#trumps reign of terror

[rejectingrepublicans]

[castielsprostate]

hey americans, please fucking vote this year! thanks!

signed,

the rest of the world

[onenakedfarmer]

MARC ELIAS

Trump wants you to be fearful because he thinks that if you are fearful, you will capitulate, you will give in, you will pull your punches. And if you do that, two things will happen. Number one, you give up your integrity. But number two, Donald Trump then knows he’s got you. And once he's got you, you're not safer. You're more at risk.

[ehj3]

ANTHROPOCENE COLLAPSE

“Look, it’s his show. If he wants to be hard to kill, let him.” —Cartoon character Boris Badenov The star of this snapshot of a cinematic set piece is, of course, a Trumpasuraurus wrecks—a Godzilla-like beast, but without the kitschy charm—enjoying his vengeful, but otherwise mindless, anarchy. a Reign of Terror wrought by a wannabe Robespierre with a Napoleon complex. The creature’s inclusion…

[qqueenofhades]

Not that anything's a for sure bet but my read on the general situation re: Harris-Walz is that there's going to be a lot less headwind to fight for Harris specifically as opposed to Clinton because the amazing right wing media hasn't had twenty years for poison to seep into the layperson's thoughts about Clinton's "worthiness"

Well, that and the fact that the MAGA crowd are just really, really bad strategic planners (especially since a solid 75% of their strategy is "lol we'll just cheat and win it that way, we don't need anything else.") They howled for 3.5 years about how Biden was too old to serve and should step down, and then when he did, they had zero plan how to run against Kamala and Trump is now practically begging Biden to magically get back into the race and save him. They ran an anti-Shapiro influence campaign by encouraging the antisemitic online left and planning to exploit the issue among Democrats divided on Israel/Gaza, then furiously melted down when Walz was picked and had no plan to deal with him either. Fascism is a helluva drug, kiddos. Don't try it at home.

The reason Harris has been able to rocket so high is simple, which is that she's channeling Obama 08 energy in more ways than one. Obama also came onto the national political scene four years before (with his speech at the 2004 DNC) and four years later, he was the party's nominee. It didn't even matter that he was a skinny brown guy named Barack Hussein Obama, because people were so tired of the chaos and war and incompetence of Bush Jr that they latched onto a simple message of hope and change and the historical nature of his candidacy felt like an optimistic risk worth taking. Why couldn't it be time for the first African American president? Yes, of course, there was incredible vitriol and we are still dealing with that backlash in some ways now, but still.

As I have said before, Trump is technically not the incumbent, but the last 8 years have been dominated by his hatred, chaos, division, rage, and treason in a way even Bush could never quite manage, and when people get to that point, there's a lot of coiled-up energy that has at last come bursting out. We needed Biden's old-moderate-white-man cred to defeat Trump as the sitting president in 2020, when most of his worst scandals hadn't even happened yet, but this is not 2020 (or 2016) and the dynamic is different. We are now on offense and playing to win, people have readily and eagerly embraced the absolute god tier karma that would come from a black female prosecutor finally ending the Orange Menace's reign of terror once and for all, and the Republicans are spitting smoke and spinning gears running frantically through their usual tired old stupid cliche attacks. GAY TRANS EVIL BIRTHERISM SWIFTBOAT FOREIGN FAR LEFT COMMIE LIBERAL HEATHEN!! they scream desperately, trying to find something that sticks. Except this time, no matter how hard the corporate media tries to help them out, nobody is listening. Nobody is buying it. We know exactly what BS they're trying and we're just shrugging and going "Yeah, no. Weird."

It absolutely helps that Kamala is not dragging the ball and chain of 20 years of Republican smear attacks, yes. But there are a lot of reasons why the GOP is imploding before our eyes and it's probably now more statistically likely that there is a blue tsunami than it is that Trump wins. I still cannot, CANNOT, believe it has been barely three fucking weeks. If this is a dream don't want to wake up, etc. Let me goddamn stay in this timeline just a little longer. And if we do the work, we can in fact make it that way, and Yeah. Yeah.

[republicansaredomesticterrorists]

You repeated Republican propaganda that smeared Biden/Dems for what Netanyahu was doing. You helped Trump get elected and now the Palestinians you pretended to care about are going to suffer because of you.

