Trump huddles with Tulsi Gabbard ahead of debate with Harris
Source: The Hill
08/16/24 2:55 PM ET
Former President Trump has met with former Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (Hawaii) in recent days, huddling with the one-time presidential candidate who shared a debate stage with Vice President Harris in 2019.
A Trump campaign spokesperson confirmed the former president has spoken with Gabbard, though they dismissed the idea Trump was engaging in traditional debate preparations ahead of his Sept. 10 showdown with Harris.
“President Trump has proven to be one of the best debaters in political history as evidenced by his knockout blow to Joe Biden,” Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said in a statement. “He does not need traditional debate prep but will continue to meet with respected policy advisors and effective communicators like Tulsi Gabbard, who successfully dominated Kamala Harris on the debate stage.”
The New York Times first reported on Trump’s conversations with Gabbard. Arguably Gabbard’s most notable moment of her unsuccessful 2020 White House bid was when she attacked Harris on the debate stage over her record as a prosecutor.
Read more: https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4831575-trump-tulsi-gabbard-debate-harris/
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bullimiami
(14,075 posts)
Traildogbob
(13,018 posts)Sizes of Tic Tac containers right in that oversized jacket. Ya reckon if he pops a few in she will let him GRAB her. He is famous. And she is desperate for attention.
claudette
(5,455 posts)The orange felon really DOES want to lose. 😂
Blue Owl
(59,105 posts)
rsdsharp
(12,002 posts)czarjak
(13,639 posts)
karin_sj
(1,370 posts)"President Donald Trump says almost 1 million people had requested tickets to attend his upcoming rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma. But some who have registered for the free event, which is scheduled to take place at a nearly 20,000 seat auditorium next week, say they have no plans to attend.
They’re trying to troll the President’s campaign instead.
Mary Jo Laupp, a 51-year-old grandmother living in Fort Dodge, Iowa, appears to have helped led the charge on TikTok late last week when she posted a video encouraging people to go to Trump’s website, register to attend the event – and then not show up.
“All of those of us that want to see this 19,000 seat auditorium barely filled or completely empty go reserve tickets now and leave him standing alone there on the stage,” Laupp told her then-1,000 or so followers on TikTok, normally thought of a platform for dancing teenagers and not, necessarily, political action."
https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/16/politics/tiktok-trump-tulsa-rally-trnd/index.html
Blue Owl
(59,105 posts)And maybe traipsing off to jail!!!
Zoomie1986
(1,213 posts)As to believe the ticket requests showed so much genuine interest that they wasted money on an expensive outdoor viewing area for the 'overflow' crowds.
They actually thought that 60,000 was the minimum attendance to expect:
To winnow down the likely audience further, advisers estimated that only between 200,000 and 300,000 people lived within immediate driving distance. Worst-case scenario, they concluded, was an audience of about 60,000.
LOL. Tulsa's fire department pegged it at 6200. Looks like far more than 300,000 ticket requests were fake.
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/06/21/donald-trump-oklahoma-campaign-debacle-333263
Thank you, K-Pop fans.
karin_sj
(1,370 posts)The K-Pop fans did a great job of humiliating the orange cretin! And their song was pretty catchy too!
brush
(61,033 posts)and as far as helping get rethug votes, what's the use of preaching to the choir?
Neither of course lessens his mental decline, his real problem besides being an election denier and insurrectionist.
thesquanderer
(13,006 posts)(As opposed to the vote-getting reasons you were speculating about.)
brush
(61,033 posts)is go off on tangents on Hannibal Lector and sharks and acid batteries.
VP Harris will have on her prosecutor hat and demolish the lie-a-minute, already convicted criminal. He'll wish he never consented to debate her.
See post 11 by the way to see how Harris slapped Gabbard down for constantly appearing on FOX to bash the Obama admin. It's not pretty so her input won't help the orange turd at all.
AdamGG
(1,882 posts)some coaching could help him. But, it's most probable that he's way too narcissistic to follow any advice and substantially change anything about his presentation.
thesquanderer
(13,006 posts)dem4decades
(14,057 posts)Klarkashton
(5,292 posts)
ificandream
(11,837 posts)jvill
(459 posts)Yeah, man!! She dominated Kamala so bad Harris became VP and is now the leading contender for president.
