Donald Trump’s presidential campaign has received official support from Tulsi Gabbard, a former congresswoman who ran as the Democratic presidential candidate in 2020 but then distanced herself from the party.
On Monday, Trump welcomed 43-year-old Ms. Gabbard on a stage in Detroit in the key swing state of Michigan.
Ms. Gabbard left the Democratic Party in 2022, complaining about its “wokeness,” and has been a regular and outspoken guest on Fox News ever since.
She appeared alongside Trump to commemorate the US soldiers killed in an attack in Afghanistan three years earlier and used it as an opportunity to criticise the Biden administration.
The suicide attack on Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul killed 13 US soldiers and more than 100 Afghans.
The incident occurred as American troops chaotically withdrew from the country and the Taliban returned to power.
Trump called it a “humiliation” that “triggered the collapse of America’s credibility and respect around the world.”
Earlier, Ms Gabbard, a war veteran, accompanied him to Arlington Cemetery in Virginia to commemorate lost American lives.
Ms. Gabbard frequently criticized U.S. military interventionism during her congressional career from 2013 to 2021.
During her appearance at the event in Michigan on Monday, Gabbard said she was urging Democrats, Republicans and independents alike to vote for Trump at the ballot box in November. It was about “saving our country and serving the people.”
Her official support for Trump represents the culmination of a remarkable political development over the past decade that began on the progressive left of the Democratic Party.
She was the first Hindu member of the U.S. Congress and later served as vice chair of the Democratic National Committee before resigning from her post to support Senator Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign.
Ms. Gabbard ran for president in 2020, championing liberal issues such as government-run health care, free college tuition and gun control.
But Joe Biden became the Democratic nominee that year and won the presidency. Two years later, Ms Gabbard resigned as a Democrat, saying the party had succumbed to “cowardly wokeness.”
In early 2024, she praised Biden’s rival Trump, who will this time run against Kamala Harris for the White House.
She warned of a growing threat to American democracy – and said this danger comes from the American left’s prosecution of Trump.
In the months that followed, there was even speculation that Ms. Gabbard was in the running as Trump’s possible vice presidential candidate for November – a role that ultimately went to JD Vance.
Since leaving the Democratic Party, she has been a regular contributor to Fox News and has been accused by Ukrainian officials of “spreading Russian propaganda.”
Gabbard’s comments came days after Trump received the endorsement of another Democratic defector, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who suspended his independent campaign for the White House last week.
Leading Democrats immediately rejected Ms. Gabbard’s support.
“Instead of focusing on winning the support of hard-working Americans, Trump is more fixated on winning the support of extremists like Gabbard and RFK Jr. – and they will do nothing but add weight to his sinking campaign ship,” Alex Floyd, the party’s rapid response director, said in a statement.