All you”Genocide Joe” assholes helped get Trump elected. The future suffering of the Palestinians during the Trump reign of terror is on your heads. YOU HAVE BLOOD ON YOUR HANDS. F—k you in advance of your comments that will get you blocked. 🖕

[magnanimousmuse]

I hope everyone understands that trump “reversing” the ban on TikTok is not because he cares about your rights but so he can appeal to younger audiences. He is still a fascist who did something non-fascist. That doesn’t mean he won’t continue a reign of terror for the four years, and we will still feel the impact of 2025 decades from now.

[phebo]

Reminder: as things devolve, the GOP politicians and ultra-rich WANT you to get focused on being mad at anyone but them. They want you mad at people who didn’t vote/voted differently/are a different gender/different race, anything but putting the blame squarely where it belongs: the politicians + billionaires writing and approving the orders. Don’t fall for it. You have more in common with a republican voter than either of you do with Musk or Trump, whether you like it or not.

Another note: they want you to get violent enough to enact martial law, imprison you, and then to delay elections, especially towards the end of Trump’s reign of terror. Be safe. Remember it’s class war above everything. Always. They will play on every possible bias and emotion to get us to attack one another instead, but the only thing that exists is owners vs workers. This is a principal component that both Republican and Democrat voters agree on.

I know someone is going to attempt to misconstrue this as something fucked up like “befriend your local KKK member”. No. But don’t fall for the “you get what you voted for!!!” rhetoric you have already seen on the internet that is 100% meant to divide. It’s not red vs blue, it’s all of us vs the ruling class. The sooner you realize this, the easier it will be to come together to change the system despite any differences elsewhere.

Our language, our writings, our posts—they are textual iterations that shape our reality. Hopelessness and division incite hopelessness and division. Do what you must, but be thoughtful and remember the common enemy isn’t so common. ❤️

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Jessica Valenti at Abortion, Every Day:

Picture this: violent anti-abortion protesters swarming every clinic in every state. They’re no longer required to stay a hundred feet from the entrance, and nothing stops them from blocking patients trying to get inside. The screaming and terrorizing we’ve witnessed for years now happens inches from patients’ faces. When protesters are arrested, they file First Amendment lawsuits—and they win. Right now, America is on the brink of a new era of extreme anti-abortion violence, one where radicals can terrorize women and doctors unchecked. This kind of dangerous free reign is right around the corner—not just in states with bans, but everywhere. And it’s been gift-wrapped by men who campaigned as abortion ‘moderates.’

On Thursday, Donald Trump pardoned nearly two dozen extremists convicted of attacking abortion clinics across the country. The activists, who our felon president called “peaceful” and “elderly,” forced their way into clinics, terrorized patients, and blocked them from entering the building for care. In Michigan, that included a woman whose pregnancy had just been diagnosed with a fatal abnormality and whose health was at risk. In DC, a patient was forced to climb through a window to access the building, while ‘pro-life’ activists refused to let another woman see a doctor even after she collapsed in pain. And the protesters that Republicans depict as praying grannies? One told a Manhattan clinic “we’re gonna terrorize you so good,” and crushed a staff member’s hand in a door. Another was found with a half a dozen fetuses hidden in her home. What Trump offered last week weren’t just pardons, they were permission.

In fact, both Trump and JD Vance promised at the March for Life that anyone who harasses patients or attacks clinics will “never have the government go after them ever again.” Vance told the crowd, “We stand with you.” That’s not a symbolic gesture or empty promise: Abortion, Every Day has discovered that on the very same morning of the march, more than thirty Republican legislators held a private meeting with anti-abortion activists where they pledged to repeal the FACE Act—the federal law that prohibits blocking or doing violence to a reproductive health clinic. At that event, U.S. Rep. Andy Biggs made their intent chillingly clear: “God demands justice,” he said. Meanwhile, as Republicans advance legislation to undo the FACE Act, the Department of Justice announced that they won’t enforce it anyway. Not unless there are “extraordinary circumstances...such as death.” In other words, anti-abortion activists can do anything they want short of murder.

It’s not a coincidence that this is all happening Trump’s first week in office. With the anti-abortion movement eager to roll out a slate of deeply unpopular restrictions, giving extremists the green light to attack patients and providers without fear of arrest is, at least in part, a way to buy the administration time and goodwill. But let’s be real: Trump has always loved emboldening bullies and inciting violence. This is the same man still pushing ‘post-birth’ abortion lie, fully aware it puts providers’ lives at risk. He thrives on this shit.

