‘Hotter than everybody’: Trump makes a move on Tulsi Gabbard in public as she stretches the truth to get back in his good graces

President Donald Trump reportedly called his Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard “hotter than everybody” at a White House event — at best, a poor choice of words, at worst, blatant sexual harassment of a female staff member in public.

The full context of the quote was Gabbard’s recent DNI report, which alleged that in late 2016, Obama administration officials learned, through classified assessments, that Russia had not employed cyberattacks to alter vote tallies in the presidential election between Trump and Hillary Clinton that year, a scandal known as “Russiagate.”

‘She’s the hottest one in the room’

Speaking Tuesday, July 22, at a White House reception for Republican lawmakers, Trump said of Gabbard, “She’s like, hotter than everybody. She’s the hottest one in the room right now. [Gabbard] found out that Barack Hussein Obama led a group of people, and they cheated in the elections, and they cheated without question.”

He added. “She has all the documents; she has everything that you need. You’ve found things that nobody thought we’d ever find. Very happy and very honored to have you with us.”

Gabbard’s DNI report labeled former Obama Administration officials’ actions related to Russian interference in the 2016 election “treasonous” and “a years-long coup,” formally referring the matter to the Department of Justice for possible prosecution. So far, no charges have been filed. Obama’s office has called Gabbard’s report a distraction.

Gabbard’s DNI report

Gabbard’s DNI findings seemed to contradict several bipartisan investigations, such as the 2019 Mueller Report and the 2020 Senate Intelligence Committee investigation, which did not find evidence of altered votes or infrastructure hacking, but confirmed that Russia engaged in extensive influence operations from hacking DNC systems to releasing emails via intermediaries, and launching social media disinformation aimed at helping Trump while hurting Clinton.

Critics argue that Gabbard conflates two distinct findings: first, that there was no evidence of vote manipulation through cyberattacks, and second, that Russia engaged in a broad, well-documented influence campaign aimed at swaying the 2016 election, according to FactCheck.org.

Gabbard’s Russiagate findings smooth over Trump tensions

Tensions between Gabbard and President Trump escalated earlier this year over the U.S. assessment of Iran’s nuclear ambitions. In March 2025, Gabbard testified that the intelligence community continued to assess that Iran was not actively building a nuclear weapon and that no order had been given by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to restart a weapons program.

Trump, however, publicly rejected her conclusion, claiming Iran was “very close” to developing a bomb and dismissed Gabbard’s assessment as “wrong.” The disagreement sparked a public rift, with Trump undermining his intelligence chief on multiple occasions.

In the months that followed, Gabbard sought to clarify her remarks, stating that while Iran may not have resumed weaponization efforts, it had enriched enough uranium to potentially assemble a bomb within weeks or months.

Despite this alignment with Trump’s concerns, Gabbard was reportedly excluded from key national security briefings, including crisis discussions surrounding the Israel–Iran conflict. Her sidelining raised concerns among analysts about the politicization of intelligence and the diminishing independence of the DNI role under Trump’s leadership.