President Donald Trump’s decision to move against Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro exposed internal strains inside his administration, including sharp disagreements over how the operation was prepared and who was involved.

According to people familiar with the process, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard was kept out of months of planning discussions because senior officials questioned whether her long-standing opposition to military intervention would align with the White House’s approach to Venezuela. Those people said the concerns stemmed from her public record criticizing regime-change efforts abroad.

The separation became so widely known inside the White House that aides joked privately that the acronym for her post — DNI — meant “Do Not Invite,” according to three people who described the internal conversations. They spoke on condition of anonymity. A White House official denied that any such joke circulated.

Gabbard’s past remarks have repeatedly emphasized restraint in Venezuela. In 2019, while serving as a Democratic member of Congress, she said the United States should “stay out” of the country. As recently as last month, she publicly criticized “warmongers” whom she accused of pushing Washington toward conflict.

The episode has become another flashpoint in the uneasy relationship between Gabbard and parts of the Trump team. While Trump campaigned on avoiding new wars, the move to oust Maduro has widened divisions not only among MAGA supporters but also among senior officials inside the administration.

Vice President JD Vance rejected suggestions that either he or Gabbard were excluded from planning the operation, calling those claims “false.” White House Communications Director Steven Cheung echoed that defense, saying Trump “has full confidence in DNI Gabbard and she’s doing a fantastic job.”

“We’re all part of the same team,” Vance told reporters at the White House on Thursday. “One of the things that is really amazing about that operation is that we kept it very tight to the senior Cabinet level officials and related officials in our government and we kept this operation secret for a very long time.”

A senior intelligence official also disputed the idea that Gabbard was frozen out entirely, saying she contributed intelligence assessments that aided the mission, even if she was not involved in operational planning. An Office of the Director of National Intelligence spokeswoman pointed to a social media post Gabbard shared Tuesday praising US forces for the operation’s “flawless execution” in capturing Maduro.

“President Trump promised the American people he would secure our borders, confront narcoterrorism, dangerous drug cartels, and drug traffickers,” she wrote. The message ended several days of silence while other senior national security officials publicly celebrated the mission through interviews, press briefings, and social media posts.

Earlier, on Jan. 1, Gabbard posted four photos of herself at the beach. “My heart is filled with gratitude, aloha and peace,” she wrote.

Former intelligence officials from both Democratic and Republican administrations described her absence from planning meetings as unusual, noting that the director of national intelligence is typically the president’s chief intelligence adviser and oversees all 18 US intelligence agencies, including the CIA. Planning for the Venezuela operation intensified in late summer, according to those familiar with the matter.

Photographs released by the White House after the raid showed Trump monitoring the operation alongside Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, and Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller in an improvised war room. Gabbard was not pictured.

“It’s highly unusual for the DNI not to be involved in any of these operations, especially something like Venezuela,” said Cedric Leighton, a retired US Air Force intelligence colonel. “The visuals from that picture are a perfect description of what’s going on to Tulsi Gabbard at this point.”

The situation has renewed debate inside Trump’s orbit about the value of the DNI role itself. Some allies have argued that the position, created after the September 11 attacks to coordinate intelligence agencies, should be eliminated. Trump and his advisers have also occasionally expressed discomfort with Gabbard since she assumed the post.

The Washington Post reported Wednesday that Gabbard played only a minimal role in the planning and execution of the raid.

Tensions reportedly flared last summer after Trump grew irritated by a video Gabbard posted in June warning that the world was closer to nuclear war than ever. The video did not name any countries but was released a little more than a week before Trump ordered a strike on Iran, according to people familiar with the matter.

Marc Gustafson, director of analysis at Eurasia Group and a former head of the White House Situation Room, said it is not unheard of for either the CIA director or the DNI to be left out of certain planning processes. He noted that presidents including Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Trump himself during his first term sometimes relied on one intelligence chief over the other. “Then the other would be kind of left out temporarily,” Gustafson said.

Despite the controversy, Gabbard continues to brief Trump regularly and frequently attends Oval Office meetings, according to the senior intelligence official. That official said it was unfair to single out her past policy views, noting that other senior Trump officials — including Vance — have previously disagreed with or even criticized Trump before joining his administration.

Since taking office, Gabbard has leaned into a more political interpretation of her role, prioritizing the declassification of material important to Trump’s base, including records related to President John F. Kennedy’s assassination and Russian interference in US elections. She has also focused on rooting out what she and Trump describe as a Deep State within the intelligence community.

Gabbard, 44, served in the Iraq War and remains an officer in the Army Reserve. Throughout her career, she has opposed prolonged US involvement in regime-change conflicts.

In a 2019 post about Venezuela, she argued that “we don’t want other countries to choose our leaders — so we have to stop trying to choose theirs.”

“When we look throughout history, every time the United States goes into another country and topples a dictator or topples a government, the outcome has been disastrous for the people in these countries,” she said on Fox News in May of that year.

After launching a presidential bid in 2020, Gabbard reiterated those views in a speech last October, saying that “for decades, our foreign policy has been trapped in a counterproductive and endless cycle of regime change or nation-building.”

“The old Washington way of thinking is something we hope is in the rear-view mirror,” she said.

{Matzav.com}

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