Meanwhile, Tulsi turns out to be just another grifter weirdo hanging out in the Fox News Safe Space, getting paid to tell rancid pigs they smell like roses...
Drum
(10,678 posts)
Grins
(9,459 posts)30 March 2022
On Russian state TV Tulsi Gabbard was introduced by state TV host Vladimir Soloviev as, "Our girlfriend Tulsi."
Their “boyfriend” being testicle-tanning aficionado, Tucker Carlson.
Repulsi Blabbered?
Nictuku
(4,658 posts)Once upon a time, she was a representative of Hawaii's 2nd Congressional District, (includes Kauai, Maui, and Hawaii counties, along with part of Honolulu County. )
My very progressive/liberal friend absolutely loved her and voted for her. But then, after I saw she met with Putin, I started to see her change. And now she is cuddling up with Trump? It breaks my heart. She /was/ one of the good ones. What the hell happened to her morals?
So sad. Glad she is not in congress any more.
Skittles
(171,713 posts)
Hekate
(100,133 posts)
NBachers
(19,438 posts)
barbtries
(31,308 posts)is LGBTQ. she definitely hates the gay. i'm sure there's more, but to be honest i had forgotten she existed until this post turned up.
mahina
(20,645 posts)Last edited Sun Aug 18, 2024, 01:28 PM - Edit history (3)
We saw her for who she was and could not believe that she won. She is exquisitely talented at discerning what the people she wants something from want to hear and find a way to say it in a very persuasive way.
The progressives that I know from way back here never liked her, never wanted her, and remembered what an obvious bigot she was, including the red shirt hordes that charged our capitol to exhort their electeds to vote against equal rights for gay people; that fight was led by her father who weirdly is now in the Democratic Party. (Among those who lost their seats for voting against them was Mike McCartney, who was a highly respected and otherwise universally liked state senator and leader at the time. He never returned to elected office. Since that time, both Tulsi and her father Mike have walked back the anti-gay thing to the point that if you weren't around then you might even be unaware of how harsh their positions were.) They do what they have to do to get what they want to get, and they find the trigger points in our minds that shut off our thinking.
In Tulsi‘s case, she knows how to press our buttons, appeal to our heuristic mental shortcuts to lead us to think that she shares our values, unexamined, that we are one team. We are not. if she could have come to power stepping on Democrats by defining herself as a Republican she would have done so. She could not, nor could her father. She said she was for peace and many of us who hold peace dearly to heart, activists that had not been paying attention, assumed that meant the same thing to her that it means to us. Many who felt that way found it easy to overlook closer at her past public hatred for homosexuals. Anyone in office, in media or in public life who questioned her was in for an organized swat assault by the hoardes, online, by phone, in person, with vigor. Few questioned twice...beware of that history. It is consistent with authoritarian figures in history, minus the internet. Onward...
I am crunched for time so please excuse the incorrect capitalizations or any typos on my part. She is very calculating warrior and she remains dangerous if she thinks aligning with the trump camp will serve her goals. (revised to de-goof. thanks for your patience.)
czarjak
(13,639 posts)Hekate
(100,133 posts)God knows how long it would take me to dig it out, but I used to keep links handy to inform her fan club at DU.
mahina
(20,645 posts)Friends and supporters sometimes describe Gabbard as “poised,” which may also be a way of acknowledging that she is not particularly spontaneous. She engages audiences with a voice that is slow, reassuring, and faintly hypnotic. Her resting expression is a sympathetic smile, and she has perfected an effective double-hug technique: a warm, long embrace when she meets someone, and an even longer one when saying goodbye, as if to signal that something meaningful has transpired. “We love you, Tulsi,” someone called out when she finished.
..
