Nikki Haley on Wednesday criticized former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for Director of National Intelligence, for her 2017 “photo op” with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
“He was massacring his own people. She said she was skeptical that he was behind the chemical weapons attack,” said Haley of Gabbard on the SiriusXM show.
“Now to me this is disgusting.”
Haley, who served as UN ambassador under Trump, cited as an example a speech she gave in 2017 while holding up photos of Syrian children who were attacked by chemical weapons in the village of Khan Shaykhun.
Just months before the attack, Gabbard met with Assad during a secret trip to Syria, and in 2019 the Syrian president declared that he was “not an enemy” of the United States.
“For her to say that Assad was not behind it, literally everything she said was a Russian talking point, everything was Russian propaganda,” Haley said. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
She continued, “And the Russians and Chinese echoed her talking points and her interviews on Russian and Chinese TV.”
Elsewhere on the SiriusXM show, Haley, who was a harsh critic of Trump during his 2024 presidential run, noted that the president-elect’s pick once also opposed withdrawal from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and sanctions against Iran.
“Now she has defended Russia, Syria, Iran and China. Now, she didn’t condemn any of these views. She didn’t take any of it back,” Haley said.
She later added, “DNI… “This is no place for Russians, Iranians, Syrians or Chinese sympathizers,” he added.