[...] If SCOTUS decides to take up one of these cases, the national implications would be massive. Because remember, since Roe was overturned, threats and violence against clinics and providers have skyrocketed. Stalking and burglaries are up more than 200%, arson has doubled, and providers are regularly doxxed and threatened with death. In just the last three years, we’ve seen clinics burned to the ground and maniacs drive cars into them. That’s to say nothing of the trauma inflicted on patients simply trying to access care.

[...] What comes next is worrying. Without clinic protections, there will be an unprecedented emboldening of extremist protesters. It’s also likely that we’ll see an influx of even more extremists in pro-choice states: With abortion fully banned in ultra-conservative areas, those who have the ability to take their sideshow on the road will do just that. If and when the Trump administration does roll back access to abortion medication—whether through the Comstock Act, or FDA rules—more patients will be forced to seek care at clinics. And wherever patients go, more protesters will follow. That means clinic escorts and defenders will need our support more than ever, along with providers and abortion funds. But we’ll need to do more than the logistical work of ensuring people can get care—we have to make it clear, again and again, that everyone has the right to seek an abortion without fear, shame, or harassment from assholes.

Jessica Valenti has a harrowing must-read report in Abortion, Every Day that the GOP is coddling people who attack abortion clinics with their dangerous proposal to repeal the FACE Act.

[1americanconservative]

Jake DB Ryalls

oroenspdtSiu24iii4at6tiu6h8u77935791mtttc8191ch3m671a2908lfl  · 

BREAKING: Inside the MASSIVE Trump DOJ shake-up...

Let me tell you what's REALLY happening behind closed doors at DOJ right now. 20+ career officials SIDELINED overnight. This is just the beginning...

Trump's team isn't waiting for Senate confirmations. They're moving NOW, pushing out long-time prosecutors who've been there for YEARS.

These are people who've been politicizing "justice" for years. No longer. The Merrick Garland Reign of Terror is OVER...

The purge is hitting EVERY major division:

- Criminal Division

- National Security

- International Affairs

Here's the GENIUS part: They found a LOOPHOLE to make this stick.

Federal regulations generally protect career employees from being reassigned for at least 120 days after new leadership takes over.

But Pam Bondi hasn't been confirmed yet. The firings come from the ACTING AG.

IT GETS EVEN BETTER: Ed Martin - yes, the STOP THE STEAL organizer - is now DC's acting US Attorney.

Let that sink in.

Martin's record:

- Leader of Eagle Forum

- Wants TOTAL abortion ban

- Zero exceptions for rape/incest

- Fought to expose and stop the 2020 election fraud

- Defended J6 political prisoners

Meanwhile in NY: John Durham's SON (yes, THAT John Durham) takes over EDNY, that's Eastern District Court.

Dad investigated the origins of the Russia Collusion Hoax. Son has gone after illegal aliens, including MS-13 gang members.

Meanwhile, the all-important SDNY gets Danielle Sassoon - the prosecutor who took down Sam Bankman-Fried and prominent sex traffickers. She even clerked for Justice Scalia!

At least SOMEONE has a real track record...

But wait, it gets better. The FBI shake-up is just beginning. And even before Kash Patel arrives, it's getting WILD...

Tom Ferguson, who worked for Jim Jordan on investigating the Weaponization of government, is BACK at the FBI. He spent 22 years there before joining Team Jordan.

A LOOK at Ferguson's LinkedIn reveals:

- He hates "woke" ideology

- Fights socialism

- Says FBI "forgot their oath"

Now he's BACK IN CHARGE as part of the FBI's new leadership.

Christopher Wray? GONE

Paul Abbate? RETIRED

The people who weaponized law "enforcement" against half the country are falling like dominoes.

This is what draining the swamp looks like in real-time. Heads are finally rolling. The Deep State tried to kill Trump, and he's taking no prisoners this time.

This isn't just a shake-up. It's a complete OVERHAUL of our justice system. It's the only way to restore equal justice. It's long overdue.

And we're watching it happen in real time.

[greatwyrmgold]

Trump's vision of using what to do what??

