To the surprise of absolutely no one, Donald Trump‘s burgeoning second-term cabinet is already the stuff of nightmares, but one name among this list of incompetent, despotic bureaucrats is raising eyebrows, not least of all because she was directly opposed to the orange cheeto-in-chief for the better part of a decade.
Trump has nominated Tulsi Gabbard to become the next director of national intelligence. Gabbard used to be a staunch progressive serving as a U.S. Representative for Hawaii’s 2nd congressional district from 2013 to 2021. She’s also one of the handful of U.S. Army Reserve officers to hold a seat in Congress. Gabbard even served as vice-chair of the DNC from 2013 to 2016 and endorsed Bernie Sanders for the 2016 presidential election. Now this track record at first glance might look like the exact opposite of what Trump needs in his new administration, but not if you consider that Gabbard officially joined the Republican Party in 2024.
Following the tumultuous events of the past two years, which saw the United States embroiled in two international conflicts in the form of the Russo-Ukrainian war and the ongoing humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip as part of the Israel-Hamas war, Gabbard officially endorsed Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election after leaving the Democratic camp in 2022 to avoid being associated with what she called an “elitist cabal of warmongers.”
Considering Gabbard’s long-held stance against military interventionism, it’s obvious why she became disillusioned with the way the Biden administration has handled all these recent conflicts, but why she thought Trump would be any different when he is, in fact, partially responsible for the ongoing conflict between Israel and Occupied Palestine is anyone’s guess. Gabbard wasn’t afraid of going toe-to-toe with the Stable Genius back in the old days, and as people on social media have pointed out, she hasn’t even deleted the tweet that implicitly called Trump the b-word.
This tweet from November 2018 refers to the scandal following Jamal Khashoggi’s assassination by Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman. Now that Gabbard is to be the next DNI, she’ll be working closely with Trump to ensure the country’s national interests. Trump has promised to get a ceasefire in Gaza and an end to the devastating war in Ukraine, which has already caused more than a million military and civilian casualties, but I highly doubt he’s as persuasive in these matters as he thinks he is.
Trump can bandy around insults with totalitarian dictators all he wants, but that has neither stopped them from stockpiling those nukes in the Korean Peninsula nor brought any measure of lasting conciliation in the ongoing East-West conflict. If anything, the convicted twice-impeached president seems to be more focused on pushing his domestic authoritarian agendas than anything else, or how would you explain these recent picks for the cabinet?
My only hope is that Tulsi Gabbard will prove to be an exception among this party of incompetent nincompoops, at least so far as her history in anti-war activism is concerned.
Published: Nov 14, 2024 01:17 pm