\n<\/p>\n
You could almost detect the clenched teeth and pursed lips in Tulsi Gabbard\u2019s social-media post. \u201cPresident Trump promised the American people he would secure our borders, confront narcoterrorism, dangerous drug cartels, and drug traffickers,\u201d the director of national intelligence wrote on X yesterday afternoon<\/a>, days after the capture of Venezuelan dictator Nicol\u00e1s Maduro. \u201cKudos to our servicemen and women and intelligence operators for their flawless execution of President Trump\u2019s order to deliver on his promise thru Operation Absolute Resolve.\u201d<\/p>\n It was Gabbard\u2019s first and only comment on the raid<\/a>. She has not always been so reticent about American pressure on Maduro. For many years, while serving as a Democratic member of the U.S. House, Gabbard was a leader of the clique that fiercely opposed American intervention abroad, casting it as part of a dark imperial history.<\/p>\n \u201cThe United States needs to stay out of Venezuela,\u201d she posted in January 2019<\/a>. \u201cLet the Venezuelan people determine their future. We don\u2019t want other countries to choose our leaders\u2014so we have to stop trying to choose theirs.\u201d A few weeks later<\/a>: \u201cThe US needs to stop using our military for regime change & stop intervening in Venezuela\u2019s military.\u201d Still later that spring<\/a>: \u201cThroughout history, every time the US topples a foreign country\u2019s dictator\/government, the outcome has been disastrous. Civil war\/military intervention in Venezuela will wreak death & destruction to Venezuelan people, and increase tensions that threaten our national security.\u201d She was even clear on why the U.S. kept rattling its saber at Caracas. \u201cIt\u2019s about the oil \u2026 again,\u201d she wrote<\/a>. (Justin Amash<\/a>, another former representative and a critic of U.S. intervention, recently rounded up Gabbard\u2019s past comments.)<\/p>\n Now Gabbard is a member of the administration, and the president whom she serves, Donald Trump, is saying openly that the whole thing is mostly about the oil<\/a>. (Energy Secretary Chris Wright said today that the U.S. would control the Venezuelan oil industry \u201cindefinitely<\/a>.\u201d) She\u2019s gone from critic of imperialism to agent of it\u2014and if she objects, she hasn\u2019t done so publicly.<\/p>\n Gabbard is not alone as a noninterventionist suddenly cast into a tricky position. Steve Bannon, the president\u2019s ex-consigliere, has also opposed U.S. military actions abroad. Bannon has neither the inclination nor, with a daily online broadcast, the ability to stay as quiet as Gabbard. Over the weekend, he praised the effectiveness of the military operation but questioned what comes next and whether Trump has planned for it: \u201cSo is this part of overall Hemispheric Defense, and we\u2019re going to clean up this mess in Latin America? Or is this just the neocons talking him into it?\u201d (This position puts Bannon in line with many mainstream Democrats.)<\/p>\n No silence has been so conspicuous as that of Vice President J. D. Vance. One of the few beliefs that he has not been quick to jettison<\/a> for political advancement is his opposition to American military interventions, which he connects to his experience serving in Iraq. This spring, in a group chat to which Trump officials accidentally invited Atlantic <\/i>editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg<\/a>, Vance grumbled to colleagues about strikes intended to preserve navigation in the Red Sea. \u201cI just hate bailing Europe out again,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n In recent days, though, Vance has been not only silent but absent<\/a>. He was not present Friday night when the administration set up an impromptu war room<\/a> at Mar-a-Lago, and he was also not part of the press conference the next day where Trump celebrated the mission and talked about taking over the Venezuelan oil industry. Instead, the front man for this operation has been Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who was a foreign-policy hawk before remaking himself as a Trumpist; as it turns out, that wasn\u2019t such a transformation after all. Rubio\u2019s ascendance is notable because Vance and Rubio are widely understood as rivals for Trump\u2019s mantle. (\u201cI\u2019ll give you $100 for every person you make look really shitty compared to me,\u201d Vance told a Vanity Fair <\/i>photographer<\/a> last year. \u201cAnd $1,000 if it\u2019s Marco.\u201d)<\/p>\n What all of these figures understand is the importance of staying on Trump\u2019s good side. Bannon was exiled from the first Trump White House; he has since mastered the art of diverging just enough from the president that he sometimes takes flak but never gets banished from the fold entirely. Gabbard already saw the dangers of getting crosswise with the president<\/a> when she implicitly warned against the bombing of Iran this past summer, before quickly falling back in line. One more break might get her sacked.<\/p>\n No one has as much to lose as Vance, though. He is clearly the front-runner to succeed Trump and is desperate to lead the MAGA movement once Trump leaves office, but yesterday\u2019s January 6 anniversary is a reminder of how viciously Trump can turn on a vice president who doesn\u2019t support him in all things\u2014he even watched indifferently while a mob threatened to hang Mike Pence. Vance may not like what\u2019s going on in Venezuela, though unless he says so, no one knows. Until then, his willingness to keep his mouth shut speaks loudly. For Vance<\/a>, deeply held principles are fine, but staying in power is even more alluring.<\/p>\n Related:<\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>\n You could almost detect the clenched teeth and pursed lips in Tulsi Gabbard\u2019s social-media post. \u201cPresident Trump promised the American people he would secure our borders, confront narcoterrorism, dangerous drug cartels, and drug traffickers,\u201d the director of national intelligence wrote on X yesterday afternoon, days after the capture of Venezuelan dictator Nicol\u00e1s Maduro. \u201cKudos to … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":16244,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Has-Anyone-Checked-on-J-D-Vance-and-Tulsi-Gabbard.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16243"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16243\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16245,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16243\/revisions\/16245"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/16244"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n
Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"