Trump Clown Car Filling Up With Unqualified Top Leadership
What mandate?
A former deputy White House press secretary for trump who grew disillusioned with the would-be dictator, said trump is “drunk on power right now because he feels like he was given a mandate by winning the popular vote.”
As a matter of fact there was not much of a mandate and when the smoke clears, trump may once again be shown to have lost the popular vote while winning the all-important electoral vote.
The N.Y. Times reported that nationally, trump collected just 50.1 percent of the vote, just 1.8 percentage points better than Vice President Kamala Harris. The Cook Report has calculated that when California finishes tallying votes, trump’s margin of popular vote victory will fall below 50 percent.
Since 1888, just two other presidents who won both the Electoral College and the popular vote had smaller margins of victory than trump. They include John F. Kennedy in 1960 and Richard M. Nixon in 1968. In 2016, trump won without gaining the popular vote and in 2000, George W. Bush also was elected by the electoral college and not the popular vote.
Trump increased his margin in the Electoral College, winning 312 votes this year and 306 in 2016. Nearly complete totals show trump won this year by a cumulative 237,000 votes in three states that. Had the small margin gone the other way, we would have our first woman president.
The bogus claims of an unprecedented mandate have led trump to propose the most outrageous individuals for the most powerful posts in the entire government.
One post is the powerful, Director of National Intelligence (DNI), who should be level headed and clear thinking. Trump’s DNI secretary nominee, former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, is an experienced surfer and devoted Hindu. She was a cult follower, a Democrat, then an independent and then a Republican trump backer who also stood up for Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and gas bombing, Syrian strongman Bashir al-Assad.
Gabbard has zero experience leading any organizations, let alone the leviathan national intelligence community.
But not to worry because Karoline Leavitt, the incoming press secretary, said “President Trump will continue to appoint highly qualified men and women who have the talent, experience, and necessary skill sets to make America great again.”
If it wasn’t so serious it would be LOL.
Steven Cheung, trump’s hatchet man and communications director, said, “President Trump is nominating high-caliber and extremely qualified candidates to serve in his administration.”
Two thousand years ago, the mad Roman emperor Caligula sought to make his horse, Incitatus, a consul and now, trump, a modern day Caligula, hopes to fill his cabinet with toadies that make Incitatus look bright and independent.
Incitatus was the favorite horse of Caligula, who ruled from 27 to 41 AD. According to legend, Caligula believed that his horse was as qualified as any of his consuls. He planned to name Incitatus and give the horse authority to invite dignitaries to dine with him in his stable of pure marble.
Incitatus has returned in the form of Gabbard and Pete Hegseth, the nominee for secretary of defense, a veteran who opposes women in the armed services, who wants to get rid of generals who he and trump see as disloyal and who settled a sexual intimidation lawsuit.
If Gabbard and Hegseth are confirmed by the Senate, they ought not to unpack their suitcases as during trump’s first disastrous four years, he changed DNI’s and defense secretaries more often than most people change their socks. Trump dumped eight DNIs and six defense secretaries who he deemed not willing to genuflect enough. The average tenure for a cabinet secretary in trump’s first term other than Treasury, Commerce and Housing and Urban Development was 1.8 years. For the key security agencies, Defense, Justice and Homeland Security, the average term was 10.5 months.
Like all trump appointees, the latest qualify because they are lickspittle for trump and they offer unquestioned, blind loyalty to their leader.
In some ways Gabbard is perfect for trump.
Gabbard has been involved with the Science of Identity Foundation, a group founded in Hawaii that some have labeled a cult. The foundation has been known to be anti-LGBTQ, anti-feminists and anti-Muslim.
In 2004, Gabbard bragged that she had worked for her father’s anti-gay organization, which mobilized to pass a measure against same-sex marriage in Hawaii and promoted conversion therapy, a discredited, harmful, and pseudoscientific practice that falsely purports to “cure” homosexuality. The same year, Gabbard opposed efforts to protect gay children from bullying and harassment in public schools in Hawaii.
“The problem we were led to believe exists in our schools — that there is rampant anti-gay harassment — simply does not exist,” Gabbard said.
