During an 1873 lecture Mark Twain offered the following observation about newspapers and their influence on the electorate: “That awful power, the public opinion of a nation, is created in America by a horde of ignorant, self-complacent simpletons who failed at ditching and shoemaking and fetched up in journalism.” And, with advisors like Tulsi Gabbard, Trump will be well prepared to resist the blandishments of the military industrial complex. Much has changed during the subsequent 150 years, of course. Today, no journalist would deign to dig a ditch and few could make a shoe if their very lives depended on it. They are still quite capable, however, of cobbling together baseless calumnies about public servants whose positions fail to conform with the orthodoxies of the left. Having smeared Pete Hegseth, President-elect Trump’s nominee for secretary of defense, the horde is now going after Tulsi Gabbard, his pick for director of national intelligence (DNI). Gabbard was a four-term Democrat House member who served on the Armed Services Subcommittee on Intelligence. She served in the Army National Guard for two decades, deployed to Iraq and Kuwait and is now a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve. According to a report in Politico, “Gabbard does have one of the highest levels of security clearance, known as a TS/SCI.” Yet, the media are circulating a letter from “a group of former national security officials” who inform us that she isn’t really up to the job: Ms. Gabbard, if confirmed, would be the least experienced Director of National Intelligence since the position was created. Prior directors had executive branch experience working on intelligence matters or served on a congressional intelligence committee. Most have also had significant management experience. The Senate must carefully evaluate whether Ms. Gabbard is equipped to effectively oversee an organizational structure as unique and large as the National Intelligence Program and also the effect of her holding this position on the willingness of our closest allies to share intelligence with the U.S. This crew also makes the following claim: “Her sympathy for dictators like Vladimir Putin and Assad raises questions about her judgment and fitness.” This nonsense goes back to a ridiculous suggestion by Hillary Clinton that the Russians were “grooming” Gabbard, whom she implied was a “favorite of the Russians.” The former secretary of state has nursed a longstanding grudge against Gabbard, who embarrassed her by resigning from the Democratic National Committee to protest the rigged primary process that assured Clinton’s capture of the party’s 2016 presidential nomination. Gabbard compounded that sin by circulating a petition to ditch the DNC’s deployment of “superdelegates” to rig future nominations. Unelected superdelegates control 15 to 20 percent of the votes in the Democratic Party’s national conventions and are unpledged to any candidate. They are “party leaders” who control the DNC and effectively appoint themselves to make sure that rank-and-file delegates chosen in the state primaries don’t foolishly nominate the “wrong” candidate. Tulsi Gabbard, having watched this undemocratic process play out in 2016 and 2020 became increasingly disillusioned. She finally had enough after months of watching the Biden administration mismanage the conflict between Ukraine and Russia. She announced her departure from the party in an X video released on Oct. 11, 2022. She explained her exit as follows: I can no longer remain in today’s Democratic Party that is under the complete control of an elitist cabal of warmongers who are driven by cowardly wokeness, who divide us by racializing every issue and stoking anti-white racism, who actively work to undermine our God-given freedoms that are enshrined in our Constitution, who are hostile to people of faith and spirituality, who demonize the police but protect criminals at the expense of law-abiding Americans, who believe in open borders, who weaponize the national security state to go after their political opponents, and, above all, who are dragging us ever closer to nuclear war. This description of the Democrat leadership as warmongers produced a fresh spate of “news” and opinion pieces depicting Gabbard as Russia friendly. A number of publications exhumed the following statement she posted on X: “This war and suffering could have easily been avoided if Biden Admin/NATO had simply acknowledged Russia’s legitimate security concerns regarding Ukraine’s becoming a member of NATO, which would mean US/NATO forces right on Russia’s border.” This means that Gabbard has a far more nuanced view of the Ukraine crisis than her media critics. Even before Putin’s rise, Russia has consistently warned that the steady eastward expansion of NATO constituted a significant threat to its security. That doesn’t necessarily mean John J. Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago is correct when he writes, “[T]he United States and its European allies share most of the responsibility for the crisis.” But the “ignorant, self-complacent simpletons” of the corporate media have forgotten that Russia was invaded by Western powers in the 19th and 20th centuries. That Tulsi Gabbard understands the significance of this to Putin suggests she is more sophisticated than Obama retreads like Jake Sullivan, whom she will soon replace. Meanwhile, Trump has called for an immediate ceasefire in the Ukraine conflict. Considering the fall of Kremlin ally Bashar al-Assad in Syria, Putin may be more open to a deal than he has been thus far. If so, most Americans will feel far safer. And, with advisors like Tulsi Gabbard, Trump will be well prepared to resist the blandishments of the military industrial complex. Nonetheless, the horde will continue to question her competence as well as her loyalty to the nation she has so honorably served for decades.  No one with any sense will listen to them. READ MORE from David Catron: The Indefatigable California Vote Factory Can Musk Dismantle the Deep State? The post Pathetic Corporate Media Targets Tulsi Gabbard appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.