Vice President J.D. Vance hit back at CBS anchor Margaret Brennan for trying to use cherry-picked headlines to smear Tulsi Gabbard. During an interview on CBS, Vance spoke in favor of Gabbard’s nomination for Director of National Intelligence and said conservative publications criticizing her have “lost relevance.” “Both the Wall Street Journal and the National Review, conservative publications, as you know, have been critical of Tulsi Gabbard. The Review called her ‘an atrocious nominee who deserves to be defeated.’ They compared her defense of Edward Snowden, the fugitive who stole U.S. secrets, to an attorney general who thinks the mob gets a bad rap. Her refusal to accept U.S. intelligence findings that Assad gassed his own people, they said was “like a nominee for OMB Director not being able to count.” Does any of this give you pause putting her in charge of the U.S. intelligence community? Yes or no?” Brennan asked.
“No, Margaret look, these are publications that attacked Donald J. Trump obsessively, but those publications don’t determine who the president is, the American people do, and Donald J. Trump is the person who determines who his cabinet is, not these publications that I think, frankly, have lost relevance,” Vance shot back. “The Senate will ultimately decide,” Brennan smugly said. “Well, the Senate will provide advice and consent, as is its constitutional obligation, but I feel confident that Tulsi Gabbard will ultimately get through. Two things that are important to know about Tulsi. First of all, she is a career military servant who’s had a classification at the highest levels for nearly two decades,” Vance responded.
“She has impeccable character, impeccable record of service, and she also is a person who I think is going to bring some trust back to the intelligence services. The bureaucrats at our intelligence services have gotten completely out of control. They’ve been part of the weaponization of our political system, the weaponization of our justice system. We need to have good intelligence services who keep us safe, but part of that is restoring trust in those services, and we think Tulsi is the right person to do it,” Vance added.
“She doesn’t trust those intelligence services,” Brennan replied, again taking a shot at Gabbard. “She recognizes the bureaucrats have gotten out of control, and we need somebody there who’s going to rein them in and return those services to their core mission of identifying information that’s going to keep us safe,” Vance hit back, again defending Gabbard.