When Gabbard entered politics, she was only twenty-one, and in those early years she was a social conservative, pro-life and active in the fight against same-sex marriage. She is now pro-choice and pro-same-sex-marriage: on these and other issues, she has evolved enough to be almost—but not quite—at home in the contemporary Democratic Party, which is increasingly progressive, particularly on issues of gender and sexual orientation. The exact nature and extent of Gabbard’s political evolution is not easy to apprehend, especially since Hawaii is not known for political centrism. It is, by some measures, the bluest state in the country: in last year’s election, Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump there, sixty-two per cent to thirty per cent, her biggest victory anywhere besides the District of Columbia. Many of those Clinton voters were unhappily surprised when, less than two weeks after the election, Gabbard agreed to meet with Trump to make her case for a noninterventionist foreign policy. A few months later, she flew to Syria and met with Bashar al-Assad, who is presiding over a brutal civil war; she and he seemed to agree that the United States should not intervene to stop it.
…
For a decade, Mike Gabbard was Hawaii’s leading opponent of the gay-rights movement, an energetic and often brusque activist who stood ever ready to denounce what he called “the radical homosexual agenda.” In 1999, after one of the main characters on the teen drama “Dawson’s Creek” was revealed to be gay, Mike Gabbard flew to North Carolina, where the program was filmed, to lead a protest.
…
In her first political incarnation, Gabbard balanced liberal environmentalism with a pronounced conservative streak. In 2003, she voted against a bill to oblige hospitals to “provide emergency contraception immediately” to survivors of sexual assault, because it did not contain a “conscience clause,” to allow providers with a religious objection to opt out. She supported government surveillance efforts, warning that the “demand for unfettered civil liberties” could make the nation vulnerable to terrorists. And she joined her father’s battle against what she called “homosexual extremists.” In 1998, Mike Gabbard had successfully pushed for an amendment to the Hawaii State Constitution, to permit the legislature to ban same-sex marriage, which it did. Six years later, Tulsi Gabbard led a protest against a bill that would have legalized civil unions for same-sex couples. That same year, in the Hawaii State House, she delivered a long, fierce speech against a proposed resolution meant to target anti-gay bullying in public schools. She objected to the idea of students being taught that homosexuality is “normal and natural,” and worried that passing the resolution would have the effect of “inviting homosexual-advocacy organizations into our schools to promote their agenda to our vulnerable youth.”
…
https://www.businessinsider.com/tulsi-gabbard-science-of-identity-controversial-religious-sect-2022-10
Tulsi Gabbard's ties to the Science of Identity Foundation, a controversial religious sect that some call an abusive 'cult'
Yoonji Han Oct 18, 2022,
Tulsi Gabbard has strong words for anyone who asks about the religious sect she grew up in.
The former congresswoman and her staffers have repeatedly claimed that media interest in the Science of Identity Foundation (SIF) and its guru's influence on Gabbard amount to "Hindu-phobic bigotry."
…
mahina
(20,645 posts)After Bhaktivedanta’s death, Butler no longer had to choose between devotion and independence. As the Hare Krishna movement fractured, Butler created his own group, now known as the Science of Identity Foundation, and amassed a tight-knit, low-profile network of followers, hundreds or perhaps thousands of them, stretching west from Hawaii into Australia, New Zealand, and Southeast Asia. Butler deëmphasized age-old Indian texts and practices, presenting himself instead as a smart and curious guy who had figured out the answers to some very puzzling questions. In 1984, he published “Who Are You? Discovering Your Real Identity,” which used examples from science to argue that materialism was false, and that the self was real—and eternal. (Krishna and the Bhagavad Gita are mentioned only in passing.) He recorded a series of television specials, in which he resembled a hip young college professor on a couch, surrounded by inquisitive students.
…
One of those students was Mike Gabbard, who had been interested in Hinduism since the nineteen-seventies: he once corresponded with Bhaktivedanta, asking for advice on establishing a temple, and Tulsi Gabbard’s name reflects the family’s pre-existing spiritual commitments. When the Gabbards moved to Hawaii, in 1983, they joined the circle of disciples around Butler. Tulsi Gabbard says that she began learning the spiritual principles of Vaishnava Hinduism as a kid, and that she grew up largely among fellow-disciples, some of whom would gather on the beach for kirtan, the practice of singing or chanting sacred songs. Gabbard pursued a spiritual education: as a girl, she spent two years in the Philippines, at informal schools run by followers of Butler.