[source]

Yeah, um. That all sounds pretty bad. The most optimistic interpretation of Trump's statements is that he wants to use the army to violently suppress open dissent against his policies. The worst is something like Trump using the army to terrorize his political opponents.

And to make it clear how absurdly vile this idea is:

Even Trump's fellow reactionaries think using the military to enforce civilian law is too far. To combat this, Trump is getting rid of people who would be likely to raise such objections to him.

There's so, so much more in that article. (Some of which isn't strictly about Trump planning to declare martial law to fight crime in Democratic cities, but is about dictatorial actions Trump and his allies allies are preparing to justify.)

And...look. I'm not a fan of the Democratic Party. But when the greater evil is all but openly planning to institute a reign of terror should they gain power, we kinda have to support the lesser evil.

[meandmybigmouth]

THE NEXT 4 YEARS IN AMERICA COMMONLY KNOW AS THE "TRUMP REIGN OF TERROR!" WHERE THE RICH BECAME RICHER, THE POOR BECAME POORER AND ALL THOSE THAT DIDN'T SURVIVE IT WILL BE FORGOTTEN LIKE THOSE TRUMP AND THE GOP MURDERED DURING COVID!

[mariacallous]

I love your recent run of pulling receipts from as far back as 2018 wrt the upcoming trump presidency. Idk why people are bringing me news of his upcoming reign of terror, tribunals and repression like dead birds and expect me to react with anything other than a "yes???? Yes we knew this. This isn't surprising or shocking its extremely predictable and extremely extremely bad" lmao

Unrelated but if they ever nuke tumblr would you ever get a substack or newsletter going? Id love to keep up with what you're reading/cooking/wearing :)

I think that's one of the things that did get me - how many people were genuinely surprised and stunned. Like, we've been knowing all of this! A lot of this is either stuff he's said or did since/during/before his first term or that's been stated during this election. A lot of stuff should not be a surprise to people and yet! Acting brand fucking new and horrified.

Like, this is what was voted for! A majority of Americans either support this or didn't do one of the easiest things to oppose it!

And it's why I have no real sympathy anymore like...I knew what was coming and that's why I voted the way I did. A lot of people thought otherwise and voted otherwise and now we all get to experience what's coming. I think being...not prepared, per se, but aware and knowledgeable of this meant I was already thinking to mitigation and adaptation, and the mourning and bewilderment were easier to get through.

But RIP to the people who are having buyer's and non-voters regrets. Couldn't be me though! When tariffs cause your soda and your video gaming system to be more expensive, and your family or friends get sick and possibly die from contaminated food, and you can't get your medication, or if you can you now have to pay $200 for a week's supply because oops insurance deregulation, or the deportations begin or you get your head smashed not even because you were actually protesting but because you were just close enough to a protest and got caught up in it, and guns proliferate even more so that there's more school shootings and you can't get birth control or even a condom and the bible is required reading...I don't know what else to tell you.

[lemedstudent2021]

4 years ago when the dumbfuck (biden) won, i was a first year university student, nodding along solemnly when my family briefly discussed foreign and internal politics over our tea, pleased to be finally old enough to somewhat contribute to adult conversations.

i still clearly remember my aunt saying "well, he isnt any better [than his predecessor] but at least he cant be worse". the conversation moved on from there, but my thoughts lingered. i didnt know if i wanted to be a cynic or an optimist, so i drank my tea in silence.

--

this past year has been one of the darkest in our human history, the scale of death and destruction and pure unadulterated depravity is unmatched. it will truly be long before the world can hope to recover from the atrocious damage that has been dealt, if it ever does.

i wont go into details mainly because i havent the time nor interest in doing so, but the world to no ones surprise is changing, fast and taking a turn for the worse. it has been for years perhaps even decades now. in the grand scheme of things i mean.

for many of us this is nothing new per se, merely a tangible extension of our worst nightmares and fears, but for many others its a reign of terror of the most potent kind. one that will herald further losses, but this time around very few will be spared.

--

despite myself i did think that common sense would prevail and wed see the the fucker (trump) behind bars and hopefully dead and not- as of writing- about to win another 4 wretched years in office.

theres a sort of grim satisfaction seeing the bitch (harris) getting a big fuck you to the face, but its devastating to think that she is losing has already lost? to the biggest fuck you to the planet. i truly dont want to imagine what the world is going to look like 4 years from now. if there is anything left of the world to look at.

