Tulsi Gabbard slammed Trump’s ‘costly, terrible’ Iran actions in resurfaced 2020 video | EUROtoday

Tulsi Gabbard faces contemporary scrutiny over her function in army strikes as movies resurface from six years in the past by which she slammed President Donald Trump’s earlier actions on Iran.

Back then, she was a Democratic presidential candidate and a persistent critic of what she described as the risks of “war without congressional authority.”

“We’ve gotta be clear-eyed about the situation that we’re in,” Gabbard informed Fox News in January 2020, following a strike by which the Trump administration killed Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani.

“Inching closer; actually, more than inching… Speeding towards an all-out war with Iran would make the wars that we’ve seen in Iraq and Afghanistan look like a picnic,” Gabbard mentioned.

“It will be far more costly in American lives and American taxpayer dollars, and all towards accomplishing what goal? What objective?”

That video clip, and others prefer it, have renewed questions over Gabbard’s stance now she joined Trump’s administration as Director of National Intelligence.

Gabbard, usually a prolific poster on social media, has not up to date her X or Facebook pages since February 25, at the same time as different members of the present Trump administration have declared their help for battle with Iran.

However, an image launched by the White House reveals her within the coronary heart of the motion because the U.S. and Israel started bombing Iran on Saturday morning, sitting within the Situation Room alongside Vice President JD Vance, Energy Secretary Chris Wright, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.

It’s a startling turnaround for Gabbard, who spent years vehemently opposing American army motion abroad.

In one other video resurfaced from 2020, Gabbard slammed Trump for “seriously escalating the situation” with Iran and pushing the U.S. into one other undesirable battle.

“It’s not a matter of well, are we going to have a war with Iran… We are in a war with Iran right now. So the real issue is, are we going to allow this war to continue to escalate? And if so, for how long and to achieve what objective?”

At the time, Gabbard insisted that retribution alone was not enough to justify killing Soleimani.

“We’ve gotta make sure that our commander in chief is making decisions based on the best interests of the safety and security of the American people, our own national security, and that’s not what’s happened here,” she informed Fox News.

Gabbard, a former Hawaii congresswoman with a military record that included serving in Iraq, was well familiar with the costs of war.

“When the bullets start flying and the bombs start dropping, terrible things can happen that no one has planned for,” she wrote on Facebook in 2020.

“This is one of the great tragedies of war. Unintended consequences and so-called ‘collateral damage.’”

She frequently spoke out against 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, calling her “the queen of warmongers,” and in October 2022, Gabbard introduced she was leaving the Democratic Party, accusing it of dragging the U.S. “closer to nuclear war.”

Gabbard subsequently grew to become a Republican and endorsed Trump in 2024, touchdown a job as DNI in his second administration.

Even from inside Trump’s internal circle, Gabbard has appeared reluctant to beat the drums of battle, asserting final March that there was no proof to counsel that Iran was constructing a nuclear weapon.

“The intelligence community continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khomeini has not authorized the nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003,” Gabbard had mentioned.

Trump was livid about being contradicted and declared that his DNI’s intelligence was fallacious.

Gabbard subsequently reversed course and claimed that Iran might have a nuclear weapon constructed “within weeks to months.”