Another Downey Angel will be driven out of St. Petersburg – the nickname for the swamp surrounding Washington Donald Trump this is life Embodiment of the Peter Principle ——This is inevitable. The only question is who? The smart money is either in Kashi Patelwhose self-aggrandizing behavior has begun to irritate the self-aggrandizing person, or Tulsi GabbardIts anti-war stance is increasingly at odds with the Trump administration’s moves. As it turns out, it was Honorary Desi who made the first move when Gabbard, an avid surfer, found herself being kicked off the boat.Now that her departure is inevitable, aides openly joke that DNI, short for Director of National Intelligence, should stand for “Do Not Invite.”Since Trump took office, the administration has delivered on every “Make America Great Again” promise made during the election season. China should be contained, but now more than ever Beijing is flexing its muscles. Uncle Sam not only failed to prevent the United States from acting as the global policeman, but was also involved in direct conflicts with many foreign powers and indirect conflicts with its own allies. The war between Russia and Ukraine shows no sign of letting up. The idea of peace in the Middle East is that the conflict has expanded from Israel and the axis of resistance to engulf the entire region, disrupting global markets and reminding the world that Iran can act as a gatekeeper to global energy needs by strengthening its control of the Strait of Hormuz.The gulf between Trump’s behavior and Gabbard’s worldview makes the latter’s position untenable. Perhaps her fate was sealed last June, less than two weeks before Operation Midnight Hammer, when she posted a video in which she said “elite political warmongers have accidentally stoked fear and tension among nuclear powers”. The article was published shortly before the U.S. struck Iran’s nuclear facilities, an operation that almost borrowed a plot from Top Gun: Maverick.While the official reason for her departure was her husband’s bone cancer diagnosis, numerous reports said Gabbard was forced to leave as White House officials became increasingly dissatisfied with her behavior.
The rise and fall of Tulsi Gabbard
Tulsi, who shares her name with the protagonist of a popular Indian family TV series, has had a rather unlikely journey through American politics.From the strange ideological archipelago of Hawaii, where she grew up around the Identity Science Foundation, a little-known spiritual movement with roots in Hare Krishna and a fraught history, to the Iraq War, where she served in uniform and established veterans’ authority that shielded her from the usual charges of armchair anti-interventionism.
Tulsi Gabbard and her husband Abraham Williams
She entered Congress as the first Hindu member of the House of Representatives, took the oath of office with the Bhagavad Gita, navigated democratic politics with as much aplomb as if she had been convened by a casting director for “post-partisan America,” and then gradually revealed herself to be someone more difficult to pigeonhole: socially cunning, a foreign policy heretic, gun-toting enough to unsettle liberals, anti-war enough to unsettle hawks, and anti-woke enough to charm the right. She was ambitious and understood that in American politics, the quickest way from obscurity to myth is to become impossible to position.Gabbard resigned as vice chair of the Democratic National Committee in 2016, when she accused the party of gaming the system against Bernie Sanders in support of Hillary Clinton. She also earned major MAGA brownie points for her criticism of the Obama-era Russia investigation and her dismantling of Kamala Harris during the 2019 Democratic National Committee debate. Over time, Trump hand-picked her for the position of Director of National Intelligence and gave her the highest title in MAGAland: “She’s sexier than anyone.“Despite the title of Director of National Intelligence, the role is not as powerful as it sounds and involves primarily coordinating the U.S. intelligence community and briefing the president on what’s going on across agencies. Gabbard faced an unusual obstacle entering the job: She is not a tenured intelligence officer, has little institutional support in the world she is supposed to govern, and has a long record that has left Democrats and old-school security hawks alike questioning her judgment.
As former CIA officer Mark Polymeropoulos explained to the Washington Post: “She doesn’t have a role anymore. If you don’t have the ear of the president, if you don’t have his trust, you can’t function. That’s D.I. 101 in Washington.” All intelligence agencies in Washington have their tricks, and the DNI’s trick is coordination, engagement and trust. With Trump marching to the beat of his own drum, that role has become redundant.Gabbard was chosen for her non-interventionist “America first” ideology, instincts that conflict with Trump’s actions in Iran and Venezuela. While Trump’s national security team was at Mar-a-Lago keeping tabs on U.S. operations in Venezuela, Gabbard was miles away in Hawaii, CNN reported.Even in the intelligence community, things are not always smooth sailing. Gabbard’s relationship with CIA Director John Ratcliffe was reportedly fraught, and Gabbard felt Ratcliffe had bypassed her and gone directly to the president. Even in her own office, she became isolated, surrounded by a small group of advisers. In Washington, that’s rarely a sign of strength. This is usually the moment when the music stops and the characters have not yet realized that there are no chairs.Previously, Joe Kent, another official appointed by Trump, resigned as director of the National Counterterrorism Center. Another Gabbard ally, Amaryllis Fox Kennedy, also stepped down, weakening the anti-war coalition within MAGA.
