It’s pretty clear that Tulsi Gabbard’s public relations video was meant for an audience of one, which is Vladimir Putin. And we do hope he is pleased. If Gabbard was hoping to have the same effect on her compatriots in Washington, she fell flatter than a pancake. Check out Gabbard’s flop video and the article that goes with it. We’re at a strange impasse in American history, where we have the least qualified group of people ever assembled in high government office at the same time, coupled with a global situation which has broken out in war in some places and is threatening to escalate to that level in others.
Both foreign and domestic policy is challenged right now and we have a golfer who does photo ops from time to time and his clown car of incompetents running the show. Does anybody know the name of Nancy Reagan’s astrologer? Maybe we can get some sage counsel there, as she supposedly did, back in the days when Ronnie had Alzheimers and his capacity was more geared to eating jelly beans and feeding the White House squirrels than governing. Those days were challenging and God knows Iran-Contra was something to deal with, but I shudder to think what Trump’s legacy will be when all is said and done. Meanwhile, here’s how Gabbard is impressing her peers in Washington with her strange “warning.”
She obviously needs to change her meds,” Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) told Jewish Insider of Gabbard. Kennedy, like all Republicans except Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), voted to confirm Gabbard in February.
“I only saw a post that she did, which I thought was a very strange one since many people believe that, unfortunate though it was, the nuclear bomb that was dropped in World War II at Hiroshima actually saved a lot of lives, a lot of American lives,” Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) told JI of Gabbard’s video.
In the social media video, Gabbard describes a recent visit to Hiroshima, Japan, where she learned about the toll of the atomic bomb dropped on the city by American troops in 1945, which spurred a Japanese surrender and the end of World War II. She warned that the world faces another “nuclear holocaust” unless people “reject this path to nuclear war.”
“This is the reality of what’s at stake, what we are facing now, because as we stand here today, closer to the brink of nuclear annihilation than ever before, political elite warmongers are carelessly fomenting fear and tensions between nuclear powers,” said Gabbard, not specifying who she was referring to by “political elite warmongers” or which countries she may have been calling out.
Gabbard’s video decrying “warmongers” prompted concern from Republicans seeking a more traditionally conservative foreign policy worldview.
“She seems to be doing her best audition to be head of the Quincy Institute,” a senior employee at a pro-Israel advocacy group said of Gabbard.
One Senate Republican, speaking on condition of anonymity, questioned Gabbard’s logic in raising the human toll of Hiroshima and her “warmongers” comment.
“I’m not sure I understand why the DNI would even need to make that point,” the senator said of the Hiroshima focus, later adding: “I don’t seek nuclear war. I don’t know anyone who wants nuclear war. There’s plenty of ideological diversity here, but pretty much universal opposition to that.”
Since taking office, Gabbard, who in 2020 was a surrogate for progressive Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) presidential campaign, has generally been aligned with the isolationist wing of the Republican Party, which is increasingly ascendant in the Trump administration. William Ruger, the official she tapped for the high-level position that prepares the president’s daily intelligence briefing, came from Koch-affiliated institutions and has called for “American restraint” on the world stage.
From Bernie Sanders to Vladimir Putin, that’s some journey. Gabbard was another one of Trump’s submissions for confirmation that barely squeaked through. She had precious little credibility, let alone political capital, to begin with. What little there was got squandered when she made a fool of herself in Congress during the SignalGate hearings. Now Gabbard is playing out as the joke we knew she would be and only a few months into her term.
Grist for the Trump mill. And remember, no matter how bad things are in Trump world, they always.Get.Worse.
