Facebook
X
LinkdIn
Copy Link
Yesterday morning, I asked why President-elect Donald Trump seemed to be pausing before announcing Marco Rubio as secretary of state. By the evening, we appeared to have an answer. He wanted to combine that news, which distressed the anti-elitists in the MAGAsphere and reassured Republicans in Washington, with his announcement that Tulsi Gabbard would be his director of intelligence, which has delighted the anti-elitists and horrified Washington. With one hand the good Donald giveth, with the other he taketh away.
How will Gabbard cope in a cabinet now stuffed with hardline pro-Israel hawks who despise her?
Gabbard’s appointment should please those who don’t like futile wars and deep-state deceptions. There had been hopes that she might get secretary of defense but Fox News’s Pete Hegseth got that job — reportedly because he happened to be sitting in a useful part of Mar-a-Lago at the right time. Yet Trump’s decision to put Gabbard in change of America’s spy networks is arguably more radical.
Trump has been interested in Gabbard since 2016 — long before she quit the Democratic Party to become an independent in 2022 and formally joined the Trump Train this year. “Donald Trump must be defeated. Another four years of him as president would be a disaster,” she said in 2020, when running as a Democratic candidate for the presidency. Such remarks can be quickly forgotten in Trumpland.
Because Trump and Gabbard are both former Democrats who have been radicalized rightwards. She is an Iraq veteran, Samoan surfer girl and ultra-ambitious peacenik. As such, we can expect the worst people in the so-called intelligence community to do everything they can to stop her. Trump and some of his key allies are eager to publish lots of classified material on everything from Russiagate to the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Will Gabbard help on that front? If so, we can expect at least one “scandal” to leak against her in the coming days.
In the 2010s, the Clintons tried to tarnish Gabbard as an Assad “toady” — to use the word Bari Weiss deployed about Tulsi on Joe Rogan — because she had the temerity to meet Syria’s leader and didn’t make all the correct noises on foreign policy.
How will Gabbard cope in a cabinet now stuffed with hardline pro-Israel hawks who despise her? One of her last acts as a congresswoman was to introduce a bill to prevent US sanctions from harming civilian populations. Yet, as she has shown throughout her transition from liberal Democrat to Trump advocate, Gabbard is nothing if not a survivor.
Tulsi arguably wasn’t the most explosive hand-grenade appointment Trump threw at Washington yesterday, however. He also named Matt Gaetz, yet another Floridian, as his next Attorney General. Trump wants to wage war on the Department of Justice, which has spent the last four years trying to put him in prison. Gaetz, whose own rather fruity private life might get in the way of his confirmation, is a genuine troublemaker and gonzo choice for the role. He has a rather libertarian attitude towards illegal drugs. He was the key actor in the defenestration of Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the House last year, which infuriated the old Republican establishment. He’ll be willing to challenge the powerful legal authorities who stand in the way of Trumpism. As with Gabbard, however, the question will be when and how the establishment fights back.
This article was originally published on The Spectator’s UK website.
