By Caden Pearson
Former Democratic congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, responding to efforts to keep former President Donald Trump off the 2024 ballot, said Democrats “will stop at nothing” to maintain power.
In a candid interview on Fox News’s “Hannity” on Thursday, the Democrat-turned-Independent former congresswoman raised an alarm over what she described as a concerted effort by Democrats to sideline President Trump from the 2024 ballot.
She described the decision by Maine’s top election official, a Democrat, to remove President Trump from the state’s ballot as a dangerous precedent and urged Republicans and Democrats alike to “stand up for our democratic process” and the right of voters to pick their president.
“This is the MO of the Democrat elite,” Ms. Gabbard said. “They will stop at nothing to try to maintain their power, even if it means taking away the right to vote of Americans.”
Furthermore, Ms. Gabbard charged that Democrats “have no issue taking Trump off the ballot,” including by “pursuing him and persecuting him through a weaponized and politicized Department of Justice.”
“They have no qualms about doing whatever they feel is necessary to hold on to power,” she added.
The former Hawaii congresswoman pointed out the “ridiculous” hypocrisy in the eagerness of some Democrats, whom she referred to as “war hawks,” to intervene in foreign countries when political candidates face similar actions to those experienced by President Trump.
“We’ve seen how the war hawks in Washington, they will see this happen in another country, and they’ll be very quick to say we must go and intervene; we must go and topple this banana republic or this dictatorship,” said Ms. Gabbard.
Many of the congressional lawmakers who advocate along those lines, she added, “are the people who are driving” these efforts against President Trump.
She noted that efforts to sideline President Trump extend beyond the Democratic Party, with some Republicans “threatened by” his departure from “their establishment ways.”
Maine Official Defends Decision
In an interview with CNN, Ms. Bellows asserted that she adhered to Maine’s election law and upheld the U.S. Constitution in her decision to disqualify President Trump from the presidential primary ballot in her state.
“Maine law specifically delegates to me as secretary of state a requirement to review the qualifications for any candidate running for office,” she said.
“The weight of evidence that I reviewed indicated that it was in fact an insurrection,” she added. “And Mr. Trump engaged in that insurrection under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.”
“But I will always uphold what the court does, and it’s part of the job of being secretary of state. Should the U.S. Supreme Court rule that Mr. Trump would be on the ballot, I want that placed on the ballot. It’s part of why I suspended the effect of my decision until the courts can act,” Ms. Bellows added.
White House Denies Reality of Migrant Threat: Gabbard
Springboarding off a question about U.S. concern for Ukraine’s border, Ms. Gabbard criticized the Biden administration for downplaying and denying the direct national security threat posed by the influx of unvetted illegal immigrants at the southern U.S. border.
“I feel like the Democrats and the Biden-Harris administration are trying to put their heads in the sand here,” she said.
In December, the number of encounters with illegal border crossers at the southern U.S. border reached 225,000, the highest monthly record in 23 years, preliminary Department of Homeland Security figures show, reported CNN.
In November, FBI Director Christopher Wray told Congress during a House Homeland Security Committee hearing that illegal immigrants who got away from border officials are a source of “great concern” for the bureau.
The FBI chief revealed a significant rise in suspected terrorists attempting to cross the southern U.S. border in the past five years, reaching record levels in the 2023 fiscal year. These threats are currently overwhelming all FBI field offices nationwide, but Mr. Wray declined to provide reasons for the surge, stating, “It’s not in my lane.”
This month, the Dec. 21 arrest of an Iranian national with terrorism ties near the northern U.S. border has underscored concerns about the potential for terrorists to enter the country. The fugitive is “also a permanent resident of Canada and a national security priority who is wanted by Canadian authorities on assault charges,” according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Ms. Gabbard accused the White House of being in “complete denial of what every American is seeing.”
The influx of migrants making their way to the southern U.S. border and crossing illegally “poses a direct threat to our national security,” said Ms. Gabbard. “They have no idea who these people are who are coming across the border,” she added.
“We do know that they’re coming from around the world. We do know that these are not just poor women and children who are trying to escape oppressive conditions. This is a very real direct threat to our national security,” she added.
Ms. Gabbard, who formerly represented Hawaii in Congress as a Democrat before retiring to run for president, publicly resigned from the Democrats in 2022, saying she could “no longer remain in today’s Democratic party that is under the complete control of an elitist cabal of warmongers who are driven by cowardly wokeness, who divide us by racializing every issue and stoking anti-white racism.”
On Thursday, Ms. Gabbard suggested that “there are many Democrats like myself across the country who are disgusted with the direction the Democratic Party has taken but acknowledged that unlike her, ”they’re afraid to speak up“ for fear ”the Democrat leaders will smear, destroy, and try to cancel anyone who doesn’t go along with their narrative.”
