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Donald Trump’s presidential marketing campaign has obtained an official endorsement from Tulsi Gabbard – a former congresswoman who ran to be the Democratic candidate for the presidency in 2020, earlier than distancing herself from the celebration.
On Monday, Trump welcomed Ms Gabbard, 43, to a stage in Detroit, in the important thing swing state of Michigan.
Ms Gabbard give up the Democratic Party in 2022, complaining of its “wokeness”, and has since turn out to be an everyday and outspoken visitor on Fox News.
She appeared alongside Trump to commemorate US service personnel killed in an assault in Afghanistan three years prior, utilizing it as a possibility to criticise the Biden administration.
Thirteen US service members and greater than 100 Afghans had been killed in the course of the suicide bombing at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul.
The incident occurred as American troops made a chaotic withdrawal from the nation, and the Taliban returned to energy.
Trump labelled it a “humiliation” that “set off the collapse of American credibility and respect all all over the world”.
He was joined earlier within the day by Ms Gabbard, a navy veteran, at Virginia’s Arlington Cemetery to recollect the American lives misplaced.
Ms Gabbard made frequent criticisms of US navy interventionism throughout her profession in Congress from 2013 to 2021.
Appearing at Monday’s occasion in Michigan, Ms Gabbard mentioned she was interesting to Democrats, Republicans and independents alike to select Trump on the poll field in November – saying it was a matter of “saving our nation and serving the individuals”.
Her official backing of Trump marks the end result of a outstanding political journey during the last decade that started on the progressive left of the Democratic Party.
She was the primary Hindu member of the US Congress, occurring to function vice-chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee – earlier than resigning to endorse the 2016 presidential marketing campaign of Senator Bernie Sanders.
Ms Gabbard ran for president in 2020, championing liberal points like government-run healthcare, free faculty tuition and gun management.
But Joe Biden grew to become the Democratic nominee that 12 months, and went on to win the presidency. Two years later, Ms Gabbard give up as a Democrat, saying the celebration had succumbed to “cowardly wokeness”.
By early 2024, she was singing the praises of Mr Biden’s rival, Trump, who will this time compete for the White House in opposition to Kamala Harris.
She warned of a rising risk to American democracy – saying this hazard was posed by the prosecution of Trump by America’s left-wing.
In the following months, it was even speculated that Ms Gabbard could possibly be within the body as Trump’s potential working mate for November – a task that finally went to JD Vance.
Since her departure from the Democratic Party she has turn out to be an everyday contributor to Fox News and has been accused of spreading “selling Russian propaganda” by officers in Ukraine.
Ms Gabbard’s feedback got here days after Trump obtained the endorsement of one other Democratic defector, Robert F Kennedy Jr, who final week suspended his unbiased marketing campaign for the White House.
Top Democrats had been fast to dismiss Ms Gabbard’s endorsement.
“Rather than specializing in incomes the assist of hardworking Americans, Trump is extra fixated on profitable the backing of extremists like Gabbard and RFK Jr — and so they’ll do nothing however crush his sinking ship of a marketing campaign,” the celebration’s Rapid Response Director Alex Floyd mentioned in a press release.
