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On March 7, Gabbard is scheduled to be the keynote speaker at a Mar-a-Lago fundraising dinner for the 917 Society a nonprofit best known for distributing pocket-sized copies of the Constitution according to an invitation obtained by The Daily Beast. Tickets for the soiree range in cost from $1,250 to $25,000.
“I don’t think there’s a downside to her being there,” one Trumpworld operative told The Daily Beast. “We’d love to have Tulsi’s support.”
An endorsement from Gabbard, whose embrace of America First-style foreign policy and “anti-woke” politics have defined her rightward drift, could boost a Trump campaign that is trying to build a broad coalition for 2024.
But Gabbard might have her own next moves in mind, too. A friend of Gabbard’s and a former senior campaign staffer from her 2020 campaign, each of whom spoke on condition of anonymity, indicated the current Army Reserve officer is open to a military or veterans’ affairs-focused role in a future Trump administration.
While Gabbard hasn’t made a decision yet on whether to endorse Trump, the friend said, she’s not ruling it out. Both sources cited a recent Washington Post report detailing Gabbard’s discussions with Trump on foreign policy as a significant inflection point in her path toward potentially joining forces with the former president.
What’s more, Gabbard who began her career as a staunch opponent of LGBT rights has adopted MAGA-era positioning on social issues. In officially departing the Democratic Party in 2022, she described her former party as “an elitist cabal of warmongers driven by cowardly wokeness.”
Even if Gabbard is more likely to be in the mix for a Pentagon position or elsewhere in a future Trump administration, the source close to the Trump campaign didn’t rule her out as a dark horse for the VP pick.
