linked actors, who used similar claims to justify Moscow’s military escalation.
Meet your new DNI – Tulsi Gabbard
She was one of the only ones at the time saying there were US Funded Biological Labs working on Deadly Pathogens in Ukraine
Warmongers like Mitt Romney vilified her and tried to destroy her for saying there were Biolabs in Ukraine. He called… https://t.co/4WWlI5FiwF pic.twitter.com/uQDMPjN5AK
— MJTruthUltra (@MJTruthUltra) November 13, 2024
Shortly after, Russian state media outlets amplified her remarks. A panel on the Kremlin-backed program “60 Minutes” praised Gabbard and Tucker Carlson, calling them reliable voices. One panelist reportedly said, “They’re practically our co-hosts.” The clip circulated widely in Russian-language propaganda circles and was cited in Western press reports, including Newsweek and The Daily Beast.
Gabbard has also repeatedly framed NATO expansion as provocation and drawn attention to the presence of far-right Ukrainian military formations such as the Azov Battalion—echoing Kremlin narratives that seek to portray Ukraine as fascist-controlled, despite the group comprising a tiny fraction of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Following widespread criticism and pressure from Western allies, the political character of the Azov Battalion has been significantly diluted since its early days. As part of broader Ukrainian army reforms post-2017, the unit was integrated into the National Guard of Ukraine, and its most overtly extremist elements were sidelined or purged. While Azov remains a propaganda focus for the Kremlin, its actual political influence within the Ukrainian military has diminished substantially.
More recently, Gabbard turned her fire inward. She accused Barack Obama of orchestrating a conspiracy to target Donald Trump using the national security establishment. This rhetoric isn’t just reckless. It’s disqualifying for someone now entrusted with national security oversight.
The problem isn’t just that these narratives echo the Kremlin. It’s that they do so at a time when trust in American institutions is already frayed. When politicians and influencers repeat disinformation—intentionally or not—it normalizes it. Gabbard’s status as a former member of Congress and military officer gives these talking points an air of legitimacy they would not otherwise possess. That is what makes her role particularly dangerous.
The erosion of trust has real-world consequences. It doesn’t just impact how people think—it affects how institutions function. Hybrid warfare thrives in these gray zones, where disinformation doesn’t have to convince everyone, only enough to disrupt cohesion and paralyze response. Public figures in the U.S. who echo adversarial narratives don’t need direct coordination with foreign actors. Their value lies in amplification, not allegiance.
And Gabbard has been useful. Useful to Russian propagandists who want to show division in the West. Useful to far-right influencers who want to delegitimize the U.S. intelligence community. Useful to autocrats who want to frame American democracy as hypocritical and unstable. Now she’s been handed a platform from which she can shape policy, debrief officials, and influence strategic priorities.
She doesn’t need to fabricate anything to be dangerous in that role. All she has to do is sow enough suspicion to paralyze decision-making. If the people tasked with countering foreign influence campaigns stop trusting their own institutions, those campaigns succeed by default.
Some might argue that Gabbard is simply voicing legitimate skepticism. But skepticism becomes dangerous when it aligns—knowingly or not—with the foreign adversaries it claims to oppose. Her accusations about a “coup” by Barack Obama and the intelligence community don’t emerge in a vacuum. They reinforce a broader narrative aimed at hollowing out public confidence in American institutions. These kinds of narratives don’t just cause friction in policy debates. They erode the very scaffolding of trust that national security relies on. Once that trust collapses, so does the ability to distinguish dissent from sabotage, and oversight from destabilization.
If America wants to maintain any credibility in confronting authoritarian threats, it cannot afford to elevate those who serve as vectors for their narratives. Gabbard doesn’t need to be a formal agent to be a liability. The Kremlin has already made clear that they consider her messaging valuable. That alone should tell us something.
We can still close that door. But we have to stop pretending that someone loudly echoing enemy propaganda is just playing contrarian. Sometimes the most effective disinformation asset is the one who thinks they’re just being honest.
Sometimes the most useful idiot is the one who doesn’t even know what team they’re on.