In the latest stunning Trump administration move away from Ukraine, Director of National Intelligence tore into a series of internal wartime policies in Kiev and said they departed from U.S. values.
Her remarks tore into the government of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at a time he is deeply vulnerable, with House Speaker Mike Johnson questioning Sunday whether he can remain in office if he can’t quickly repair the breach with President Trump after their explosive Oval Office meeting.
In an appearance on Fox News Sunday, Gabbard raised an issue that Trump has also elevated: the push for Zelensky to stand for elections. He declared martial law immediately after Russian forces invaded his country in 2022.
‘You have the cancelling of elections in Ukraine. You have political parties being silenced or even criminalized or thrown in prison’ she said – tearing into the regime.
‘You have the freedom of religion – churches being shut down. You have political opposition being silenced You have total government control of the media. We could go down a whole laundry list of issues that are against the values of democracy and freedom,’ she continued.
‘So it really begs the question, as vice president Vance said again in Munich, it’s clear that they’re standing against Putin. Obviously, that’s clear. But what are they actually really fighting for, and are they aligned with the values that they claim to hold in agreement with us? The values that President Trump and Vice President President Vance are standing for, and those are the values of freedom, of peace and true security.’
‘What are they actually really fighting for, and are they aligned with the values that they claim to hold in agreement with us?’ DNI Tulsi Gabbard said Sunday in the latest administration attack on Ukraine
She said Zelensky ‘claimed to be standing and fighting for the cause of freedom and democracy’ when the reality was ‘the exact opposite.’
The ‘values’ attack comes after Zelensky was hailed as a hero during his 2022 address to a joint meeting of Congress.
Her remarks referred in part to Ukraine’s 2024 law banning organizations with ties to the Russian Orthodox Church, which has backed Russia’s invasion. Nevertheless, it has raised religious freedom concerns.
Her blasts followed Trump calling Zelensky a ‘dictator’ for not standing for election amid the war, a comment Trump didn’t repeat in the run-up to his angry White House meeting where he blasted Zelensky for not accepting a ceasefire without security guarantees for his country.
Gabbard was confirmed to her post this month, despite Democrats and a few GOP critics saying she had a history of parroting Kremlin talking points.
In her latest comments, she raised many of the criticisms Moscow has hurled at Ukraine to justify its ongoing invasion.
Asked about whether the way she described Ukraine and the situation amounted to ‘choosing between the lesser of two evils,’ Gabbard brought up the risk of ‘World War III.’ Trump has also stressed that threat, along with focusing on battlefield deaths, as a way to push for a quick ceasefire that Ukraine fears will lock in place Russian gains.
‘Either he needs to come to his senses and come back to the table in gratitude, or someone else needs to lead the country to do that,’ Speaker Mike Johnson said about Zelensky on NBC’s ‘Meet the Press’
Host Shannon Bream asked Gabbard about Vladimir Putin after she attacked Ukrainian government policies
Gabbard defended Trump on television while the president golfed at his West Palm Beach course
Zelensky has been expressing repeated thanks to the U.S. since the blowup, after JD Vance accused him of being ungrateful
‘What I’m focused on is what President Trump is focused on, which is peace, seeing the world through a very clear picture, and making sure that the President is having honest and good faith negotiations with both of these countries to bring about an end to this war.
‘That is what it’s about, that lives are at stake. The potential of World War III, if this war continues to go on and escalate, is what’s at stake,’ she said.
Host Shannon Bream told the DNI that certainly those are not things you would say that Russia or Putin celebrates or bestows on his own people. Putin has been in power for a quarter of a century, and dissidents and journalists are routinely locked up. Opposition leader Alexei Navalny died in an arctic prison last year.
‘That’s correct. I would not make that claim and it’s clear that that’s not the case,’ Gabbard, 43, a former Hawaii Democrat who joined the GOP and backed Trump, responded.
