Former President Donald Trump met with former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard (Hawaii) to discuss foreign policy and how he’d run the Pentagon in a second term, which sent the mainstream media into hysterics.
Trump and Gabbard reportedly discussed how he’d manage the Department of Defense in his second term, opining that his biggest mistake was hiring personnel who deviated from his America First philosophy.
The Washington Post promptly trashed the meeting as evidence Trump is pursuing an “isolationist” foreign policy that will upend the international world order and reject neoconservative policies that entrench U.S. forces in multiple countries.
The talks with Gabbard — who has staked out a role as an outspoken critic of aid to Ukraine and U.S. military interventions overseas — are part of a broader conversation about how Trump would manage the Pentagon differently if voters award him a second term. Trump has repeatedly told advisers and donors in recent months that one of his biggest mistakes was his personnel choices at the Pentagon, where he says he was stymied by officials with diverging opinions.
He sought to immediately pull out of many countries where the United States had troops, wanted to withdraw from NATO at times because he said other countries were not paying enough, questioned traditional alliances, praised and negotiated with dictators considered foes of the United States, and clashed repeatedly with the Republican establishment, particularly in the Senate, on foreign policy.
“She appeals to Republicans who are skeptical of intervention overseas, which is now a majority of Republican voters,” Andrew Surabian, a Republican strategist who advises Donald Trump Jr. and Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), told WaPo.
WaPo also lamented that Trump’s talks with Gabbard are just a facet of his overall foreign policy approach.
The Gabbard conversations are only one element of Trump plotting out a second term in the Defense Department. One adviser said that Trump is determined to have personnel in the department this time who will listen to him and who share “his views philosophically 100 percent” after years of clashing with the Pentagon during his presidency, and that he has begun talking about the Pentagon.
Pentagon bureaucrats also allegedly complained to WaPo that they’re worried Trump will demand more from NATO and install officials that align with his non-interventionist views such as Col. Douglas MacGregor (Ret.).
Another former senior administration official said he is “greatly concerned” that Trump will upend longtime alliances if he is elected to a second term. The issue, the official said, came up “constantly” when Trump was in office, with him raising the prospect of pulling troops from Germany and South Korea and both withdrawing troops from Africa and closing all U.S. embassies there.
“He sees these treaties and partnerships as transactional relationships, and he is constantly looking at the ledger and saying, ‘Is this a good deal or this a bad deal?’” the official said. “He views America’s forces abroad, and America’s protection, as a service to be paid for.”
Among former administration officials, there is greatest concern that he would try to install Douglas MacGregor as a top official at the Pentagon. MacGregor was appointed by Trump to the board of the U.S. Military Academy after the Senate did not confirm him to be the U.S. ambassador to Germany. MacGregor is a frequent Fox News guest who has counseled Trump and has a history of espousing baseless accusations and complaining about migrants.
Gabbard left the Democrat Party in 2022, claiming the party had been hijacked by an “elitist cabal of warmongers driven by cowardly wokeness.”
I can no longer remain in today’s Democratic Party that is now under the complete control of an elitist cabal of warmongers driven by cowardly wokeness, who divide us by racializing every issue & stoke anti-white racism, actively work to undermine our God-given freedoms, are… pic.twitter.com/oAuTnxZldf
— Tulsi Gabbard ? (@TulsiGabbard) October 11, 2022
“I can no longer remain in today’s Democratic Party that is now under the complete control of an elitist cabal of warmongers driven by cowardly wokeness, who divide us by racializing every issue & stoke anti-white racism, actively work to undermine our God-given freedoms, are hostile to people of faith & spirituality, demonize the police & protect criminals at the expense of law-abiding Americans, believe in open borders, weaponize the national security state to go after political opponents, and above all, dragging us ever closer to nuclear war,” Gabbard said.
The media is apoplectic over the prospect of Trump conducting another term of sober foreign policy that doesn’t involve miring the U.S. in needless wars that benefit only the military industrial complex and politicians.
