Former Democrat Tulsi Gabbard endorses Trump in 2024 presidential race

Former Democratic congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, who was forced to reject her anti-LGBTQ+ past, has endorsed Donald Trump for the presidency. 

Gabbard, who has become well-known at right-wing conferences following her departure from the Democrats – whom she branded an “elitist cabal of warmongers – voiced her support for Republican nominee Trump, at a National Guard Association conference in Detroit, Michigan, on Monday (26 August).

Speaking at the event, where Trump also spoke, she said: “This administration has us facing multiple wars on multiple fronts, in regions around the world, and closer to the brink of nuclear war than we ever have been.

“This is one of the main reasons why I’m committed to doing all that I can to send president Trump back to the White House, where he can once again serve us as our commander-in-chief. I am confident that his first task will be to do the work to walk us back from the brink of war.”

Gabbard then hit out at Democratic nominee, and a former rival for the presidency, Kamala Harris, adding: “We as Americans must stand together to reject this anti-freedom culture of political retaliation and abuse of power.” 

Democratic National Committee director Alex Floyd commented on both Gabbard and Robert F Kennedy Jr, the nephew of former Democrat US president John F Kennedy, supporting Trump.

“Donald Trump’s brand is so toxic that he’s resorted to touting support from off-putting extremists like RFK Jr and Tulsi Gabbard,” he said.

“Gabbard and Trump have a lot in common: they have both earned the praises of white supremacists and other extremists, celebrated the overturning of Roe v Wade, and campaigned for dangerous election deniers.”

Tulsi Gabbard has a poor LGBTQ+ record

Gabbard is a former Hawaii representative who, in 2012, became the first Hindu and first Samoan-American to be elected to congress. She was a vice-chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee and served in the military in Iraq.

Gabbard ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2019. However, during her campaign she came under fire for her history of opposing marriage equality and calling LGBTQ+ activists “homosexual extremists”.

In a grovelling apology, she insisted that her views had changed and that she was now an LGBTQ+ ally. However, the following year she introduced a “blatantly transphobic” bill to deny trans-inclusive schools funding, which resulted in her being called a “liar” and “fraud”. 

She quit the Democrats in October 2022, writing on X/Twitter that the party was “under the complete control of an elitist cabal of warmongers who are driven by cowardly wokeness, who divide us by racialising every issue and stoking anti-white racism”. 

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