Tulsi Gabbard 'surprises' Trump with full MAGA conversion as she joins Republican Party

Donald Trump called it a “surprise” that Tulsi Gabbard, the former congresswoman who left the Democratic Party two years ago and has since joined the Republican Party, announced Tuesday night that she was joining the GOP.

The Republican Party's least surprising news in an admittedly surprise-filled campaign cycle – what with the self-proclaimed “Black Nazi“, Trump take a 9/11 conspirator to a 9/11 memorial and his declared admiration the late Arnold Palmer's genitals, to name a few – occurred at a rally in Greensboro, North Carolina.

“I am proud to stand here with you today, President Trump, and tell you that I am joining the Republican Party,” Gabbard said minutes into an address she delivered after being invited to speak by the former president had been.

She endorsed Trump back in August, making her GOP membership the final step in a sweeping MAGA baptism.

Trump, standing off to the side, leaned forward and opened his mouth before straightening up, giving two thumbs up and mouthing to Gabbard, “That's great.”

“Those of you here or at home who are independent-minded people like me, who love our country and are committed to the Constitution and freedom, the Democratic Party is not a home for people like us,” Gabbard said. She continued to call Democrats “anti-freedom, pro-censorship, pro-open borders.”

“Tulsi, that’s great,” Trump said when he was back at the microphone. “Wow. That was a surprise. It really was – she has been independent for a long time. This is a great thing, a great honor. Thank you very much, Tulsi.”

Gabbard has been independent for a “long time,” if “a long time” is two years. The former House representative, who served in Hawaii's 2nd Congressional District from 2013 to 2021 and ran for her former party's presidential nomination in 2020, resigned from the Democrats in October 2022.

During her time in office, she represented a mix of views across the spectrum and supported very non-Republican ideas such as a national health care Insurance program and criminal justice reform including a ban on private prisons.

When she left the Democratic Party, it was a step 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 stay in today’s Democratic Party. It is now completely under the control of an elite cabal of warmongers driven by cowardly wokeness who are dividing us by racializing every issue and fomenting anti-white racism.”

The Republican candidates she has been campaigning for since 2022 include: Election deniers like Kari Lake.

In addition to adopting MAGA rhetoric denigrating “wokeness” and taking issue with election truths, Gabbard also agrees with Trump’s isolationist foreign policy, and like the Republican candidate, she has one questionable record on Russian President Vladimir Putin accused the West for Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Gabbard, a National Guard veteran who served in Iraq and Kuwait, noted that a key motivator in her decision to join the GOP was Vice President Kamala Harris and the “shameless” embrace of former Republican Vice President Dick Cheney, a key Republican figure. by the Democratic Party that the Iraq War had been started on the basis of faulty intelligence information. Hundreds of thousands of civilians and 4,500 American military personnel were killed.

Many liberals were also baffled by Harris' questionable courting of Cheney's support.

The Daily Show Host Jon Stewart – who played a key role in criticizing the American media and political class over blame for the Iraq War in the 2000s – confronted Harris' running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, about how she did it Support of the arch-neoconservative was welcomed. WHO approved the use of torture and proud bragged that he would “do it again in a minute.”