While Matt Gaetz, Pete Hegseth, and Robert Kennedy Jr. are each outrageously terrible choices for their respective appointments that Donald Trump has announced, the reactions they’ve generated have outshone someone far more tragic. Even while Tulsi Gabbard’s pending nomination as Director of National Intelligence is equally as bad on its face, she hasn’t received anywhere near the same level attention. Maybe it’s just patriarchy–once again the woman has to be double what a man is in order to receive the same recognition.
On the other hand, maybe some people in the public don’t fully understand just how dangerous it would be to have Gabbard sitting at the helm of the nation’s intelligence operations. It’s bad enough that Gabbard has a history of defending our adversaries, along with spreading Kremlin conspiracy theory propaganda, and has even been accused of being a Russian asset. And many people may simply see Gabbard as a terrible, but otherwise predictable and on-brand choice by a President who they believe is also a Russian asset.
Gabbard’s nomination, however, poses a true existential threat to the United States because Gabbard is uniquely untrustworthy. Donald Trump could not possibly choose to a worse person to be Director of National Intelligence if he drew a random American’s name from a bowl. Gabbard thrives on being an insurgent who becomes vindictive when her feather ruffling results in her friends turning their backs on her. She’s all too willing to jump ship whenever her vengeful spirit sees an opportunity to possibly take a bigger bite out of her old friends/new enemies. In short, she’s loyal nobody. She’s not even loyal to herself, as she’s all to happy to cut off her nose to spite her own face. Her only loyalty is to an idea. Unfortunately, that idea isn’t the the US constitution, it’s her own stubborn quest for payback.
Tulsi Gabbard was once a rising star in the Democratic Party, and became a high ranking member. In 2012 she went from being a City Council member to speaking at that year’s DNC event just before winning election to Congress. A few weeks after taking her seat on Capitol Hill, she was unanimously elected to be he Vice Chair of the Democratic National Committee, under then Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz. The future was initially looking bright for her, but that soon changed. By 2015 Gabbard was feuding with Wasserman-Shultz, and their arguments began spilling out into pubic view. This led to the Congresswoman from Hawaii being barred from attending the first debate of the party’s primary for the 2016 cycle.
Gabbard’s dissatisfaction with her party led her to seek revenge. She famously declared her resignation as DNC vice chair on live television, along with her personal endorsement for independent Bernie Sanders to be the party’s nominee, in defiance of the party establishment’s clear backing of Hillary Clinton. Clinton, of course, won the battle but lost the war. By the Donald Trump was assuming the Presidency Gabbard, was already moving on to all new ways to be a rabble rousing nonconformist.
In January of 2017 Gabbard decided to unilaterally go on a “fact finding” mission to Syria, where the United States was engaged in combat operations while the dictatorial Assad regime had used chemical weapons against their own citizens. Gabbard decided to start spreading sympathetic garbage about Assad in defiance of US policy. By 2019 she was entertaining a run for the White House, but her popularity in her own party had long gone sour, and she gained little traction. When Gabbard had difficulty qualifying for debates, she absurdly resurrected her old complaints about the DNC supposedly rigging the primary process. Hillary Clinton began suspecting that Gabbard was working with Republicans to stage a spoiler third party campaign. Gabbard would deny this, but when she tried to sue Clinton over the accusation, Gabbard hired the same lawyers that defended Rudy Giuliani and George Papadopoulos during the Muller investigation. There certainly was nothing mob-ish about that.
By 2022 Gabbard parted ways her old party. Around that time, not only did she begin working on air for Fox News, but on the Tucker Carlson show of all things! She didn’t just sever her ties to her old party. She doused them with gasoline, garnished them with olive oil, packed them in C-4, and tossed them into a volcano.
And why? What was all of this about? Because back in 2015 she wasn’t getting her way, so she decided “I’ll show you!” Each and every time she attempted to “show” them she failed to actually gain significant traction, so she kept escalating to bigger and bigger things. She’s now gone from saying that Donald Trump is Saudi Arabia’s bitch, to having weird kissy face action with him, all as part of her revenge.
But where does Gabbard go from here? If Trump sours on Gabbards, as we all know he usually does when he hires people, where will Gabbard look for her next revenge tour? The Democrats won’t take her back, the Republicans will repudiate when their leader does, and minor parties don’t have anywhere near the clout to offer a new base camp to carry out sabotage. All of America will have turned their backs on her. The only place left to turn will be America’s adversaries.
Not all motivations for betraying one’s country are equal, and they don’t yield equal dangers. Some people see pure gain. Others are susceptible to blackmail and coercion. Others yet may have misguided notions of what is right and wrong. But such individuals will always have limits to how they can be manipulated to an adversary’s benefit, even if those limits may seem to be minimal. Gabbard is a different kind of person. She doesn’t have to be tricked, bribed, or pressured into helping an adversary. She’s the kind of person who will do it voluntarily for no other purpose than to delight in her own opportunity to exact pain.
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