Part 2/7:
Central to the criticisms against Gabbard are her statements from a 2017 visit to Syria. During this trip, she controversially claimed that the then-embattled President Bashar al-Assad was “not an enemy” of the United States. This assertion, combined with her claim that the Syrian government was not responsible for chemical attacks on its own civilians, has caused alarm among critics, especially in light of the Trump administration's retaliatory military actions against Syria for its use of chemical weapons.