Tulsi Gabbard squeaked through on a party-line vote Tuesday, advancing her nomination to be the next director of national intelligence. The two GOP senators who were iffy on her nomination—Susan Collins of Maine and Todd Young of Indiana—voted alongside their party mates, thanks to former Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, independent of Arizona.
According to Semafor, Sinema approached Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, and offered to vouch for Gabbard, a close friend from her time in the House. Their professional relationship apparently went beyond Capitol Hill, with Sinema hiring Gabbard’s sister as a security detail, according to Boston Globe’s Sam Brodey.
Former Sen. Kyrsten Sinema
Sinema reportedly spoke with both Collins and Young about their respective concerns with Gabbard’s background. And it paid off: Both senators enthusiastically backed Gabbard’s bid, meaning the full Senate will now vote on whether she’ll lead U.S. intelligence.
Sinema’s lobbying on Gabbard’s behalf is surprising for two reasons. One is that it shows how far President Donald Trump’s allies and disgruntled former Congress members will go to get his Cabinet appointees confirmed, even if they’re highly controversial—or, in Gabbard’s case, have unconventional views on Russia and Syria. And it also suggests that MAGA fanboys won’t have to put external pressure on senators to back Trump’s nominees. In cases like this one, former Democrats will do the work for them.
According to Axios, Cotton worked every angle possible to get Gabbard confirmed. And it makes sense he’d want her to succeed. After all, he did tell Trump that he could get her confirmed, and Trump doesn’t seem to like those who can’t fulfill their promises.
Of course, Sinema wasn’t the only person deployed to persuade undecided senators. Cotton also worked with Vice President JD Vance and Trump adviser Jason Miller, and he tapped former NSA adviser Robert O’Brien to whip members of the committee.
While Cotton told Intelligence Committee members that they would have the space to make their own decisions on Gabbard’s nomination, that didn’t appear to be the case. On Sunday, mega-billionaire Elon Musk posted on X that Young is a “deep state puppet.”
He later deleted that post, saying he stood “corrected.”
Even though Young caved, there could still be some votes against Gabbard on the Senate floor. With Republicans’ narrow majority in the chamber, Gabbard can only afford to lose three GOP votes, assuming that all Democrats vote against her. Axios singled out Sens. John Curtis of Utah, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska as possible dissenters.
But with Collins and Young on board, Trump’s team is expressing confidence that Gabbard will be confirmed. And for that, we have Sinema—the woman who would skip votes to run in an Ironman—to thank.
Luckily, it doesn’t seem as though Sinema has plans to run for public office any time soon—or ever again. But clearly, she can still create chaos, even from the outskirts of Capitol Hill.
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