--

there isnt much to say or add i think. nothing i can contribute at least for the time being. i would however like to point to what jon stewart bless his soul has to say about the matter

esp at 02:15

sounds hypocritical to say after having said nothing but the worst, but i mean it when i believe that this isnt the end. to give up now is to doom ourselves and the rest of the world (and perhaps the trajectory of humanity itself, whos to say) into eternal darkness.

ive said it many a time on this blog before and ill continue to say it for as long as there is life in me; power will always be with the people. weve seen it time and time again throught history and before our eyes. we are a force to be reckoned with.

we do hold the power to change the tides, look how many countries fought with everything they had for their freedom, how many times we arose from the ruins and started building anew and with just as much fervour, how much damage we can do to the institutions that dare to transgress.

war brings out the worst in some but the best in others. this is a war, one the corrupt wage on the sanctity of our lives and human rights, one were all on the front lines of, for ourselves and those around us.

--

as cliche as it is, and i admit to it being so, our chances honestly are better when we move and act as one. dont be fooled into thinking our differences will seperate us; those in power follow the age old rule of divide and conquer & thrive when we are scattered and lost.

show them that our spirit is one and whole, prove to them that we wont give into their unjust demands. look out for one another and dont hesitate to come to each others aid. be kind to yourselves.

humanity as a whole literally and metaphorically depends on it.

Godbless & Godspeed

[anexperimentallife]

JD Vance Just Blurbed a Book Arguing That Progressives Are Subhuman

As I keep pointing out, anyone who has studied 1930s-40s German history will tell you that today's GOP is cribbing directly from the Nazi playbook. Even their "support" of Israel's genocidal colonialist settler state (and lip service "support" of non-Israeli Jews) is primarily rooted in a combination of antisemitism, white supremacy, and Islamophobia. (Gift link at the bottom of the article excerpt.)

Michelle Goldberg writes:

---

In a normal political environment, there would be little need to pay attention to a new book by the far-right provocateur Jack Posobiec, who is probably best known for promoting the conspiracy theory that Democrats ran a satanic child abuse ring beneath a popular Washington pizzeria. But “Unhumans,” an anti-democratic screed that Posobiec co-wrote with the professional ghostwriter Joshua Lisec, comes with endorsements from some of the most influential people in Republican politics, including, most significantly, vice-presidential candidate JD Vance.

The word “fascist” gets thrown around a lot in politics, but it’s hard to find a more apt one for “Unhumans,” which came out last month. The book argues that leftists don’t deserve the status of human beings — that they are, as the title says, unhumans — and that they are waging a shadow war against all that is good and decent, which will end in apocalyptic slaughter if they are not stopped. “As they are opposed to humanity itself, they place themselves outside of the category completely, in an entirely new misery-driven subdivision, the unhuman,” write Posobiec and Lisec.

As they tell it, modern progressivism is just the latest incarnation of an ancient evil dating back to the late Roman Republic and continuing through the French Revolution and Communism to today. Often, they write, “great men of means” are required to crush this scourge. The contempt for democracy in “Unhumans” is not subtle. “Our study of history has brought us to this conclusion: Democracy has never worked to protect innocents from the unhumans,” write Posobiec and Lisec.

One of their book’s heroes is the Spanish dictator Francisco Franco, who overthrew the democratic Second Spanish Republic in the country’s 1930s civil war. The authors call him a “great man of history” and compare him to George Washington. They quote him on what doesn’t work against the unhuman threat: “We do not believe in government through the voting booth. The Spanish national will was never freely expressed through the ballot box.”

Nakedly authoritarian ideas like this one are not uncommon in the dank corners of the reactionary internet, or among the sort of groups that led the Jan. 6 insurrection. “Unhumans” lauds Augusto Pinochet, leader of the Chilean military junta who led a coup against Salvador Allende’s elected government in 1973, ushering in a reign of torture and repression that involved tossing political enemies from helicopters.

Pinochet-inspired helicopter memes have been common in the MAGA movement for years. And as the historian David Austin Walsh wrote last year, there’s long been a cult of Franco on the right. Nevertheless, it’s extremely unusual for a candidate for vice president of the United States to openly align himself with autocratic terror.

