Not surprisingly, former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard’s endorsement of Donald Trump attracted a lot of attention on social media ― and a lot of Vladimir Putin jokes.
Gabbard officially endorsed Trump’s presidential campaign at a National Guard event Monday in Detroit, saying the former president “understands the grave responsibility that a president and commander in chief bears for every single one of our lives.”
Gabbard previously represented Hawaii as a Democrat from 2013 to 2021 and briefly ran for the party’s presidential nomination in 2020 before leaving the party in 2022 to become an independent.
However, earlier this year, she made no secret about her desire to be Trump’s running mate, telling Donald Trump Jr. that she’d be “honored to actually be in a position to help President Trump execute his policies.”
This was a switch from 2019, when she called him “corrupt.”
But many people on X, formerly Twitter, seemed more interested in how Russian President Vladimir Putin might feel about the endorsement, since she has long been suspected of being a “Russian asset” by fellow party members, including former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
A 2022 trip to Russia didn’t help those allegations either.
Gabbard has also been criticized for refusing to condemn Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, saying that the accused war criminal is “not the enemy of the United States because Syria does not pose a direct threat to the United States.”
Gabbard’s endorsement brought out major snark from various people on X.
Others weren’t impressed for other reasons.