She apologized to the LGBTQ community in 2012 and again in 2019 when she said, “In my past, I said and believed things that were wrong, and worse, they were very hurtful to people in the LGBTQ community and to their loved ones.”
The mysterious leader of the Science of Identity Foundation is Chris Butler, 76, also known as Jagad Guru Siddhaswarupananda Paramahamsa. Butler has been described in news articles as an “abusive, misogynistic, homophobic, germophobic, narcissistic nightmare.”
Gabbard was born in American Samoa and moved with her family to Hawaii in 1983. Her father, Mike, a Democratic Hawaii state senator, was the first to join the circle of disciples around Butler. He and his wife, Carol Gabbard, were listed in the early 1990s as teachers for the Science of Identity Foundation. Mike
Gabbard was a strong opponent of same-sex marriage and believed that spirituality was a weapon against sexually deviant practices.
Tulsi said she grew up largely among fellow Science for Identity Foundation disciples. As a girl, she spent two years in the Philippines at informal schools run by followers of Butler. In a 2015 video, Gabbard referred to Butler as her “guru dev,” or divine teacher. She has described her religious practices as “transcendental Hinduism.”
The Science of Identity Foundation website says it promotes yogic wisdom, “practical answers to the personal and social issues of today such as racism, sectarianism, hatred and conflict, fear of death, the causes of crime, how to have a peaceful, progressive society.”
Founded in the 1970s, the Science of Identity Foundation has been described as an alt-right branch of Hare Krishna, with thousands of followers. Butler broke off and formed his own group that was patterned on teachings of AC Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, a spiritual, philosophical, and religious teacher from India who spread the Hare Krishna mantra and the teachings of “Krishna consciousness” to the world and the Hare Krishna movement. The foundation’s followers come from Hawaii, Australia and Southeast Asia.
Butler’s followers practice vegetarianism and are not allowed to gamble, engage in any sexual contact outside marriage, or consume caffeine or intoxicants. Butler’s teachings included condemnation of homosexuality, hostility towards Islam, and skepticism of science. A story in the New Yorker reported that Butler taught that engaging in bisexual relations would lead to pedophilia and bestiality.
Butler’s estranged brother, Kurt, said the Science of Identity Foundation “gradually evolved into a full-fledge cut.”
Gabbard said she never heard Butler “say anything hateful, or say anything mean about anybody. 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.”
That was the opposite of how the cult was described in a column in Medium in 2017 by Lalita, a self-described cult survivor who left the cult in 1997, just before she turned 20. Lalita, who used only her first name, described a situation with frightening parallels with trump’s demands for total fealty.
Lalita wrote that Gabbard “grew up in the same group that I did. She was subjected to the same environment I was. What I am concerned about is the control I know Chris Butler has over her, the influence he has over her ability to make decisions, decisions that could become law and impact a whole lot of people.”
She wrote that Butler “held this larger than life presence in my childhood. Everything I did I had to think about how it benefitted him. He was my parents’ spiritual master and they looked to him for guidance on everything, from what to eat, to how to raise their children, and they did it all without question.”
Lalita wrote that Butler was “abusive, misogynistic, homophobic, germophobic, narcissistic.”
“And I know what kind of relationship he has with Tulsi,” wrote Lalita. “The entire group dynamic is centered around gaining favor of the leader, who uses this dynamic in a controlling and abusive manner.”
Lalita wrote that Butler demanded “the utmost dedication and loyalty from his followers and if he didn’t get it, the punishments were swift and severe.”
“I remember hearing stories of people who were told they weren’t allowed to eat because they didn’t make food to his liking, who were not allowed to sleep because there was a light making a buzzing noise in the house, and the follower didn’t have the foresight to fix the issue ahead of time,” Lalita wrote.
Disciples of the Science of Identity Foundation formed a political group in 1977 called “Independents for Godly Government.” In past years, members of the foundation have been elected to public office, including former state Sen. Rick Reed; former Maui County Council Member Wayne Nishiki; Tulsi Gabbard’s father, Mike,; and Carol Gabbard, who was elected to the Hawaii Board of Education. Party chair Bill Penaroza is the father of Gabbard’s longtime, former chief of staff, Kainoa Penaroza.
