Mother Jones illustration; Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post/Getty; YouTube
This week, Tulsi Gabbard had her first brush with controversy as President Donald Trump’s director of national intelligence, when it became known that she had picked as her deputy a right-wing podcaster named Daniel Davis, who had regularly assailed the Israeli government and its war in Gaza, accusing Israel of “pursuing ethnic cleansing” and criticizing US support for what he called “Netanyahu’s war.” Within hours of Jewish Insider breaking this story on Wednesday, which sparked immediate criticism, Gabbard reversed course on appointing Davis, a senior fellow at the Koch-funded Defense Priorities think tank, to this powerful position that oversees the compiling of the President’s Daily Brief, the collection of intelligence assessments that goes to the White House and top policymakers.
Davis’ fervent opposition to Israel’s war—rooted in the non-interventionist tradition of the far right—was too much to bear for senators and Trump administration officials. He became a victim of the never-ending campaign mounted by pro-Israel hawks to keep such critical voices far from positions of power. But the focus on Davis’ stance on Israel distracted from a truly scandalous aspect of this near-appointment: By picking Davis, a former Army lieutenant colonel with no intelligence community experience, Gabbard sought to hire for this important and highly sensitive position a prolific disseminator of pro-Russia messaging, who himself has been embraced by state-controlled Russian media outlets for the positions he espouses and platforms. Yet Davis’ extensive amplification of pro-Putin talking points received little, if any, attention in the media coverage of this hullabaloo.
Davis posts episodes of his YouTube Deep Dive podcast daily; sometimes he produces multiple episodes a day. In recent months, most shows have focused on the Russia-Ukraine war, with Davis and his guests usually pounding on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and criticizing US assistance for Ukraine. There is not much, if any, criticism of Russian leader Vladimir Putin, his launching of the war, or the atrocities committed by his forces.
In a January episode typical of the show, retired Army Col. Douglas Macgregor called on Trump to walk away from Ukraine: “The win for us is extricating us from this tar baby, get out, say good bye move on… Announce we’re leaving, we’re out, we’re not going to do this anymore.” He noted that the United States should not even try to craft a negotiated end to the conflict. Davis agreed and said, “This is what makes sense.” He then cited a key Kremlin talking point, asserting that Russian leader Vladimir Putin has no interest in moving against other European nations and is only “focused on protecting the ethnic Russians in the eastern part of what was Ukraine.”
Because of conversations like these, Davis’ show, which has 134,000 subscribers on You Tube, has been regularly promoted on Russian state media. One private analysis obtained by Mother Jones shows that Russian state media outlets have cited Davis’ show nearly 300 times in the past 18 months. For instance, when Davis hosted Macgregor in late 2023 and he proclaimed the Russian economy was doing “brilliantly” and Moscow was about to win the war, Rossiyskaya Gazeta a government daily newspaper, published a news story on this episode under the headline, “Colonel Macgregor: Biden has made Putin stronger than ever.”
Macgregor has been, by far, the most frequent guest on Davis’ podcast, some weeks appearing several times. In 2020, Trump named him to be US ambassador to Germany, but after CNN revealed his history of making xenophobic and racist comments, his nomination died. Following Putin’s invasion of Russia in 2022, Macgregor often appeared on Fox News programs, spouting a pro-Putin line. He told Tucker Carlson that it would be pointless to impose sanctions on Russia. On another show, he said that Russian forces were “too gentle” during the opening days of the invasion and that Zelensky was a “puppet.” He blasted all information coming from Ukraine as propaganda.
During one Fox appearance, Macgregor said the United States should not demonize Putin, provide no aid to Ukraine, and let the Russian leader take whatever part of Ukraine he desired.
In his podcast episodes, Davis often seconded Macgregor’s remarks and presented him as a fellow whose extreme views should be heeded by the president and US policymakers.
Another regular guest for Davis has been Larry Johnson, who was a CIA analyst for several years in the 1980s. As the Voice of America reported recently, “The Kremlin uses Johnson’s often false and misleading claims to promote pro-Russian narratives and improve its image.”
Johnson is a longtime critic of US intelligence and an advocate for Russia—and a promoter of conspiracy theories. After the 2016 election, he repeatedly appeared on Russian state media to refute the US intelligence finding that Russia had covertly interfered in that contest to help Trump. (He claimed the CIA might have engineered the hacking of Democratic sources—a crime widely attributed to Russian operatives.) He also pushed the bogus claim that British intelligence services had spied on Trump. As a blogger in 2008, he spread the rumor that Michelle Obama had been recorded uttering a slur about white people.
More recently, in 2023, he contended that US intelligence was scheming to assassinate Zelenskyy and make it look as if he had been killed in a Russian airstrike. Citing his claim, RIA Novosti, the Russian- state-owned news agency, declared that “U.S. intelligence agencies are planning to assassinate Zelenskyy.” Last September, Voice of America reported that leading Russian state media outfits had cited or referred to Johnson more than 1000 times in the previous twelve months, as he often predicted Ukraine was about to suffer a major setback or even lose the war.
On Wednesday, Davis featured Johnson on his show once again, and Johnson reported that he had just attended a small meeting in Moscow with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. Davis nodded approvingly, as Johnson voiced Russian talking points, praised Lavrov, and said it was “quite an honor” to speak with the Russian. (On his website, Johnson hailed Lavrov, a longtime Putin henchman, as “a gentleman and the walking definition of a master diplomat.”) Johnson blamed the West for the Russia-Ukraine war and the United States for tensions with Russia. He said of Putin, “As a lawyer, he is a stickler for the law.” Davis did not challenge this observation.
While in Moscow, Johnson and right-wing commentator Andrew Napolitano, also met with Russia oligarch Konstantin Malofeev, a Russian media mogul and Putin supporter who was sanctioned by the United States in 2014 for supporting Russian forces in eastern Ukraine and who was indicted by the US in 2022 for allegedly conspiring to violate US sanctions. Talking to Davis about his trip, Johnson recounted that he saw few cops and cited this to suggest that Russia was not a police state. He praised Moscow’s clean streets.
During this podcast, Johnson insisted that Americans should knock off criticizing Russia for corruption. He said he expected the “news” to break “in the next month or two” that members of Congress “took money from Ukrainians, $50 billion worth that wound up in banks in the Caribbean. Fifty billion.” Davis replied, “Yeah.” Johnson dumped on Zelenskyy, saying, “he is not a legitimate negotiating partner.” He called on Ukraine to stop fighting and withdraw its soldiers. He did not say the same about Russia. Davis pointed out that Trump had been right to halt US military aid to Ukraine—which has since been resumed—and remarked, “Trump agreeing to the Russian side isn’t a capitulation. It isn’t a surrender. It is an acknowledgement of reality… There is no other alternative.”
Davis did not respond to a request for comment, nor did Gabbard’s office. Macgregor and Johnson also did not reply to requests for comment.
Davis’ appointment was sabotaged in part because he has defied the pro-Israel hardline deeply ingrained within the Trump administration. (The Anti-Defamation League called him “extremely dangerous” and “unfit for this key security role.”) But his selection should have been problematic for another reason: This conservative non-interventionist has made common cause with and amplified pro-Russia commentators of dubious credibility, and that has rendered him useful for Putin’s state-run media. What’s most troubling is that Gabbard saw him as qualified and suitable for this position. A supposed military expert who relies on and boosts pro-Putin proponents and a conspiracy theorist ought not be in charge of the daily intelligence report the president receives. Gabbard’s initial decision to hire him shows that she, not Davis, is the real problem.