CHOPPING BLOCK

This Cabinet Member Is in Trump’s Crosshairs for Iran Leak: Author

Trump has settled on an underling to blame for the leaked intelligence assessment that revealed the U.S. strikes on Iran did not destroy their nuclear sites.

Tulsi Gabbard is on thin ice.

Michael Wolff, the Trump biographer who has long studied the president, revealed on The Daily Beast Podcast this week that the Director of National Intelligence might become the next former Director of National Intelligence if she isn’t careful.

On Saturday, the U.S. launched an attack on three nuclear enrichment sites in Iran. But despite Trump’s declared victory, early intelligence assessments suggest that the strikes did not destroy the facilities at all.

“It’s always important in the Trump script, the fallback is always who to blame, who to blame,” Wolff told The Daily Beast’s Joanna Coles. “Just have to have someone to blame. Tulsi is in the line of fire.”

To Trump, he added, she is a “stooge” at this point.

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Reports of the still-existent nuclear sites are at odds with Trump’s repeated claims that the strikes “completely and totally obliterated” the facilities.

The leaked report became a big PR nightmare for Trump, and Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told CNN: “This alleged assessment is flat-out wrong and was classified as ‘top secret’ but was still leaked to CNN by an anonymous, low-level loser in the intelligence community.”

But now that the assessment is available for the public to judge for themselves, Wolff said that Trump is in search of someone to throw under the bus.

“There is an investigation that is going on,“ said Wolff. ”They will try to find someone to blame. Within the White House, within the West Wing, what they are saying as of this morning, who this is being pinned on, is Tulsi.”

White House staff have confirmed that the leak is already being investigated.

“President Trump’s Peace through Strength foreign policy is a tried-and-true approach that keeps America safe and deters global threats,” White House Communications Director Steven Cheung told the Daily Beast in a statement. “Efforts by the legacy media to sow internal division are a distraction that will not work. President Trump has full confidence in his entire exceptional national security team. DNI Gabbard is an important member of the President’s team and her work continues to serve him and this country well.”

On Tuesday Trump raged against anyone that questioned the rocky ceasefire between Israel and Iran for which he took credit. The 79-year-old president exploded in a tirade—complete with a dropped f-bomb—against the “fake news.”

“These networks and these cable networks are real losers. You really are,” Trump said. “You’re gutless losers. I say that to CNN.”

Wolff said that Trump was upset because he could no longer claim “bragging rights” for solving the problem.

“What we saw... with the f-bomb, was the fact that this truce that he claimed he put in place, [that] he was the peacemaker... was coming apart. And so he was p----d,” Wolff said.

He continued: “Believe me, in private there are many, many, many f-bombs going off. The leak of this intelligence, and the intelligence is devastating. The intelligence basically says that this was all for nothing... It accomplishes nothing.”

Instead of being a few weeks away from assembling a working nuclear device, said Wolff, Iranians are now “a few weeks plus.”

“So this contradicts the entire narrative that he’s tried to establish,” he said.

And who’s to blame? Gabbard, of course.

“Trump is not going to say, ‘Oh yeah, this is a problem, we have to figure this out, how to continue this campaign if we truly want to end the Iranian nuclear ambition,’” said Wolff. “He’s not going to do that. He’s going to instead blame someone for the fact that this alternative and probably correct version of reality is now in the public.”

Gabbard was awkwardly snubbed by President Donald Trump this week after he dismissed her Congressional testimony that countered the administration’s justification for bombing Iran.

“The intelligence community continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Khomeini has not authorized the nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003,” she said in March.

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But this month, Trump publicly slammed Gabbard when her comments resurfaced.

“I don’t care what she said,” Trump said of Gabbard’s comments. “I think they were very close to having them.”

Trump later doubled down, telling reporters that Gabbard was “wrong” about the issue.

Gabbard bowed down to Trump’s assertions, quickly posting on X that the “dishonest media is intentionally taking my testimony out of context and spreading fake news as a way to manufacture division.”

White House sources suggested that although Gabbard has directly said that Iran was not building a nuclear weapon, other parts of what she has said, including in testimony to the House Intel Committee in March, pointed to the country being very close to building one.

Gabbard’s recent statements are a blatant contradiction to a post she made in January 2020 while she competed for the Democratic presidential nomination.

“To all who voted for Trump bc of his antiwar rhetoric, it’s time to realize he lied to u,” she wrote. “Stand with me against Trump’s Iran War!”

New episodes of The Daily Beast Podcast are released every Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday. Follow our new feed on your favorite podcast platform at beast.pub/dailybeastpod and subscribe onYouTube to watch full episodes.

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