Vance provided the first blurb on the “Unhumans” book jacket. “In the past, communists marched in the streets waving red flags. Today, they march through H.R., college campuses and courtrooms to wage lawfare against good, honest people,” he wrote. “Jack Posobiec and Joshua Lisec reveal their plans and show us what to do to fight back.”

Other endorsements come from Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump Jr., a key figure in his father’s presidential campaign. The foreword is by Stephen Bannon, Donald Trump’s former chief strategist.

Now, it is always possible that Vance recommended “Unhumans” without actually reading it, a practice that’s not unheard-of in book publishing. But unless and until he credibly distances himself from it, we should take him at his word that he shares the book’s analysis. After all, some of the language in “Unhumans” resembles his own rhetoric.

“The great American counterrevolution to depose the Cultural Marxists must occur on all terrains of society they currently possess and on those they aim to seize,” write Posobiec and Lisec, adding, “It is achievable but only with the resolve of Franco and the thoroughness of McCarthy.” (They mean Joseph McCarthy, another of the book’s icons.) Compare that to what Vance said on the alt-right podcast “Jack Murphy Live” in 2021, when he argued that Republicans, upon taking power, should purge their opponents the way Iraq’s government once purged members of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party.

“I tend to think that we should seize the institutions of the left and turn them against the left,” said Vance. “We need like a de-Baathification program, but like a de-wokification program in the United States.” He argued that “we don’t have a real constitutional republic anymore,” suggesting that Donald Trump need not be limited by the norms of republican governance. Trump, said Vance, should “fire every single midlevel bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people.” And if the courts try to stand in his way, Trump should “stand before the country like Andrew Jackson did and say: ‘The chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.’”

You can and should laugh at Vance’s melodramatic self-importance and creepy subcultural fixations. (On “Jack Murphy Live,” Vance respectfully references Curtis Yarvin, a right-wing blogger popular in reactionary Silicon Valley circles who calls for replacing democracy with a sort of techno-monarchy.) It’s good that Democrats have found, in the epithet “weird,” simple language to describe the 4Chan side of the Republican Party. But in the Venn diagram between “weird” and “dangerous,” there’s a lot of overlap.

“Much like the United States founding fathers, Franco and his fellows saw themselves as rebels intended to overthrow a corrupt, tyrannical government that aided and abetted murder and rape as well as other repugnant sins,” write Posobiec and Lisec. We should take seriously the possibility that Vance and his fellows see themselves the same way.

Gift link: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/05/opinion/jd-vance-fascism-unhumans.html?unlocked_article_code=1.A04.-t6I.Jie2a3Abas5a&smid=url-share

[sonyaheaneyauthor]

Trump’s pick for director of national intelligence has long been regarded as dangerous for her Syria contacts and stance on Ukraine

Guardian international staffThu 5 Dec 2024 18.00 AEDTShare

In 2018, a Syrian dissident codenamed Caesar was set to testify before the House foreign affairs committee about the torture and summary executions that had become a signature of Bashar al-Assad’s brutal crackdown on opposition during Syria’s civil war.

It was not Caesar’s first time in Washington: the ex-military photographer had smuggled out 55,000 photographs and other evidence of life in Assad’s brutal detention facilities years earlier, and had campaigned anonymously to convince US lawmakers to pass tough sanctions on Assad’s network as punishment for his reign of terror.

But ahead of that hearing, staffers on the committee, activists and Caesar himself, suddenly became nervous: was it safe to hold the testimony in front of Tulsi Gabbard, the Hawaii congresswoman on the committee who just a year earlier had traveled to Damascus of her own volition to meet with Assad?

Caesar at the closed member-only briefing with the House foreign affairs committee in 2018. Photograph: Syrian Emergency Task Force

“There was genuine concern by Democrats in her own party, and Republicans and us and Caesar, about how were we going to do this?” said Mouaz Moustafa, the executive director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, an activist group, who had previously traveled with Gabbard in Syria in 2015. “With the member sitting on this committee that we believe would give any intelligence she has to Assad, Russia and Iran, all of which would have wanted to kill Caesar.”

During a congressional trip in 2015, Moustafa recalled, Gabbard had asked three young Syrian girls whether the airstrike they had narrowly survived may not have been launched by Assad, but rather by the terrorist group Isis. The one problem? Isis did not have an air force.