Anti-war MAGA Civil War
For better or worse, one of MAGA’s platforms that brought many different conservatives together was their anti-war platform. Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon, Joe Kent, Tulsi Gabbard, and America First, among others, believe that the Bush-Cheney ghost lingering in the Republican Party will finally be buried thanks to the actions of Trump 1.0.Carlson is the loudest among them. He believes that Iran’s escalation is not a war by the United States, but a war launched by others against the United States. “This is Israel’s war. This is not America’s war,” he said, a phrase that captured the anti-war right’s deepest fear: America first becoming Israel first again, under a better brand.Bannon’s warning was less moral and more political. “We can’t do this anymore. We’re tearing this country apart. We can’t have another Iraq,” he said, speaking on behalf of the MAGA faction, which believes Trump’s mission is to close the empire’s bill, not open a new one.Kent turned his dissent into resignation. “I cannot in good conscience support Iran’s ongoing war. Iran poses no imminent threat to our country,” he wrote, making him the rare Trump official who doesn’t just complain from the sidelines but steps outside the machine itself.The problem is that Trump’s anti-war rhetoric has always been instinctive rather than dogmatic. He hates Iraq because it looks stupid, Afghanistan because it ends in disgrace, and “endless wars” because they make America look like a country it can neither win nor leave. As messaging from the White House attests, Trump likes the idea of war and victory, often sharing videos of his enemies being bombed.While other anti-war figures are outside the establishment, Gabbard is very much a part of Trump’s world.
Don’t women have MAGA?
In his reality TV days, Trump was fond of saying “You’re fired,” but now that phrase seems to be mostly reserved for people with XX chromosomes. Gabbard is the fourth and perhaps most high-profile female appointee to leave Trump’s Cabinet.As head of the Department of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem has borne the brunt of the administration’s bumbling immigration crackdown and the broader chaos surrounding the Department of Homeland Security. Her $220 million border security ad campaign starring herself hasn’t helped her cause. Trump told Reuters he had not yet signed the deal: “I don’t know anything about it.” Noem has become a branding issue in a White House that allows only one person to represent power.Attorney General Pam Bondi’s ouster was linked to the Epstein dossier and Trump’s revenge machine. The Epstein issue has become radioactive within MAGA because the base wants to be exposed, not edited. Bundy helped raise expectations, but it was followed by confusion, disappointment and the feeling among Trump supporters that the great revelation had somehow turned into a bureaucratic fog. Meanwhile, Trump reportedly believes she doesn’t move quickly enough to prosecute critics and opponents he wants to face criminal charges. In Trump’s world, loyalty is never enough if it doesn’t punish.
Lori Chavez-Dremer’s departure was less ideological and more scandal-driven. She resigned as labor secretary amid allegations of misconduct and questions about her leadership. Washington’s official language on withdrawal has always been moderate. People pursue private opportunities, spend time with family or seek new challenges. But the message is simple: She has become more trouble than she deserves.Gabbard’s exit falls into the fourth category. Noem failed the optics test, Bundy failed the revenge test, Chavez-Dremo failed the scandal survival test, and Gabbard failed the obedience test.Still, there are many cabinet members with XY chromosomes who persevere despite failure, controversy and public embarrassment. That doesn’t mean every woman leaves for the same reasons. That means there’s a familiar rhythm in Trump’s courts: Women can serve as symbols before they become liabilities, and once they become liabilities, they rarely get the same long ropes as men.
Postscript from Iran
Perhaps the failure of the entire experiment can be summed up in the mockery of Iran, which has really upped its meme game amid its wars with Israel and the United States. It wrote on the Armenian embassy’s account that it wished Gabbard’s husband a “speedy and complete” recovery, praised her for “telling the truth about Trump’s hated Iran” and said it regretted that she worked for an administration that “sidelined the United States” and became an “Israeli proxy.”It’s a cruel little diplomatic garland, delivered with soap opera-like precision. Tulsi Gabbard, the namesake of Indian television’s most famous bahu, learned the hard way that in a Washington family drama, the patriarch is always right, dissent is betrayal, and even a favorite daughter-in-law can be written off between episodes.Because the DNI was never invited either.
