Trump Is About to Be Pissed at Tulsi Gabbard’s Canada Admission

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard absolutely—and accidentally—shredded Donald Trump’s phony reason for placing steep tariffs on Canada.

During a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing Tuesday, Gabbard presented the Annual Threat Assessment, or ATA, about the dangers state and nonstate actors pose to the United States. In her opening statement, Gabbard emphasized the presence of foreign cartels and illicit drug trafficking as the most dire threat to national security—but notably didn’t mention Canada at all.

Canada’s absence in the report presents a stark contradiction to the Trump administration’s insistence that drug trafficking across the northern border presents a major threat to Americans. Trump has cited this excuse as part of his rationale for levying 25 percent tariffs on Canadian exports.

Senator Martin Heinrich asked Gabbard to explain why she hadn’t mentioned Canada in her report.

“Is the [Intelligence Community] wrong in its omission of Canada as a source of illicit fentanyl in the ATA? I was surprised, given some of the rhetoric, that there is no mention of Canada in the ATA,” the New Mexico Democrat pressed.

“Senator, the focus in my opening and the ATA was really to focus on the most extreme threats in that area. And our assessment is that the most extreme threat related to fentanyl continues to come from and through Mexico,” Gabbard replied.

“So, the president has stated that the fentanyl coming through Canada is massive, and actually said it was an “unusual and extraordinary threat,” and that was the language that was used to justify putting tariffs on Canada,” Heinrich said. “I’m just trying to reconcile those two issues. Is it an “unusual and extraordinary threat,” or is it a minor threat that doesn’t even merit mention in the Annual Threat Assessment?”

Gabbard said she couldn’t speak to the “specifics” of the threat posed by Canadian fentanyl trafficking.

Heinrich assured her that it accounted for “less than 1 percent” of the fentanyl seized by the U.S. government. “But if you have different information, I would very much welcome that,” he said.

The Trump administration has repeatedly referred to a terrifying 2,000 percent increase in drug trafficking over the U.S.-Canada border in the last year. But the reality is much less thrilling.

In 2023, only two pounds of fentanyl were seized at the northern border, and a total of 43 pounds of fentanyl were seized in 2024, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. As one NBC News reporter pointed out, that’s still “less than a carry-on suitcase.”

Trump’s border czar just confirmed that Immigration and Customs Enforcement is detaining innocent people.

Tom Homan was asked on Fox Business Tuesday morning about whether ICE would be providing the city of Boston with information regarding the 370 people it said it arrested over the last week in the city.

“Tom, will you share information with the mayor on those arrested?” the host asked Homan.

“We never hide anything. I can tell you that their city’s safer.… It’s safer now because [of the] actions of ICE.… We arrested 370 illegal aliens in Boston and the surrounding counties, not just Boston,” Homan said. “Majority of them were criminals. We had, you know, numerous collateral arrests. And I’ve said it before on this show and I’ll keep sayin’ it: Collateral arrests are gon’ be … people who aren’t criminals that are found when we’re lookin’ for the criminal are gonna be taken into custody.”

This is a significant admission that tracks well with the administration’s recent detainments: indiscriminate kidnappings and extraditions of hundreds of Latino men on shaky allegations of gang tattoos. Trump always knew his massive criminal deportation crackdown promises were overambitious, so he’s drawing innocent people into the crossfire as he alleges all of ICE’s targets are rapists and terrorists—unsubstantiated claims that none of the detainees can defend because they won’t get a day in court.

Time will only tell who starts to get classified as a “collateral arrest” going forward.

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard refused Tuesday to admit to her involvement in a major national security scandal. 

Trump administration officials used a Signal chat to discuss sensitive details of a plan to bomb Houthis in Yemen earlier this month—and accidentally added The Atlantic’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, to join. 

Gabbard, who recently railed against leaks from the intelligence community, was reportedly one of the many high-ranking Cabinet officials in the group chat who lacked the basic due diligence to check the members of the group before spouting off about war plans.

During a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing Tuesday about global threats to the United States, Gabbard flatly refused to answer questions about her own role in threatening national security. 

“Director Gabbard, did you participate in the group chat with the secretary of defense and other Trump senior officials discussing the Yemen war plans?” Senator Mark Warner asked. 

Gabbard refused to answer. “Uh, Senator I don’t want to get into the specifics—” she replied, before being cut off by Warner. 

The Virginia Democrat continued to press Gabbard to answer. “You were not ‘TG’ on this group chat?” he asked, referring to the Signal screen name. Gabbard continued to insist she would not “get into specifics.”

“Why aren’t you gonna get into the specifics? Is this—is it because it’s all classified?” Warner asked.

“Because this is currently under review by the National Security Council,” Gabbard said. 

“Because it’s all classified? If it’s not classified, share the texts now,” Warner said. 

Warner then turned to CIA Director John Ratcliffe, who readily admitted to participating in the Signal group chat, claiming that its use was permitted under a Biden-era policy and insisted the platform was considered safe for use at the CIA, as long as the decisions made within the chat were recorded formally.  

