President Donald Trump has privately asked cabinet officials in recent weeks whether he should replace Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence, venting frustration that she appeared to defend a former deputy who publicly undermined the administration's justification for the Iran war, according to two people briefed on the discussions, as reported by The Guardian on April 2, 2026. The private polling of advisers is an ominous signal for Gabbard — it is the same pattern Trump has followed before every previous personnel change in his second term.
The Trigger: Joe Kent and the Iran War Rationale
The immediate catalyst was Gabbard's testimony at a worldwide threats hearing on Capitol Hill on March 19. Days earlier, Joe Kent — who served as head of the National Counterterrorism Center and was widely regarded as Gabbard's closest ally within the intelligence community — had resigned from the administration, citing his belief that Iran posed no imminent threat to the United States and that Israel had used deliberate misinformation to draw the U.S. into the conflict.
According to The Washington Post's March 17 account of Kent's departure, Kent believed that "deliberate Israeli misinformation and lies to President Donald Trump about a 'swift path to victory'" had been used to build the case for war. The White House had repeatedly pressured Gabbard to fire Kent before his resignation, and she had refused each time, according to Axios's March 17 reporting on the episode.
At the March 19 hearing, Gabbard declined to condemn Kent. According to The New York Times's March 18 deep dive on the Gabbard-Kent relationship, her comments at the hearing "were in line with her longstanding criticism of the U.S. becoming entangled in foreign wars" and represented remarks that had been workshopped with the CIA in advance. Trump, according to the people briefed on the private discussions cited in The Guardian report, was particularly frustrated that Gabbard appeared reluctant to defend the administration's decision to attack Iran.
Trump's Public Signals Before the Private Polling
Trump's private frustration had already begun surfacing publicly before the adviser-polling report emerged. On March 29, aboard Air Force One returning from Mar-a-Lago, Trump told reporters that Gabbard was "softer" than him on the Iran nuclear issue, according to Reuters. When asked directly whether he retained confidence in Gabbard, Trump said "yeah, sure" — and then immediately qualified it: "She's a little bit different in her thought process than me. But that doesn't make somebody not available to serve."
The formulation — confirming confidence while immediately introducing caveats — followed the same template Trump has used with other officials before personnel changes. It is notably weaker than unqualified statements of support.
White House spokesperson Steven Cheung issued a statement April 2 asserting confidence in Gabbard's work. "As President Trump just said in his remarks, he has confidence in Director Gabbard and the tireless work she is doing," Cheung said in the statement, as quoted by The Guardian. Gabbard spokesperson Olivia Coleman separately said Gabbard "remains committed to fulfilling the responsibilities the president placed in her."
The Pattern: How Trump Signals Firings Before They Happen
The Guardian's reporting specifically flags the significance of the adviser-polling step: Trump "tends to poll his advisers when he starts to seriously consider whether a personnel change is necessary." This internal process has preceded multiple departures in Trump's second term. Most recently, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem — whose exit was covered by multiple outlets including Reuters and The Guardian — was effectively demoted to a lesser State Department role rather than fired outright, reflecting Trump's documented aversion to high-profile dismissals without a ready successor.
The Guardian report notes that there is currently no standout candidate to replace Gabbard, and that advisers have cautioned that a high-profile vacancy before a successor is ready could create "unhelpful political distractions" — particularly during an active military conflict with Iran.
That lack of a ready replacement may be Gabbard's most significant near-term protection. Intelligence community oversight is a Senate-confirmable position, meaning a replacement would require a confirmation fight at a moment when the administration is simultaneously managing the Iran war, domestic political pressures around the conflict's economic cost, and what multiple reports have described as internal dissension about the war's objectives and timeline.
Gabbard's Standing: A Record of Accumulated Frustrations
The Guardian report describes Gabbard as having "quickly racked up a list of perceived transgressions" beyond the Kent episode. As early as June 2025, Trump became irritated after Gabbard recorded a video warning about the horrors of nuclear war following a visit to Hiroshima. Trump felt the video would frighten people and that she should not speak in unnecessarily graphic terms about the subject.
Weeks after the Hiroshima episode, Trump publicly contradicted Gabbard on a separate intelligence matter — an unusual step that drew attention at the time. The Guardian report says these earlier episodes, while individually resolved, form part of a broader pattern of friction that has made Gabbard's position more precarious over time.
Gabbard has, however, also built credits with Trump. The Guardian report specifically notes that she won favor for "producing an official report asserting that Russia had not sought to boost Trump's campaign in 2016 at the expense of Hillary Clinton" — a conclusion that ran counter to congressional investigations at the time but aligned with Trump's longstanding public position on the matter.
The New York Times's March 18 reporting described a more textured picture: Gabbard has been "spending nearly every day at the White House in support of the war in Iran," and her congressional testimony on the nuclear issue had been workshopped with the CIA beforehand — suggesting her public positioning at the hearing reflected, at minimum, a defensible intelligence-community posture rather than freelancing. Whether Trump views it that way is a separate question.
The Intelligence Context: What the DNI Does in Wartime
The Director of National Intelligence, a position created after the September 11, 2001 commission's recommendations, sits atop the 18 agencies that make up the U.S. intelligence community and serves as the president's principal intelligence adviser. At a moment when the United States is engaged in active military operations against Iran — now entering its second month — the DNI's role in producing the President's Daily Brief, coordinating intelligence assessments, and managing inter-agency disputes about targets and threat assessments is directly consequential.
Gabbard told lawmakers at the March 19 hearing that the U.S. intelligence community had "high confidence" about where Iran keeps its stockpile of highly enriched uranium — a significant public statement at a sensitive moment. She declined in the open session to discuss whether the U.S. has the capability to destroy that stockpile, according to Reuters's contemporaneous coverage of the hearing.
The internal dispute over how imminent Iran's nuclear threat was — which Kent cited in his resignation and which Axios reported had been a point of internal disagreement within the administration since before the war began — sits at the heart of the Gabbard situation. Trump's stated justification for the war has been, in part, the claim that Iran was close to developing a nuclear weapon. Kent, and apparently Gabbard at the hearing, declined to fully validate that framing — a friction point that is now, according to The Guardian, leading to active consideration of her removal.
What Comes Next
Several factors will shape how this develops. First, the absence of a ready successor limits Trump's options for an immediate change. Second, Gabbard's continued daily presence at the White House in support of the Iran campaign — as described in The Guardian and NYT reporting — reflects an attempt to demonstrate loyalty through action rather than rhetoric. Third, the war itself is the dominant variable: if Trump concludes operations soon, as he has publicly suggested, the internal pressure around Gabbard's Iran-related positioning may ease.
Against that, the adviser-polling is itself a signal that has historically not reversed course in Trump's second term. Of the officials who have been subjected to this process — per the pattern described in The Guardian — none have ultimately survived in their original roles.
Whether Gabbard becomes the next example of that pattern or the first exception may depend on whether anyone credible emerges as a replacement before the Iran war reaches a defined end — and on how much more friction accumulates in the weeks between now and that moment.