Gabbard was confirmed 52-48 this month, with Ukraine hawk and former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell saying ‘the nation should not have to worry that the intelligence assessments the President receives are tainted by a Director of National Intelligence with a history of alarming lapses in judgment.’
She drew pushback online after the White House blowup when she posted thanking Trump for his ‘unwavering leadership in standing up for the interests of the American people, and peace. What you said is absolutely true: Zelensky has been trying to drag the United States into a nuclear war with Russia/WW3 for years now, and no one has called him on it.’
She repeated the World War III charge on Fox, referencing a conflict where the U.S. and NATO allies are already supplying arms, while Putin has used an estimated thousands of North Korean forces to try to push back a Ukrainian advance in its territory.
Also on Sunday, House Speaker Mike Johnson said the U.S. was not ‘abandoning’ Ukraine, after Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham said Zelensky may need to resign after his blowup with President Trump.
‘Well, something has to change. Either he needs to come to his senses and come back to the table in gratitude, or someone else needs to lead the country to do that. I mean, it’s up to the Ukrainians to figure that out, but I can tell you that we are – we are reexerting peace through strength,’ he said.
Vice President J.D. Vance berated Zelensky in the Oval Office, asking ‘Have you ever said ‘thank you’ once?’ and accused him of campaigning for the ‘opposition’ when he visited a Pennsylvania ammunition factory on his October 2024 trip to the U.S.
Unlike Vance, who voted against a $60 billion Ukraine aid package when he was in the Senate, Johnson ended up getting behind the deal at a time when he was politically vulnerable.
But on Sunday, he turned up the heat on Zelensky on NBC’s ‘Meet the Press.’
‘President Trump has brought back strength to the White House. We knew that this moment would come. We worked hard for it to come, and now it’s here. But we need these parties to, to go along with this, and we need President Zelenskyy to do what is necessary. This war has drug on far too long. He’s lost hundreds of thousands of people, including women and children. We’ve got to bring an end to it. And I think our European allies are hoping that that is the case, and we are as well,’ he said.
Host Kristen Welker asked him if he would like to see Vladimir Putin step down.
‘I’d like to see Putin defeated, frankly,’ he responded. ‘He is an adversary of the United States. But in this conflict, we’ve got to bring it into this war. It’s in everybody’s interest.’
He rejected the idea that the U.S. was realigning toward Russia, and responded to his own past comments raising alarms that Russia might march through Europe if Ukraine was left undefended.
‘Mr. Speaker, do you still believe that Ukraine is an ally who the United States should support over Vladimir Putin and an axis of evil?,’ he was asked.
‘Yes. It’s pretty absurd for anyone in the media or Democrats to somehow proclaim that President Trump, the White House, or Republicans in Congress are on Putin’s side. It’s a joke. We understand that he is a dangerous adversary and he is the one that provoked the war,’ he said.
White House National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, who was present for the White House meeting that went off the rails, also raised doubts about Zelensky without completely calling for him to go.
He told CNN’s ‘State of the Union’ there was a need for ‘a leader that can deal with us, eventually deal with the Russians and end this war, and if it becomes apparent that President Zelensky’s either personal motivations or political motivations are divergent from ending the fighting in his country, then I think we have a real issue on our hands.’
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders blasted the pressure on Zelensky when asked about Johnson’s latest tough talk.
‘I think that is a horrific suggestion. Zelenskyy is leading a country, trying to defend democracy against an authoritarian dictator, Putin, who invaded his country. And I think millions of Americans are embarrassed, are ashamed, that you have a President of the United States who says that Ukraine started the war, that Zelenskyy is a dictator – he’s got it exactly backwards,’ Sanders said.
‘The people of Ukraine have lost tens of thousands f soldiers. Their cities are being bombed as we speak, and our job is to defend the 250 year tradition that we have of being the Democratic leader of the world, not turn our backs on a struggling country that is trying to do the right thing.’