Photographs from the 2018 briefing showed a heavily disguised Caesar sitting in a hoodie and mask giving testimony before the House committee.

“I often disguise [witnesses],” said Moustafa, who had worked closely with Caesar and served as his translator. “But that day I was especially wary of Tulsi.”

There is no evidence that Gabbard sought to pass any information about the Syrian whistleblower to Damascus or any other country, nor that she has any documented connection to other intelligence agencies.

But within Washington foreign policy circles and the tightly knit intelligence community, Gabbard has long been seen as dangerous; some have worried that she seems inclined toward conspiracy theories and cosying up to dictators. Others, including the former secretary of state and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, have gone further, calling her a “Russian asset”.

Those concerns have been heightened by Gabbard’s nomination under Donald Trump to the post of director of national intelligence, a senior cabinet-level position with access to classified materials from across the 18 US intelligence agencies, and shaping that information for the president’s daily briefing. The role would allow her to access and declassify information at her discretion, and also direct some intelligence-sharing with US allies around the world.

Tulsi Gabbard during an antiwar rally to mark the first anniversary of the war in Ukraine in February 2023. Photograph: Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP/Getty Images

Gabbard and her supporters have denounced those attacks as a smear, saying that her history of anti-interventionism in Syria and Ukraine has been misrepresented as a kind of “cold war 2.0”.

In Washington, she has staked out a unique foreign policy position as a strong supporter of Israel and the “war on terror” – but also as a critic of US rivalries with countries like Russia and Iran (she strongly criticised Trump’s decision to assassinate the Iranian general Qassem Soleimani as an “illegal and unconstitutional act of war”).

“When it comes to the war against terrorists, I’m a hawk,” she told a Hawaiian newspaper in 2016. “When it comes to counterproductive wars of regime change, I’m a dove.”

Jeremy Scahill, the leftwing US journalist and activist, wrote that to “pretend that Gabbard somehow poses a more grave danger to US security than those in power after 9/11 or throughout the long bloody history of US interventions and the resulting blowback is a lot of hype and hysteria”.

But Gabbard has repeatedly shared conspiracy theories, including claiming shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine that there are “25+ US-funded biolabs in Ukraine which if breached would release & spread deadly pathogens to US/world”. In fact, the US program stemming back to the 1990s is directed at better securing labs which focus on infectious disease outbreaks.

Tulsi Gabbard and Donald Trump during a campaign rally in Greensboro, North Carolina, in October. Photograph: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

And she has repeatedly supported dictators, including Assad, suggesting that reports of the 2013 and 2017 chemical weapons attacks were false, and calling for the US to “join hands” with Moscow following its 2015 intervention in Syria.

Establishment Democrats and Republicans have openly questioned whether or not she poses a threat to national security.

“I worry what might happen to untold numbers of American assets if someone as reckless, inexperienced, and outright disloyal as Gabbard were DNI,” wrote Adam Kinzinger, a former congressman who served on the foreign affairs committee with Gabbard in 2018 when Caesar testified.

The person close to the intelligence community said that there were continuing concerns about Gabbard’s contacts in the Middle East, stemming back to the controversial 2017 meeting with Assad – an encounter that Gabbard has insisted she does not regret.

Those contacts may be explored during a Senate confirmation hearing early next year, the person said.

Gabbard was briefly placed on a Transportation Security Administration watchlist because of her overseas travel patterns and foreign connections, CNN reported last month, but was later removed.

She does not have a background in intelligence, although the Hawaii native served in the army national guard for more than two decades, and has deployed to Iraq and Kuwait.

Moreover, there are concerns that her choice could affect intelligence sharing among US foreign allies, including the tightly knit Five Eyes intelligence group that includes the US, Canada, UK, Australia and New Zealand, as well as Nato and allies in Japan and South Korea.

“Much of the intelligence we get, at least from the human collector side, is from our partners,” said John Sipher, formerly deputy director of the CIA’s Russia operations, noting that the cooperation was usually informal, “personality- and trust-based”.

“They’re going to be really hesitant to pass [information] to a place that that is becoming more partisan and less professional … they would be making their own checklist: ‘Hey, this sensitive thing that we would in the past have passed to the CIA that could do us damage if it becomes public … Let’s just not do that this time.’”