Warner moved his attention back to Gabbard, asking whether she had requested a sensitive compartmented information facility, or SCIF, to discuss the strike plans. 

“There was no classified material that was shared in that Signal chat,” Gabbard said, suddenly more forthcoming. 

Her statement echoed that of White House, which claimed that not only were no classified materials shared but that no war plans were discussed. Much of the White House’s statement was false, and it also contradicted the National Security Council’s own prior statement confirming the legitimacy of the chat. 

“So, if there was no classified material, share it with the committee! You can’t have it both ways! These are important jobs! This is our national security,” Warner said. 

“Bobbing and weaving and trying to, you know, filibuster your answer—so please answer the question,” Warner said. “If this was a rank-and-file intelligence officer who did this kind of careless behavior, what would you do with them?”

“Senator, I’ll reiterate there was no classified material in that Signal—” Gabbard said, before being cut off. 

“And if there’s no classified materials, share! And then if there’s no classified materials, then answer—you can’t even answer the question whether you were on the chat,” Warner said, visibly frustrated.

He asked Gabbard what she planned to do if the information was, in fact, classified. She emphasized that there was a difference between the “inadvertent release” and “malicious leaks” of classified information, before restating that there was no classified material in the chat.

Will anyone in the Trump administration take their monumental national security leak seriously?

Administration officials were caught red-handed after The Atlantic’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, revealed Monday they accidentally added him to a Signal chat earlier this month discussing sensitive details of a plan to bomb Houthis in Yemen.

When asked directly about the scandal on Monday, Donald Trump appeared bewildered and unaware, telling reporters at the White House that he knew “nothing about it.” But by Tuesday, Trump had a notably different response, openly joking about the misconduct.

In response to a post in which his billionaire adviser, Elon Musk, mocked The Atlantic by claiming that the second page of the publication is the “best place to hide a dead body,” on the basis that “no one ever goes there,” Trump shared an article by the satirical conservative rag The Babylon Bee.

“4D Chess: Genius Trump Leaks War Plans To ‘The Atlantic’ Where No One Will Ever See Them,” the headline reads.

The monumental slipup was a horrific omen for U.S. national security, whose weakest link is apparently a crew of Cabinet members who can’t accomplish the basic due diligence of double-checking who they’re adding to a group chat hosted by a private company.

Trump and Musk are just two of several heads of state that have attempted to undercut Goldberg’s report. So far, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt have also opted to deny, deny, deny the egregious error.

Regardless of whether the administration wants to confront what other former U.S. officials are lambasting as “the highest level of fuckup imaginable,” the existence of the group chat has already been verified. A spokesperson for the National Security Council, Brian Hughes, already confirmed to Goldberg that the chat was real.

The Social Security Administration has been crippled by cuts to the agency pushed by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.

The Washington Post reports that employee cuts at the SSA have led to office managers at field offices being forced to answer phone calls at the front desk in place of fired receptionists. In addition, the agency’s website crashed four times in 10 days in March due to server overloads, preventing millions of retired people and the disabled from accessing their online accounts.

On top of that, the office that monitors whether people are satisfied with their service was also cut by DOGE, making it nearly impossible to figure out small ways to fix some, if any of the problems.

Unable to get answers from the SSA, Americans who depend on Social Security have flooded congressional offices with angry phone calls. The AARP says it has been getting 2,000 calls a week since early February, double its usual amount, from people concerned about their Social Security benefits.

The SSA is responsible for $1.5 trillion in benefits to 73 million retired workers, their survivors, and poor and disabled Americans, and now is struggling to deliver to these vulnerable groups. About 40 percent of older Americans depend on Social Security as their primary source of income.

At present, the agency is being run by acting Commissioner Leland Dudek, who has cut more than 12 percent of the SSA’s 57,000-person staff and says DOGE is calling the shots, despite a court order last week preventing Musk’s cronies from accessing the agency.

Dudek’s predecessor, Michelle King, quit her job as acting commissioner rather than hand over Americans’ sensitive personal information to DOGE. Still, Musk’s staffers have pressed on with their quest to find fraud in Social Security benefits, a problem that isn’t as extensive as they claim. Instead, their efforts have resulted in the people who depend on those benefits being shut out altogether.

Dudek and DOGE’s actions have caused chaos within the agency, pushing out experienced officials who were running the SSA’s complicated information technology and benefit systems. As a result, an agency that has been underfunded for years now is on the brink of being shut down, according to Dudek, who wasn’t happy with last week’s court order blocking DOGE from accessing Americans’ data.

Is all of this by design? Musk has called Social Security “the greatest Ponzi scheme of all time,” and conservatives have long sought to privatize the agency. One former agency veteran who took early retirement this month told the Post, “They’re creating a fire to require them to come and put it out.” If that is the goal, is there anything that can save one of America’s most successful anti-poverty programs?