Gabbard is a reserve lieutenant colonel who previously served in the Hawaii Army National Guard, with assignments in medical, police, and civil-affairs-support positions. That is the extent of her administrative experience.
The DNI is in charge of the entire, sprawling intelligence community, overseeing the nation’s 18 intelligence agencies, from the mammoth FBI and NSA to the lesser known but vital National Reconnaissance Office. The DNI director is the principal advisor to the president, the National Security Council, and the Homeland Security Council on all intelligence matters. The DNI produces the President’s Daily Brief, a classified document including intelligence from all intelligence agencies, that advises the president on the state of the world.
Gabbard, 43, was the youngest woman elected to the Hawaii state legislature in in 2012, and was the first Samoan-American member of Congress, serving from 2013 to 2021. She served with the National Guard and was deployed to Iraq from 2004 to 2005.
In 2016, she supported Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., for president and did not back trump. She was the only Democrat to vote “present” when trump was impeached for the first time in 2019.
Gabbard opted not to run again for her House seat in 2020, instead joining the crowded Democratic presidential primary field, running as an “anti-interventionalist Democrat who support a populist economic agenda.” White power advocates David Duke and Richard B. Spencer, endorsed Gabbard but she disavowed both endorsements. Her candidacy failed to gain traction and she left the primary race.
Gabbard supported President Joe Biden in 2020 and left the Democratic Party in October 2022 and switched to independent.
As a Democratic candidate she was economically and socially progressive but that changed in 2024, when she switched to the Republican Party and became a solid trump supporter.
In a tweet, Gabbard accused the Democratic Party leadership of “cowardly wokeness, anti-white racism, (being) hostile to people of faith and spirituality, and dragging us closer to nuclear war.” She later endorsed and campaigned for trump, Don Bolduc, a retired general who lost a bid for congress from New Hampshire; Adam Laxalt, a losing candidate for U.S. Senate from Nevada; JD Vance, who won a Senate seat from Ohio and is now vice president; and Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, who lost after claiming the election was rigged in 2022 and again lost a bid for U.S. Senate from Arizona in 2024.
Gabbard has offered excuses for the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine and has claimed that Russia has “legitimate security concerns” regarding Ukraine. She also repeated a Russian conspiracy theory that Ukraine was developing U.S.-backed, biological weapons. The story was a fabrication by Russia.
In 2022, she said that Russia was provoked to invade Ukraine because NATO and the Biden administration refused to eliminate any chance for Ukraine to join NATO. In March 2022, she said media freedom in Russia is “not so different” from that in the United States.
“This war and suffering could have easily been avoided if [the Biden administration and Nato had simply acknowledged Russia’s legitimate security concerns regarding Ukraine’s becoming a member of Nato,” Gabbard tweeted on the day that Russia invaded Ukraine.
In 2015, Gabbard tried to introduce legislation to block CIA activities in Syria. The plan was blocked by congressional committees. She flew to Syria in 2017 and met twice with Syrian strongman, Bashar al-Assad. Gabbard was skeptical of universal intelligence and eyewitnesses accounts of victims of chemical weapons attacks ordered by Assad against civilians in Khan Shaykhun, which were followed by a military attack against Syria by the United States.
She strongly disagreed with trump’s order for missile attacks on Syria after the reports of Al-Assad’s use of chemical weapons.
In an April 7, 2017, tweet, Gabbard said, “Our Constitution is written so that the American people have the right to weigh in prior to acts of war. Congress must vote. Congressional approval is meant to help prevent aimless warfare without clear justification, goals and exit strategy.”
She voted against a House resolution condemning the dictator’s war crimes. More recently, she said Assad was “not the enemy of the United States.”
“From Iraq to Libya and now in Syria, the U.S. has waged wars of regime change, each resulting in unimaginable suffering, devastating loss of life, and the strengthening of groups like al-Qaeda and ISIS,” Gabbard said. “The U.S. must stop supporting terrorists who are destroying Syria and her people. The U.S. and other countries fueling this war must stop immediately. We must allow the Syrian people to try to recover from this terrible war.”
As a member of the Republican Party, Gabbard has accused the government of being complicit in a “military industrial complex” and has challenged the “foreign policy establishment in Washington.”