Tulsi Gabbard, Donald Trump’s nominee for director of national intelligence, has said she is “in full support” of the president-elect’s position on developments in Syria.

As a reminder, here’s what Trump had to say on Truth Social on Sunday morning:

Assad is gone. He has fled his country. His protector, Russia, Russia, Russia, led by Vladimir Putin, was not interested in protecting him any longer. There was no reason for Russia to be there in the first place. They lost all interest in Syria because of Ukraine, where close to 600,000 Russian soldiers lay wounded or dead, in a war that should never have started, and could go on forever. Russia and Iran are in a weakened state right now, one because of Ukraine and a bad economy, the other because of Israel and its fighting success. Likewise, Zelenskyy and Ukraine would like to make a deal and stop the madness. They have ridiculously lost 400,000 soldiers, and many more civilians. There should be an immediate ceasefire and negotiations should begin. Too many lives are being so needlessly wasted, too many families destroyed, and if it keeps going, it can turn into something much bigger, and far worse. I know Vladimir well. This is his time to act. China can help. The World is waiting!

The veteran and former Democrat is often criticized over a 2017 visit to Syria in which she met now-ousted Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. Following the visit, Gabbard denied crimes were committed by the Syrian regime and said Assad “is not the enemy of the United States”.

In late November, Nikki Haley launched a scathing attack on Gabbard calling her “a Russian, Iranian, Syrian, Chinese sympathizer”.

The former Florida congressman who was briefly in contention to be Trump’s next attorney general is now reportedly set to join the conservative channel One America News Network (OANN) as an anchor.

CNN national correspondent Kristen Holmes first reported the development on Monday citing an unnamed source, which appeared to explain a cryptic post by Gaetz’s wife Ginger on X on Sunday that read simply: “Big news coming next week!”

CNN’s chief media analyst Brian Stelter subsequently reported that he had asked OANN’s president Charles Herring to confirm Gaetz’s appointment, but Herring had declined to comment.

The Independent has approached OANN for further clarification.

A webpage for “The Matt Gaetz Show” was live on the network’s official website complete with banner and promotional artwork as of Tuesday morning.

President Joe Biden is set to explain how his administration’s economic policies have put the US economy ahead of the entire developed world in recovering from the Covid-19 pandemic with a major address on his “economic legacy,” the White House has said.

According to a White House official, Biden is scheduled to speak to the Brookings Institution think-tank Tuesday morning to lay out how his administration’s plan “rescued” the American economy “from one of the worst economic crises in American history and delivered a soft landing” that avoided the catastrophic recession predicted by many economists.

Here’s more from Andrew Feinberg.

After another session on Capitol Hill yesterday attempting to shore up support among concerned Republican senators…

…Trump’s choice for defense secretary was back on Fox News working to debunk the past accusations against him.

This is how the California Democrat responded to the president-elect’s latest disturbing remarks about incarcerating his political enemies yesterday.

Meanwhile, Trump adviser Jason Miller was attempting to downplay it all on CNN, evidently recognising a needless firestorm the transition team could well do without.

Also on Truth Social, the president-elect backed KC Crosbie to replace Lara Trump at the Republican National COmmittee after she announced her resignation late on Sunday, presumably with one eye on running for Marco Rubio’s soon-to-be-vacant Florida Senate seat.

Here’s Justin Baragona on what’s next for her.

The president-elect has already promised to issues pardons to convicted rioters on his first day in office and is now reportedly interested in appointing right-wing activist Pete Marocco – who was spotted among the mob that laid seige to the legislative complex in a bid to stop the certification of the 2020 presidential election results – to a key role in his transition team.

“Marocco, who drew internal fire when he worked in numerous agencies in the Trump administration and more recently was a conservative activist in Dallas, has been seen at the transition’s Florida headquarters working on hiring, including for the State Department,” Politico reports.

Marocco and his wife Merritt were reportedly spotted by the watchdog group Sedition Hunters inside and outside the Capitol on that infamous day after footage taken from social media was analysed.

The couple have called that a smear and Trump transition spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said in a statement that Marocco has “valuable knowledge on national security policy has been a tremendous benefit to the Trump-Vance transition effort”.

Leavitt added: “Democrats and their allies in the media who think they are going to obstruct our ability to deliver on this mandate by going back to the same January 6 playbook of smears and faux outrage that was soundly rejected by the American people will be disappointed.”

The president-elect will not like the following one bit from Professor Jonathan Turley, who spoke out on his behalf during his first impeachment by the House of Representatives and whom he regularly quoted on Truth Social earlier this year during his now-historic legal wrangles.

But responding to Trump’s threat in his NBC interview on Sunday to jail the likes of Bennie Thompson, Liz Cheney and Adam Schiff for daring to investigate his part in the Capitol riot, the Fox News legal analyst wrote on his blog: “The fact, however, is that there is no viable criminal case to be made against the J6 Committee members for their investigation or report.

“We need to move beyond the rage rhetoric if this country is going to come together to face the tough challenges ahead.”

Cheney herself has already hit back at Trump over the same comments, declaring in a statement: “Here is the truth: Donald Trump attempted to overturn the 2020 presidential election and seize power.

“He mobilized an angry mob and sent them to the United States Capitol, where they attacked police officers, invaded the building and halted the official counting of electoral votes.

“Trump watched on television as police officers were brutally beaten and the Capitol was assaulted, refusing for hours to tell the mob to leave.”

Donald Trump has announced two more picks for his incoming administration, naming Harmeet K Dhillon as his choice for assistant attorney general for civil rights at the Justice Department and Mark Paoletta as general counsel to the Office of Management and Budget, a role he has held before.

Here’s what he had to say about them:

President-elect Donald Trump took to his Truth Social platform on Sunday night and declared that Democrats were “fighting hard” to make all future presidential elections based “exclusively” on the Electoral College.

The curious late-night post prompted many to wonder if the incoming president was trolling liberals after finally winning the popular vote on his third try. At the same time, some progressives hoped that Trump’s assertion could lead conservatives to be “radicalized” against the notion of relying on states’ electoral votes to determine presidential elections.