Donald Trump called it a “surprise” that Tulsi Gabbard, the former member of Congress who left the Democratic Party two years ago and has been campaigning for Republicans ever since, announced she was joining the GOP on Tuesday night.
The least surprising Republican Party news of an admittedly surprise-filled campaign cycle—what with the GOP’s self proclaimed “Black Nazi,” Trump taking a 9/11 conspiracist to a 9/11 memorial, and his professed admiration of the late Arnold Palmer’s genitals, to name just a few—happened at a rally in Greensboro, North Carolina.
“I’m proud to stand with you here today, President Trump, and announce that I’m joining the Republican Party,” Gabbard said, a few minutes into an address she gave after being invited up by the former president to speak.
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She endorsed Trump back in August, making her GOP membership the final step in a full-blown MAGA baptism.
Trump, standing off to the side, leaned forward and let his mouth drop open before standing up straight again, giving two thumbs up and mouthing to Gabbard, “That’s great.”
“Those of you here or those watching at home who are independent-minded people like myself, who love our country and are committed to the Constitution and to freedom, the Democrat Party is no home for people like us,” Gabbard said. She went on to call the Democrats “anti-freedom, pro-censorship, pro-open borders.”
“Tulsi, that’s great,” Trump said, when it was his turn on the mic again. “Wow. That was a surprise. That was really—she’s been independent for a long time. That’s a great thing, a great honor. Thank you very much, Tulsi.”
Gabbard has been an independent for “a long time” if “a long time” is two years. The former House representative, who served Hawaii’s 2nd Congressional District from 2013 to 2021 and ran for her former party’s presidential nomination in 2020, quit the Democrats in October 2022.
While in office, she held a mix of views across the spectrum, supporting very non-Republican ideas like a national health care insurance program and criminal justice reform including a ban on private prisons.
By the time she left the Democratic Party, a move she announced in the first episode of her podcast, The Tulsi Gabbard Show, she cited a litany of MAGA epithets for progressives: “I can no longer remain in today’s Democratic Party. It’s now under the complete control of an elitist cabal of warmongers driven by cowardly wokeness, who divide us by racializing every issue and stoking anti-white racism.”
Among the Republican candidates she has campaigned for since 2022 are election deniers like Kari Lake.
In addition to adopting MAGA rhetoric bashing “wokeness” and palling around with election truthers, Gabbard sees eye to eye with Trump’s isolationist foreign policy and, like the Republican nominee, she has a questionable record on Russian President Vladimir Putin, having blamed the West for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Gabbard, a National Guard veteran who served in Iraq and Kuwait, noted that a key motivator for her decision to join the GOP was Vice President Kamala Harris and the Democratic ticket’s “shameless” embrace of former Republican vice president Dick Cheney, a key figure in launching the Iraq War on the basis of faulty intelligence. Hundreds of thousands of civilians and 4,500 American military personnel died as a result.
Many liberals have also been baffled by Harris‘ questionable touting of Cheney’s endorsement.
The Daily Show host Jon Stewart—who played a key role in critiquing the American media and political classes' culpability in the Iraq War in the 2000s—confronted Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, about their ticket welcoming the endorsement of the arch neoconservative, who approved the use of torture and proudly bragged he would “do it again in a minute.”
