If you’re paying attention, you’ve heard the rumors: Putin shill, friend to dictators, traitor to her political party, spy for America’s enemies.

Which is, I gotta say, totally nuts. No, not just the spy bit — all of it, beginning to end. For anyone who’s followed her career, she’s been nothing but consistent, and she wears her heart, and her convictions, on her sleeve for all to see.

Mind you, I don’t know her personally. I’ve seen her at campaign events, listened to her speak, watched her now and then as a talking head on the evening infotainment. I’ve got no inside track that’s not available to you.

“So why should I pay attention to your opinion? What makes it better than mine?” I hear you ask.

Good question.

Because I actually have the time that you don’t, to follow these things to their roots and figure out what’s really going on. You’ve got things like work, friends, a life. I’ve got my little mysteries, and I spend hours chasing down stories and figuring out what the clues mean.

Putin Shill

No, she’s not really a fan. What she is, she’s very smart, and she understands realpolitik in a way the average person can’t, because most of us don’t have the necessary background. Trouble is, she makes the mistake of thinking people care about the truth as much as she does.

The average voter wants to make a moral judgment and act on it. Either Putin’s a villain who keeps invading countries and needs to be stopped, or he’s a patriot doing his damnedest to keep Russia from collapsing into chaos and the third world. Truth is, he’s both, and it doesn’t matter because he’s not subject to your petty morality, ya schmuck. Judge him all you want, he’ll keep doing what he does.

Friend to Dictators

We have to deal with the real world, how things actually are, not how we want them to be.

This is why America props up a nasty brutal repressive authoritarian regime like Saudi Arabia: because the alternatives are all worse, and incidentally they hate us. It’s why we arm Ukraine and Israel: because a war over there beats a war over here. These aren’t morally correct decisions. They’re horrible, awful necessity, at least according to the State Department. Come up with an alternative that doesn’t result in global holocaust and maybe you can start to preach about it.

Tulsi Gabbard is cognizant of all this. It’s why she used the power of her office as a Congresswoman to meet with people like Assad and Modi. I would too — because I’m desperately trying to think of a way to avert World War III.

Traitor to the DNC

When Tulsi Gabbard entered politics, it was in support of her politician father. His causes were conservative — an anti-gay marriage PAC, among other things. Party insiders never trusted her; she was never “one of us”. In 2013, she was unanimously elected to vice-chair the DNC, in the hope that the office would satisfy her ambition, and that the implied promise of future plums would keep her in line.

Then she spoke her mind, opposing the effort to crown Hillary Clinton as the next presidential candidate rather than holding open primaries. She was then disinvited to functions, undercut by chair Wasserman Schulz, and informally pressured to resign. Unsurprisingly, she threw in with the Bernie Sanders campaign, the only organized opposition to Clinton, who was destined to lose to Trump in the general election.

In 2020, she ran for the presidency herself, memorably eviscerating Kamala Harris on the debate stage — another eventual coronation candidate doomed to lose to Trump. However, she received no party support, and her campaign fizzled even before Biden’s arranged victory in the primaries.

It’s safe to say the Democratic Party left her, and not the other way around.

Spy

There’s actually some justice to this accusation. It’s just that it’s wrong about who exactly she’s working for. Turns out, in 2021, she was a Lt. Colonel with Army Special Ops in the Horn of Africa, helping run top secret missions. Against whom we don’t know (because, duh! top secret), but that particular command deals with Somalia (including pirates), Ethiopia, and the Middle East (can we say Assad?)

Her current job is commanding the 1st/354th, a unit that trains MPs in counterintelligence at one of the top Army schools in Oklahoma. She holds a top-secret clearance, and has been repeatedly vetted by US intelligence agencies.

She’s one of the good guys, a full-time soldier who serves her country. She is not a foreign spy.

So Where…?

Where did these rumors come from?

Pretty obvious, when you think of it. She pissed off the DNC Establishment back in 2015, and then again in 2020 — by being right, as it happens, and by correctly predicting her party’s future losses. Their spin control’s been telling outrageous lies about her ever since. Presumably, they haven’t learned the lesson she tried to convey.

At this moment, Trump has her on the nomination list for Director of National Intelligence. Insiders are spreading some nasty gossip, trying to block her — some because they figure it’s a fight against Trump, others for partisan revenge, and doubtless a few because they’re honestly mistaken about her. It happens.

Then too, she’s guilty of a cardinal sin for a politician: She’s boring. Her one shining moment came when she lit into Harris at the debates; since then, she’s been uniformly reasonable at all times. Tulsi’s held her temper and kept her voice level in moments when anyone else would pitch a fit. Mind you, it’s always a mistake to lose your temper when you’re in politics — but she could, perhaps, use a reminder that the Spirit of Aloha comes with typhoons and volcanoes built in.

They’re not thinking it through.

Tulsi Gabbard is non-partisan, brilliant, and highly competent in the field. She’s arguably one of the better qualified candidates for the position. Perhaps more importantly, she’s a woman who Trump respects and listens to, and she’s on the inside. The success of her nomination could prevent the next administration from rushing headlong into disaster.

Bear in mind: I’m no fan of Donald Trump. He’s headstrong and profoundly ignorant about a lot of things, and he’s also got the arrogance often associated with being the smartest man in the room. Anything that can penetrate that has got to be a good thing.

Call your Senators, people. Get her confirmed.

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