President Donald Trump was reportedly livid after his director of national intelligence posted an unauthorized video on social media last week warning that “warmongers” had brought the world “closer to the brink of nuclear annihilation than ever before.”
The three-minute video showed Tulsi Gabbard visiting Hiroshima, Japan, and warning viewers that modern nuclear warheads would cause even more death and destruction than the bombs that ended World War II.
“Political elites and warmongers are carelessly fomenting fear and tensions between nuclear powers,” she said. “Perhaps it’s because they are confident that they will have access to nuclear shelters for themselves and for their families that regular people won’t have access to. So, it’s up to us, the people, to speak up and demand an end to this madness.”
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The video was posted on June 10, just days after Israel hawks met with Trump at the White House and urged him to support Israel’s attacks on Iran, Politico reported.
The president and some of his advisers viewed Gabbard’s post as an unacceptable attempt to steer him away from supporting the attacks, sources told the outlet, leading Trump to tell Gabbard personally that he didn’t approve of the video. More than a week later, it nevertheless remained up on the social media platform X.
“I don’t think he dislikes Tulsi as a person… But certainly the video made him not super hot on her… and he doesn’t like it when people are off message,” a senior administration official told Politico.
The president also doesn’t like it when it looks like people are trying to correct him or his administration’s position, which is how many people interpreted the video, the official added.
The news comes after Trump shot down an intelligence assessment Gabbard provided to Congress in March about Iran’s nuclear capabilities. The president “just been kind of down on her in general,” a source told Politico, adding that Trump thinks she “doesn’t add anything to any conversation.”
Before Trump appointed her as the nation’s spy chief, Gabbard—a former Democratic representative and Lt. Col. In the U.S. Army National Guard—didn’t have any national intelligence experience and had been critical of the intelligence community.
She wasn’t invited to a Camp David huddle on June 8 where Trump and other senior officials discussed their posturing on Israeli’s looming strikes, and the president has debated eliminating her office altogether.
Her graphic anti-war video caused even more tension in the West Wing, according to Politico. The White House questioned whether the trip to Hiroshima, which was apparently tacked on to a visit to a Marine Corps air station in nearby Iwakuni, was relevant to her role.
Gabbard insisted to reporters on Tuesday, however, that she and the president were “on the same page” on Iran. A source told Politico she and the president had been meeting with top officials in the Situation Room this week.
Gabbard’s deputy chief of staff, Alexa Henning, dismissed the Politico report as “total clickbait” in a post on X.
The post pointed to a statement from Vice President JD Vance, who said, “Tulsi Gabbard is a veteran, a patriot, a loyal supporter of President Trump, and a critical part of the coalition he built in 2024. She’s an essential member of our national security team, and we’re grateful for her tireless work to keep America safe from foreign threats.”
White House spokesperson Steven Cheung told Politico the president “has full confidence in his entire exceptional national security team” and insisted that “efforts by the legacy media to sow internal division are a distraction that will not work.”
The Daily Beast has reached out to Gabbard’s office for comment.
