Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., said Sunday that he has no concerns about President-elect Donald Trump’s selection of former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard to serve as director of national intelligence.
Gabbard, a vocal non-interventionist, has seen her credentials come under scrutiny, particularly in light of a regime change in Syria and her covert meeting with former strongman Bashar Assad in 2017, which occurred after he had used chemical weapons on protesters. She later said Assad was “not the enemy of the United States.”
“I know Tulsi Gabbard. She’s a patriot. She served our country honorably. She, I think, fits the reform agenda. President Trump ran on disrupting permanent Washington and having people who are going to view things differently,” Schmitt told “This Week” anchor George Stephanopoulos. “There’s a lot of reform, George, that needs to happen in those agencies. Tulsi Gabbard is somebody who I think can execute on that.”
“I don’t think it’s unusual for members of Congress to visit foreign countries and talk to foreign leaders,” he said of the former Democratic congresswoman. “President Trump, I think, believes in engaging in diplomacy, solving these things.”
Gabbard has begun meeting with senators on Capitol Hill to try to get the votes she’ll need from them for confirmation, though her chances have coincided with a wider debate over the U.S. role in Syria.
Trump has said the U.S. should stay out of events there, although there are 900 U.S. troops in the country to fight remaining ISIS pockets. Trump has not definitively said what he plans to do with those troops.
“I think that’s a longer discussion, and a discussion that President Trump had in his first term,” Schmitt said. “I do think we’re entering a new phase, though, of realism in this country. President Trump would be less interventionist, and we get back to our core national interests, principally defending the homeland, the Indo-Pacific and China.”
“Understanding what terrorism means around the world is important, but having these trip wires in other regions that pull us into wars, I think the American people have had enough of that,” he added when pressed on the risks of an ISIS resurgence if U.S. troops leave Syria.
Gabbard is just one of many Trump picks who will need to win confirmation.
Stephanopoulos also pressed Schmitt on Kash Patel, the president-elect’s choice to lead the FBI.
Patel is a top Trump loyalist who has railed against the “deep state” and pushed to eliminate the FBI’s intelligence gathering capabilities, leading some critics to say that he’d politicize the bureau in Trump’s favor.
Asked about Patel’s book “Government Gangsters,” in which he included a 60-person “enemies list,” Schmitt dismissed that as a “footnote” in the book and insisted that Patel does not have an “enemies list.” Schmitt said Patel would bring change to an agency that many Republicans have grown to distrust.
“That agency is in desperate need of reform. Kash Patel is very qualified, and I think he’s going to get the support in the Senate,” Schmitt said.
On Trump’s promise to pardon Jan. 6 rioters, Schmitt said the president-elect would look at pardons on an individual basis and decipher between violent and non-violent offenders, which he said is the “exact right approach.”
“I think you do separate violent acts from non-violent acts, but I think he’s been pretty clear he’s going to view these individually,” Schmitt said.
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