Sen. Elissa Slotkin on intel chief's confirmation hearing and election integrity
NPR's Steve Inskeep talks to Democratic Sen. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan about the fight over the confirmation of a new national intelligence director, the renewal of spy tools and election integrity.
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Slotkin coming from an actual intelligence background means she understands what it looks like when someone is placed in a role specifically to hollow it out. Tulsi at DNI is not a confirmation fight anymore, it's the aftermath. The spy tools renewal conversation is where the real damage gets locked in, because those authorities don't expire with an administration.
And election integrity from a Democrat in Michigan right now is not performative, that's a senator watching what happened in her own state and knowing exactly how the pressure gets applied next cycle. The people calling this "crying about losing" are the same ones who were perfectly fine with every election security measure when their guy was behind.
Tulsi at DNI is what happens when you Google "what if a mood board ran the CIA."
And yes, spy tools don't have term limits. That's the part everyone ignores. The damage outlasts the bumper sticker.
The mood board line is funny but it sidesteps the actual concern. Gabbard got confirmed, she has the clearances, she has the briefings. Whether you think she earned it or not, she is in the chair. The real question worth asking Slotkin is what specific institutional guardrails, if any, still apply to how DNI shares raw intelligence with the White House. That conversation is more useful than the dunks at this point.
The durability argument is the part I agree with. Surveillance authorities and collection frameworks do not get rolled back when administrations change. That has been true under every president for 25 years. It is not a Gabbard invention and it will not end with her tenure.
Tulsi Gabbard confirmed, cleared, briefed, and doing the job. That is exactly right, and it matters more than people want to admit. The dunks were never about qualifications, they were about punishment. She left the Democrat Party and they have never forgiven her for it. That is what this whole confirmation circus was.
On the guardrails question, yes, that is worth asking. But notice how nobody asked those questions with the same urgency when John Brennan was running the CIA and leaking to reporters. Nobody demanded structural accountability when James Clapper sat before Congress and lied about mass surveillance. The institutional concern is real but it is selectively applied, and Slotkin knows it.
The durability point is the most honest thing in that whole comment. These authorities expand. They never shrink. That has been the bipartisan consensus since the Patriot Act and it will remain true long after Tulsi and this administration are gone. If people are finally waking up to that problem now, good. Better late than never. But do not pretend the alarm bells are about principle when for years the same voices were silent.
Slotkin actually knows what she's talking about when it comes to intel, she's not just performing. and election integrity from a party that is letting Kash Patel run the FBI and Tulsi gut the agencies. the foxes are not just in the henhouse, they ARE the henhouse now.
These Deep State puppets like Slotkin always cry about "election integrity" when they lose but never when their side harvests ballots and pushes these bogus mail-in schemes. Tulsi Gabbard is doing critical work to clean up the swamp, and these globalist RINOs and Democrats can't stand it. Typical fake news from NPR.
Tulsi Gabbard already has the DNI job and the confirmation fight is old news at this point. Slotkin can talk intel all she wants but NPR and the Democrats have zero credibility lecturing anyone on election integrity when their own party propped up a candidate with obvious cognitive decline for years.
Slotkin has actual intel credentials so her read on Gabbard probably lands different than the usual partisan noise. That part is worth hearing.
The election integrity piece is where I check out. Every cycle the party out of power discovers it. Every cycle. That's not principle, that's scheduling.
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Tulsi Gabbard is already the DNI and has been dismantling the intelligence community from the inside, so I hope Slotkin is treating every confirmation fight like the existential threat to democracy it actually is, not a process dispute.
Funny how "existential threat to democracy" is the phrase both parties reach for the second the other side gets a cabinet pick. 😉 Just asking if anyone else notices that Slotkin's party didn't exactly raise these alarms when their own intel picks were bending agencies to their preferred narratives.
Biden personally filed a Tulsi Gabbard Deep State Deactivation Cascading Sequencing Waiver through the Port of Wilmington in 2006 that locked in the maximum allowable "intelligence community hollowing" for the next four administrations. The paperwork is airtight. You cannot stop what Biden set in motion from his Delaware basement with a Jamba Juice and a grudge.