…
Gabbard recalls her childhood as lively and freewheeling: she excelled at martial arts and developed a passion for gardening; she was a serious reader, encouraged by her parents. But a number of Butler’s former disciples recall a harsher, more authoritarian atmosphere. Defectors tell stories of children discouraged by Butler from attending secular schools; of followers forbidden to speak publicly about the group; of returning travellers quarantined for days, lest they transmit a contagious disease to Butler; of devotees lying prostrate whenever he entered the room, or adding bits of his nail clippings to their food, or eating spoonfuls of sand that he had walked upon. Some former members portray themselves as survivors of an abusive cult. Butler denies these reports, and Gabbard says that she finds them hard to credit. “I’ve never heard him say anything hateful, or say anything mean about anybody,” she says of Butler. “I can speak to my own personal experience and, frankly, my gratitude to him, for the gift of this wonderful spiritual practice that he has given to me, and to so many people.”
…
GGabbard is not the first disciple of Butler’s to enter politics. In the late seventies, a rather opaque group called Independents for Godly Government appeared in Hawaii and fielded more than a dozen candidates for local races. The group presented itself as a multifaith coalition of conservative-minded reformers, but in 1977 the Honolulu Advertiser published a three-part exposé identifying I.G.G. as an initiative created mainly, or entirely, by disciples of Butler. One candidate told the newspaper that discretion was part of his political strategy. “I know for a fact that, if I said I was a Hare Krishna, the first thing people would think was I had a shaved head, bells on my feet, and I bothered people at the airport,” he said. “To communicate, I have to keep the doors open.” In Valley Isle, a newspaper based in Maui and friendly to Butler, Bill Penaroza, one of the leaders of the initiative, announced that the group—which hadn’t got any of its candidates elected—was “restructuring.” Penaroza didn’t identify Butler as its leader, but he did concede that he had some influence. “There was an interesting conversation with a friend of mine who I consider to be a very spiritually advanced person, whose name is Siddha Swarup Swami,” Penaroza said. (He was using a version of Butler’s initiated name, Siddhaswarupananda.) “He said he thought we were a little too self-righteous, and that we seem to have limited ourselves to working with people who were of Eastern spiritual disciplines, neglecting many of the people we could probably work with in the more established Western-oriented churches.”
The publisher of Valley Isle was a businessman named Rick Reed, who was elected to the State Senate in 1986. That year, Reed, who had worked for a local prosecutor, was accused of leaking confidential state documents in order to discredit a Democratic politician; Reed’s ex-wife told the Advertiser that Butler had been part of the plot. (Both Reed and Butler denied it.) In 1992, Reed challenged Daniel Inouye, the old lion of Hawaiian politics, for his seat in the U.S. Senate, and the campaign brought more scrutiny to Reed’s relationship with Butler. Reed had previously referred to Butler as his “spiritual adviser,” but he told the Advertiser that there was “no evidence I have ever been a member of a Hare Krishna organization, or of Independents for Godly Government.” Reed lost the election, but he successfully fended off the Federal Election Commission, which investigated a Christmas video he had filmed in the Philippines and distributed in Hawaii, allegedly in an attempt to beguile the state’s sizable Filipino-American population. The F.E.C. ultimately ruled that the video was a legitimate (if dubious) business venture, and that the ninety-thousand-dollar loan Reed had received to produce it was not, therefore, an unlawful campaign donation.
In Gabbard, Butler’s movement finally seems to have produced a widely appealing politician, with a national profile. And there are links between Gabbard’s political operation and those of I.G.G., going all the way back to Bill Penaroza: in 2015, Gabbard hired Penaroza’s son, Kainoa Penaroza, to be her chief of staff, even though he had virtually no political experience. Gabbard, like her predecessors, firmly rejects the idea that she is part of a political initiative tied to her spiritual leader. “It’s a whole lot of conjecture,” she told me. She offered a hypothetical comparison. “Senator Brian Schatz, from Hawaii—he’s Jewish,” she said. “His chief of staff is Jewish. So there must be some great plan of the Jewish community in Hawaii to advance this Jewish leader and those around him?”
