Assad's people in Trump's team

The issue is that Trump's nominee for Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, is a great admirer of Bashar al-Assad. Back in 2017, as a rising star in American politics, she secretly flew to Damascus to meet with the Syrian dictator. Claiming she "didn't know" or thought it was "something else" won't work. The State Department had warned her at the time and likely presented numerous pieces of evidence about the "peculiarities" of his regime. Nevertheless, she went, befriended Assad, and subsequently consistently defended him in the United States, justifying his "methods" as care for the people. Incidentally, she is also friendly with Putin and similarly finds ways to excuse his actions.

"Tulsi Gabbard might still claim ignorance about the death factory in a Damascus suburb. However, in 2017, she was fully aware of the use of chemical weapons against civilians in Douma. After all, evidence of such attacks was presented at a UN Security Council meeting by Nikki Haley, the then-U.S. representative."

Just as Trump could not have been unaware of the crimes against humanity committed by Assad when nominating Assad's admirer for the position of head of his intelligence. As Bolton recounts, it was the images of Syrian children poisoned by gas that prompted Trump to order American airstrikes on Syrian military bases. Trump later publicly boasted that such strikes should have been carried out by Obama in response to the use of chemical weapons against civilians. According to Trump, Obama was weak, whereas he, Trump, was not.

And so, we have Tulsi Gabbard - a former protégé of Obama and an advocate for Assad - whose nomination clearly demonstrates that Trump is indeed capable of being "flexible" when it comes to questionable ties with mass murderers.

It's essential to understand that Sednaya, Assad's most infamous prison, serves as an indictment not only of the Syrian regime but also of those democracies that continually find justifications for shaking hands with tyrants. It seems it takes some bloody atrocity, like a concentration camp in Damascus or mass graves in Kyiv Oblast, to momentarily stall the pursuit of a "grand bargain."

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About the author. Larysa Voloshyna, journalist, psychologist.

The editors don't always share the opinions expressed by the blog authors.