In January 2019, when President Donald Trump recognized Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó as interim president rather than the “illegitimate” President Nicolás Maduro and issued Executive Orders to cut off financial lifelines and isolate the government of Venezuela, then-Democratic Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii objected to Trump’s interference.
Gabbard wrote in 2019: “The United States needs to stay out of Venezuela. Let the Venezuelan people determine their future. We don’t want other countries to choose our leaders–so we have to stop trying to choose theirs.”
The post is gaining new scrutiny because Gabbard is now the Director of National Intelligence in Trump’s second administration and the U.S. is threatening Venezuela. This week Trump wrote “the shock to [Venezuela] will be like nothing they have ever seen before — Until such time as they return to the United States of America all of the Oil, Land, and other Assets that they previously stole from us.”
Critics of the second Trump administration are recirculating Gabbard’s 2019 post with comments including, “Why are you silent now?”
Why are you silent now?
— ADAM (@AdameMedia) December 17, 2025
Note: In May 2025, Gabbard fired two veteran National Intelligence Council officials — acting chair of the National Intelligence Council, Mike Collins and his deputy, Maria Langan-Riekhof — after a declassified memo was released from NIC that contradicted the Trump administration’s reasoning for invoking the Aliens Enemies Act and deporting Venezuelan immigrants without due process. (The memo asserted that the Venezuelan government did not control the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.)
After the firing, Gabbard’s deputy chief of staff, Alexa Henning, referred to Collins and Langan-Riekhof as “Biden holdovers” and said they were fired for “politicizing intelligence.”
(Note: The NIC memo was released in response to an open records request filed by the Freedom of the Press Foundation.)
You are genuinely bad at your job but that is likely a prerequisite for WaPo.
No one from ODNI told you that, so of course you inject your own politically motivated opinion. That’s wrong but who cares about facts, right?
These Biden holdovers were dismissed because they… https://t.co/kccRnpUBrQ
— Alexa Henning (@alexahenning) May 14, 2025
In September, Gabbard reportedly ordered the National Security Agency to retract another intelligence report on Venezuela, which allegedly described conversations and negotiations between Maduro and Trump’s Special Presidential Envoy to Venezuela, Richard Grenell, who is now President and Executive Director of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
The New York Times reported at the time that “Grenell, who serves as an envoy to Venezuela, has advocated negotiations with its authoritarian government, while Secretary of State Marco Rubio has pushed for a more hard-line approach.”