The difference is that the world of Butler’s disciples is relatively small and dizzyingly interlinked. Reed’s video of Christmas in the Philippines begins with a visit to Toby Tamayo, a longtime employee of the group who helped run a Butler-affiliated school there. Tamayo happens to be the uncle of Gabbard’s first husband, Eddie Tamayo, whom she married in 2002 and divorced four years later—partly, she says, because of the stress of serving overseas. Both of Gabbard’s parents worked in Rick Reed’s office. And the loan Reed received to make that Christmas video came from Richard Bellord, whose son, Rupa Bellord, recently married Gabbard’s sister and roommate, Vrindavan. Richard Bellord himself used to be married to Wai Lana, the yoga instructor who is now Butler’s wife; Abraham Williams, Gabbard’s husband, has helped film her videos. (Williams’s mother, Anya Anthony, is Gabbard’s office manager in Washington; she sits behind the “aloha spirit” sign.) Wai Lana’s company is run by a longtime Butler associate named Sunil Khemaney, who is also a business associate of Joseph Bismark’s. Khemaney helps run Gabbard’s outreach to the Indian-American community; he accompanied her on her 2014 trip to India. One person familiar with Gabbard’s operation describes an office divided between disciples and non-disciples: “Everyone wondered who was in the group and who wasn’t. It was taboo—people in the group didn’t talk about it, so no one knew for sure.”
Hekate
(100,133 posts)ificandream
(11,837 posts)Last edited Fri Aug 16, 2024, 11:39 PM - Edit history (1)
karin_sj
(1,370 posts)... slap that smug, disgusting smirk off Tulsi's face. I felt my blood pressure rise just watching her. Kamala really put her in her place though.
Butterflylady
(4,584 posts)Thinks that she will help donald win the debate. Well here's what I think:
Cheezoholic
(3,719 posts)
lastlib
(28,265 posts)typo, probly....
BumRushDaShow
(169,757 posts)"muddles" when it comes to "facts". 
lastlib
(28,265 posts)
TygrBright
(21,362 posts)Prairie Gates
(8,157 posts)
What a clown show.
70sEraVet
(5,482 posts)BrianTheEVGuy
(697 posts)I want this to happen, just to watch Walz rip her smug lunatic derrière into shreds.
WinstonSmith4740
(3,436 posts)"As honored as I am to be chosen, I decided that this job would take me away from my family, so I am stepping aside" in 3-2-...
Dem2theMax
(11,005 posts)
I wish I had seen this a few hours AFTER eating something, instead of mere minutes. I'm laughing so hard, I'm afraid I'm going to lose what's in my stomach!
The delusion that is the GOP, and everyone in it.
NBachers
(19,438 posts)LastLiberal in PalmSprings
(13,291 posts)aircraft than industrial designers, drawing the largest crowds ever gathered in the history of the world, and everything else that has ever been done. The rest of us should settle for being second place to the magnificent Donald J. Trump.
I just wish someone would have asked him what "warp speed" meant, and how you calculate it.
birdographer
(2,937 posts)Good grief. Thanks to the totally inept moderators, he ignored most of the questions, merely going back to ramble lie more about an earlier question. Hopefully when he tries this again in September a moderator will have the guts to say "We've answered that question here, we are moving on to the next question, which is..." and shut him up about what was asked two questions ago.
Butterflylady
(4,584 posts)
Javaman
(65,711 posts)
betsuni
(29,078 posts)and stuff, that's what I did and a lot of stupid people totally believed me!
LisaM
(29,634 posts)She'll drag him down just like she has everyone else. If she were in the movies, her name would be Box Office Poison.
Attilatheblond
(8,878 posts)and 'isms' but with the charm of a stopped up sink. Trump's gotta keep those kinds of white guys on his side, he will need them again come January.
