Tulsi Gabbard’s 2019 Post Predicting Military Intervention in Venezuela Would Be ‘Disastrous’ Goes Viral in Wake of US Strikes

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Several years before the U.S. conducted airstrikes on Venezuela and captured President Nicolás Maduro, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard warned against that exact intervention, predicting it would be “disastrous.”

News broke in the wee hours of Saturday morning that President Donald Trump’s administration had conducted air strikes in Caracas, Venezuela’s capital city, captured Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, and brought them to the United States.

The strikes sparked loud criticism for multiple reasons, chiefly because Trump had not sought authorization from Congress beforehand, and because of his pardon in December for Juan Orlando Hernandez, the former president of Honduras who was convicted of drug trafficking. Others have cited Maduro’s brutal oppression of his own people and how he seized power for a third term in July 2024 despite election results showing opposition leader Edmundo González had won.

Gabbard, who previously represented Hawaii in Congress as a Democrat, tweeted about the possibility of a military intervention in Venezuela on May 13, 2019, when she was a Democratic candidate for president.

“Throughout history, every time the US topples a foreign country’s dictator/government, the outcome has been disastrous,” Gabbard wrote. “Civil war/military intervention in Venezuela will wreak death & destruction to Venezuelan people, and increase tensions that threaten our national security.”

Gabbard included a video clip of her on Fox News in which she criticized Trump’s first administration for what she deemed “an increased sabre rattling and tensions” pushing the U.S. to send in the military “to wage yet another wasteful counterproductive regime change war…under the guise of humanitarianism.”

This kind of intervention to topple a foreign dictator or government always resulted in outcomes that were “disastrous for the people in these countries,” she continued, urging more efforts to “broker a diplomatic solution,” including “working with countries like Russia that have great influence over Venezuela.”

“Pushing for this civil war, pushing for the use of military force, will only end up with more suffering and death and disaster for the Venezuelan people,” as well as threatening our own national security, she said. Because this conflict inevitably involved nuclear powers like the U.S., Russia, and China, “tensions being ratcheted up…is something that poses an existential threat to the American people.”

In March 2020, Gabbard suspended her presidential campaign and endorsed Joe Biden. Trump nominated her as DNI a few weeks after winning the 2024 election, and she was sworn into office in February 2025.

Gabbard has not posted on any of her X accounts since the strikes, including her personal account @TulsiGabbard, her DNI account @DNIGabbard, or the DNI’s official account, @ODNIgov.

In the last few weeks leading up to the strikes in Venezuela, as Trump’s rhetoric against Maduro got louder, Gabbard’s 2019 collected a few more replies urging her to share her warning with Trump. “Tell your boss,” read one tweet. After the strikes, her tweet was quoted many times with critical and mocking commentary.

“Tulsi call your office,” wrote Washington Post intelligence reporter Josh Rogin.

A sampling of additional reactions is below. Several commenters went so far as to predict Gabbard would be resigning soon.

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