“Closer to the brink of nuclear annihilation than ever before.” — Tulsi Gabbard

On a recent evening, Tulsi Gabbard appeared in a self-produced video with a grave warning for the world. Speaking directly into the camera, President Trump’s Director of National Intelligence said that we are “closer to the brink of nuclear annihilation than ever before.” In the ominous clip, Gabbard blamed unnamed “political elite warmongers” for stoking conflicts between superpowers, suggesting they do so perhaps because “they will have access to nuclear shelters for themselves and their families that regular people won’t.” The Independent It was a dramatic message, punctuated by images of mushroom clouds and apocalyptic rhetoric. And it immediately set off a firestorm of reactions in U.S. media and political circles, with one MSNBC segment deeming the video “just plain weird.” Is she “just plain weird,” or an influential official sounding an alarm others won’t? At 3 Narratives News, we cover her case for urgent de-escalation, her critics’ argument that she is an opportunistic fear-monger, and then we leave space for the third narrative — yours.

Read: MAGA vs MAGA: Trump’s Iran Threat Splits the Movement

An Ominous Video and a “Nuclear Holocaust” Warning

The video, released across Gabbard’s social channels and titled with the chilling phrase “nuclear holocaust,” unfolds like a mini doomsday address. Gabbard, in a sober business suit, delivers her message in a calm but urgent tone. “It’s up to us, the people, to speak up and demand an end to this madness,” she tells viewers. “We must reject this path to nuclear war and work toward a world where no one has to live in fear of a nuclear holocaust.” The framing is simple and dark, keeping attention on her words. The imagery and language evoke Cold War-era anxieties, updated for the YouTube/X era.

In her monologue, Gabbard sketches a picture of elite actors irresponsibly inching the world toward catastrophe. The “political elite warmongers are carelessly fomenting fear and tensions between nuclear powers,” she says, arguing that these figures may feel safer than ordinary people because of their presumed access to bunkers and shelters. She does not name names, but the target is clear: in Gabbard’s telling, a small, insulated layer of power is ready to take the world to the brink. It is a harrowing accusation, one that positions the public as potential victims of an Armageddon engineered by people who will survive it. See also: Iran’s Nuclear Ambitions.

Gabbard’s alarm did not appear out of nowhere. Weeks earlier, she travelled to Hiroshima, Japan, ground zero of the first atomic bombing, and confronted the human toll of nuclear war. In the video, she reflects on that visit. Over archival footage, she recounts how one bomb “killed over 300,000 people, many dying instantly, while others died from severe burns, injuries, radiation sickness and cancer” in the months and years that followed. “Nagasaki suffered the same fate,” she adds. It is a vivid history lesson meant to prove her point: this has happened before, and it can happen again.

The timing of her warning overlaps with several live crises. In South Asia, India and Pakistan have traded threats. The Russia–Ukraine war grinds on. And the U.S. has pulled non-essential staff from its embassy in Baghdad amid tensions with Iran over nuclear talks. Each of these flashpoints adds plausibility to Gabbard’s core claim: that multiple nuclear-linked crises are running at once.

The Messenger and Her Mission

To understand Gabbard’s urgency, it helps to recall her unusual journey. A U.S. Army veteran who served in Iraq, she entered Congress in 2012 as a 31-year-old Democrat from Hawaii, widely seen as a rising star. Early on, she broke with her party’s more interventionist wing and became a sharp critic of “regime change wars.” Her worldview was shaped by the human cost of deployment, and by a deep skepticism of what she casts as Washington’s foreign-policy establishment.

Those views powered her 2020 bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, where she attacked both Democrats and Republicans for “forever wars.” Even as her campaign stalled, she built a devoted audience of anti-war progressives, libertarians, and disaffected voters. Her critics, though, saw something else: frequent Fox News appearances berating Obama-era policy, and her 2017 meeting with Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad.

By 2022 she left the Democratic Party altogether, calling it “controlled by an elitist cabal of warmongers.” When Donald Trump returned to the White House in 2024, he tapped Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence, surprising Washington. Suddenly, the onetime anti-establishment congresswoman was running the U.S. intelligence community. Yet the tone of her viral “nuclear holocaust” video shows that office hasn’t changed her instincts. If anything, it amplified them.

This is what makes the clip so unusual: DNI statements are typically cautious, triangulated, and run through interagency review. Gabbard’s was personal, populist, and confrontational. She seemed to be speaking both as an insider with access to classified assessments and as the same outsider who once railed against “the warmongering establishment.” That dual identity is what her supporters love, and what her critics distrust.

Her supporters say this is leadership. They argue she has little to gain by sounding an alarm from within government, so she must genuinely believe the danger is real. Her detractors say it’s performance politics — that she’s talking to a base that loves anti-elite language more than it loves nuance.

Media Blowback and Suspicions of Motive

Not everyone welcomed the video. MSNBC called it “just plain weird.” Analysts questioned why the nation’s intelligence chief would choose YouTube over a classified memo. Commentators suggested the video was “aimed” at keeping her Trump-aligned audience energized rather than alerting the public to a specific, time-bound threat. The Independent noted it “appeared aimed at driving fears” about a supposed cabal of powerful people.

On social media the clip spread fast, but so did mockery. Some called it “unhinged.” Others said Gabbard was echoing Russian talking points about Western “warmongers” provoking nuclear war. Gabbard did not name Ukraine or NATO, but the implication that American elites are pushing escalation was read by some as helpful to Moscow.

Her allies pushed back. They pointed out that Gabbard has condemned Russia’s invasion, that she has long opposed U.S. adventurism, and that warning of nuclear danger is not the same as siding with an adversary. They also reminded critics that she had previously sued Hillary Clinton over being labelled a “Russian asset.”

A Parallel Crisis: Diplomats Pull Back in Baghdad

At roughly the same time, the U.S. State Department ordered a partial evacuation of its embassy in Baghdad, citing “heightened regional tensions” tied to stalled nuclear talks with Iran. President Trump said the Middle East “could be a dangerous place” in the coming days and that non-essential staff were leaving “as a precaution.” Reuters

To Gabbard fans, this looked like validation: Washington was quietly preparing for escalation while she was loudly warning about it. To her critics, it was routine embassy security. To our readers, it is evidence that Gabbard is speaking into a real, not theoretical, moment of nuclear tension.

A dutiful but controversial public servant, or a Trump-era messenger of misinformation? You decide.

Sources

• The Independent — Tulsi Gabbard posts ominous video
• MSNBC clip — “Just plain weird”
• Reuters — U.S. embassy draw-down in Iraq
• The Guardian — U.S. orders non-essential embassy staff out of Iraq
• Politico — Gabbard sues Clinton over “Russian asset” remark