Old Crank
(7,078 posts)On DonOdds slobbering lie fest?
onetexan
(13,913 posts) bucolic_frolic
(55,140 posts)But Trump will be shriveled by the strength, power, logic, principles that VP Harris pummels him with.
TommieMommy
(2,902 posts)
Oopsie Daisy
(6,670 posts)* speaking of which. Where did they go?
betsuni
(29,078 posts) Saying something makes it true! twodogsbarking
(18,785 posts)Iggo
(49,927 posts)LaMouffette
(2,640 posts)Or get his marching orders from Putin through her.
Figarosmom
(11,989 posts)Them keep thinking that. We willl sure see "he's the best debater in all history" what a delusional piece of crap he is. Best in all history, yeah right.
azureblue
(2,728 posts)So far, no moderator has yanked Trump back in when he refuses to answer questions, over talks, mugs, sandbags, and lies. I have no doubt Trump is trying to work the mods ahead of time, like refusing to allow fact checking, and making sure his mike won't be cut if he runs over his allotted response time. I just hope Harris' team is working to make sure the mods will do their job, and keep Trump to the rules..
AdamGG
(1,882 posts)That the moderators wouldn't fact check or correct statements made. Trump also wanted a live audience so he could have people cheering for him, but it was agreed not to have that.
It will be up to Kamala to call bullshit on what Trump says and she will be good at that, but he spews out so much of it that there isn't time to correct all of it.
BrianTheEVGuy
(697 posts)His mindset is basically:
“How do I win back the moderate and independent voters I’m losing to Harris? Oh I know, I’ll take advice from a cult member, homophobic extremist, likely foreign agent, crazed conspiracy theorist and fringe candidate who couldn’t crack 1% in presidential polling. That should attract the normies back to me.”
Let’s hope the conversation was very long and that he is planning to take her advice, especially on policy. 😁
Iggo
(49,927 posts)In 2019, Harris was trying to win a Democratic primary against mostly good candidates.
In 2024, Harris is trying to win a General Election for President Of The United States against a criminal clown. She ain’t trying, and there’s no need, to “out-liberal” anyone.
Totally. Different. Things.
barbtries
(31,308 posts)but they're a pretty even match in the integrity department.
i am so tired of cynical greedy people fucking up the world for the rest of us.
Attilatheblond
(8,878 posts)Even Trump could figure out that wasn't gonna work for those who would like to see a woman in power now.
Hekate
(100,133 posts)Fancy dept store, Trump in a suit, Rudy all glammed up spritzing some expensive perfume on himself, then another photo with Trump leaning down to kiss Rudy’s upper bosom.
As always, whatever the party was, Donald was there for the cameras and the notoriety.
As for that photo of JD, I don’t know what that was about, but his fashion sense was nonexistent and he looked like a clown.
BumRushDaShow
(169,757 posts)or some other role, in the past - https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/06/19/tulsi-gabbard-trump-vp-secretary-policy/73968445007/
buzzycrumbhunger
(1,931 posts)… so why do they think he’ll listen to her? Since he gave up rallies in favour of his rambling, nonsensical “news” conferences where there’s no sparse crowd to point out, I think they’re all tearing their hair out. 
And yeah, she’s really become bizarre over time. I remember my daughter saw her speak in NC when she might’ve been a contender, and her impression was that this was a woman who would go nowhere.
11 Bravo
(24,310 posts)The Trump campaign yakkers make Baghdad Bob look like an amateur.
intheflow
(30,179 posts)“Harris is kinda southeast Asian, and so is Gabbard. Plus they both have vaginas and boobs. Therefore, the only person who can prepare me for the debate is Tulsi. It’ll be like preparing with Kamala herself!”
karin_sj
(1,370 posts)And this is just more proof of that. Maybe Trump will make her his VP after he boots out the couch molester.
Zambero
(9,990 posts)Not quite a resounding NO against the "witch hunt"!
TheCowsCameHome
(40,270 posts)I love a good joke.
Karoline Leavitt is a big joke as well.
lapucelle
(21,061 posts)
Lulu KC
(8,893 posts)I saw that she is coming to a Republican fundraiser near where I live to be the keynote speaker. These people have no taste.