President Trump and DNI Gabbard (Getty Images)
"You've always said that you don't believe Iran should be able to have a nuclear weapon," a reporter asked Trump while aboard Air Force One on June 16. "But how close do you personally think that they were to getting one?"
"Very close," Trump responded.
Then again Friday, Trump said Gabbard was "wrong" after she reported that Iran was not actively building a nuclear weapon.
"My intelligence community is wrong," Trump said when asked about the intelligence community previously reporting that Iran was not actively building a nuclear weapon.
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When Gabbard appeared before the Senate Intelligence Committee in March, she delivered a statement on behalf of the intelligence community that included testimony that Iran was not actively building a nuclear weapon.
"Iran's cyber operations and capabilities also present a serious threat to U.S. networks and data," Gabbard told the committee March 26.
Members of President Trump's Cabinet sit among other top officials in the Situation Room on June 21, 2025. (The White House via X)
However, as critics picked apart Gabbard's past comments, the White House stressed to Fox Digital that Gabbard and Trump were closely aligned on Iran.
A White House official told Fox News Digital on Tuesday afternoon that Trump and Gabbard are closely aligned and that the distinction being raised between Gabbard's March testimony and Trump's remarks that Iran is "very close" to getting a nuclear weapon is one without a difference.
The official noted that Gabbard had underscored in her March testimony that Iran had the resources to potentially build a nuclear weapon. Her March testimony reflected intelligence she had received that Iran was not building a weapon at the time but that the country could do so based on the resources it amassed for such an endeavor.
President Donald Trump announced on June 21, 2025, that the U.S. military had carried out strikes on three nuclear facilities in Iran, obliterating them. (Carlos Barria/Reuters/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
"A short time ago, the U.S. military carried out massive precision strikes on the three key nuclear facilities in the Iranian regime: Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan," Trump said from the White House on Saturday evening. "Everybody heard those names for years as they built this horribly destructive enterprise. Our objective was the destruction of Iran's nuclear enrichment capacity, and a stop to the nuclear threat posed by the world's number-one state sponsor of terror. Tonight, I can report to the world that the strikes were a spectacular military success."
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"For 40 years, Iran has been saying, ‘Death to America. Death to Israel.’ They have been killing our people, blowing off their arms, blowing off their legs with roadside bombs," Trump continued. "That was their specialty. We lost over a thousand people, and hundreds of thousands throughout the Middle East and around the world have died as a direct result of their hate in particular."
Fox News Digital reached out to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence for any additional comment on the Sunday strikes, but did not immediately receive a reply.
Fox News Digital's Alec Schemmel contributed to this report.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/gabbard-situation-room-iran-still-key-player-despite-trump-saying-she-wrong-intel