Tulsi Gabbard, the one-time Democratic presidential hopeful who had hoped to run against Donald Trump in 2020, completed an astonishing reversal Monday by warmly endorsing the former president.
Gabbard quit her safe Hawaii House district in 2019 to join the packed 2020 Democratic presidential field. After dropping out of the race, she endorsed Joe Biden as the best man to “heal the divisiveness that has been tearing our country apart.”
But on Monday she spoke at a meeting of the National Guard Association in Detroit, Michigan, which was also addressed by Trump—and called for the country to vote for him. “I am committed to doing all that I can to send President Trump back to the White House,” she said.
Gabbard served in the Army National Guard in Afghanistan, where she was decorated for her service. She is now an officer in the Army Reserve and framed her military credentials as part of her justification for now backing Trump.
“I know what I mean when I share with you that President Trump understands the grave responsibility that a president and commander-in-chief bears for every single one of our lives,” she said.
“He keeps us in his heart in the decisions that he makes,” she added. “We saw this through his first term in the presidency when he not only didn’t start any new wars, he took action to de-escalate and prevent wars. The same cannot be said about Kamala Harris. In fact the opposite is true.”
Gabbard’s political transformation has taken her from the anti-war wing of the Democratic Party to the inner MAGA circle. She has been helping Trump prepare for his debate with Vice President (and current presidential candidate) Kamala Harris, having been seen as landing critical blows on Harris during a July 2019 Democratic debate, when they sparred over the then-California senator’s record as a prosecutor.
She has also touted herself as a potential running mate for Trump, saying just before he was convicted of 34 felony counts of false record keeping that she would be “honored” to be on the ticket.
Her embrace of the conservative movement has seen her take a Fox News contributorship and speak at the Conservative Political Action Committee’s CPAC gathering; her book For Love of Country: Leave the Democrat Party Behind, uses the term “Democrat” rather than “Democratic” as a dig against the party. She had once been a vice chair of the Democratic National Committee.
The 43-year-old lives with Abraham Williams, her second husband, in California and Texas.
The timing of her endorsement was not accidental. Gabbard, a member of the Hawaii National Guard, had earlier gone to Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia with Trump to lay a wreath marking the third anniversary of the deaths of 13 American servicemen at the Abbey Gate of Kabul Airport during the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Trump’s campaign hopes to make the bloody exit from Afghanistan an attack line on Harris, who has said she was the last person in the room as President Joe Biden ordered the complete withdrawal from Afghanistan. Trump himself had struck the deal which led to the withdrawal and had planned to host members of the Taliban at Camp David on Sept. 11, 2019, to finalize it.
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