By Donald H. Harrison
SAN DIEGO – Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Florida) says her former Democratic colleague, now turned Republican, former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, is unfit to serve as President-elect Trump’s National Director of Intelligence because she “is likely a Russian asset.”
In an interview on Friday with MSNBC, Wasserman Schultz stated “Tulsi Gabbard is someone who has met with war criminals, violated the Department of State’s guidance and secretly, clandestinely went to Syria and met with Assad, who gassed and attacked his own people with chemical weapons. She’s considered to be, essentially, by most assessments, a Russian asset.”
The two have been at loggerheads before. In 2015, while Wasserman Shultz was serving as chair of the Democratic National Committee, Gabbard served as vice chair. She publicly criticized Wasserman Schultz for scheduling just six presidential debates in that year’s primaries, compared to 26 in 2008. Gabbard also contended Wasserman Schultz was not a neutral chairperson but rather was a supporter of Hillary Clinton’s. Gabbard resigned as the DNC’s vice chair in 2016 and endorsed Bernie Sanders for President, later giving a nomination speech for the Vermont senator at the 2016 Democratic National Convention.
In January 2017, while Gabbard was early in her third term in the House of Representatives, she met secretly with Syrian President Bashar Al Assad. She disputed the charge that Assad had used chemical weapons against his own people. However, three months after her Syrian trip, on April 4, 2017, Assad deployed chemical weapons in an attack on rebel forces in the town of Khan Shaykhun. Then-President Trump ordered a retaliatory missile strike on April 7, 2017, on Syria’s Shayrat Airbase. Trump contrasted his prompt action with the inaction of his Democratic predecessor Barack Obama, who had said that the use of chemical weapons would cross a red line, but did not retaliate in 2013.
In 2017, Gabbard had explained her trip to Syria, which has a treaty of alliance with Russia as well as a Russian naval base in Tartus, as an effort to build peace in the Middle East and also to not “blindly follow this escalation of a counterproductive regime-change war.” She noted that U.S. intelligence had been wrong about Iraq stockpiling weapons of mass destruction, which was the pretext in 2003 for the American invasion of Iraq. She also said that Assad is “not the enemy of the United States.”
As an enlisted servicewoman and later an officer in Hawaii’s Army National Guard, Gabbard served in Iraq and Kuwait on separate deployments respectively in 2004 and 2008. She was first elected to Congress in 2012 and was serving her fourth term while mounting a Democratic presidential campaign in which she was defeated in the 2020 primaries by Joe Biden, whom she later endorsed.
In 2021 she was promoted to the rank of lieutenant colonel in the Hawaii Army National Guard and was posted to the Horn of Africa for a Special Operations Mission. In 2022, she left the Democratic party to become an Independent, and earlier this year she joined the Republican party. She helped to prepare Trump for his televised debate against Vice President Kamala Harris.
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Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) has proposed incorporating provisions of the House-passed Antisemitism Awareness Act (AAA) into the National Defense Authorization Act in an effort to fast-track the long-stalled legislation in the Senate. He has so advised House Speaker Mike Johnson and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, both of whom voted for AAA in the House.
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Congressman Josh Gottheimer (D-New Jersey) has announced he will run in next year’s election to succeed Governor Phil Murphy, a fellow Democrat, who will be termed-out. If elected he would become the fourth Jewish “Josh” to serve as governor, joining Josh Green of Hawaii, Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, and newly elected Josh Stein of North Carolina. Two other Jewish governors are J. (for Jay) B. Pritzker of Illinois and Gov-elect Matt Meyer of Delaware.
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Congressman Dean Phillips (D-Minnesota), who ran an unsuccessful primary challenge to President Joe Biden, now has offered himself as a possible appointee in President-elect Trump’s administration. Interviewed on NewsNation, Phillips commented: “Anyone should consider that. If we come to a point where no Democrat would want to serve in a Republican administration, we’re limiting ourselves. I’m not a big fan of the president [Trump] himself, but I understand the MAGA movement.”
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The Jewish Electorate Institute reports its polling indicates that 71 percent of Jewish voters in the nation cast their ballots for Vice President Kamala Harris, and 26 percent voted for President-elect Donald Trump, with the balance voting either for Third Party candidates or leaving blank their choice for President. The poll, contracted by the Institute to the Mellman Group, was answered by more than 1000 respondents, 87 percent of whom described themselves as pro-Israel. Among the denominations, 84 percent of Reform movement voters, 75 percent of Conservative movement voters, and 70 percent of non-denominational or unaffiliated Jews voted for Harris. On the other hand, 74 percent of Orthodox Jews voted for Trump. There was only a slight “gender gap” among Jews, with 72 percent of women and 70 percent of men voting for Harris.
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In a post-election message, Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-San Diego) commented: “The truth is, there are a lot of people who voted for Donald Trump who will be hurt by his administration and his policies. If and when that time comes, there can be no ‘I told you so.’ There will be no gloating. That’s not who we are. The Democratic Party will have plenty of work to do in the coming months and years – and part of that must be doing everything we can to welcome back voters who are looking for solutions. We need to show them we care and prove that we will fight for their families and to make their lives better. Win or lose, we care about people, and we don’t want to see anyone suffer no matter who they voted for.”
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A California election law written by Democratic Assemblyman Marc Berman of Menlo Park has Elon Musk, owner of the social media platform X, in a dither. AB 2655 prohibits social media companies from “distributing with actual malice materially deceptive audio or visual media of the candidate with the intent to injure the candidate’s reputation … unless the media includes a disclosure stating that the media has been manipulated, subject to specified exemptions.” Musk’s attorneys argue in a lawsuit that ‘this system will inevitably result in the censorship of wide swaths of valuable political speech and commentary.”
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San Diego County Supervisor Terra Lawson-Remer, who won a second term on Nov. 5, declared: “With Donald Trump’s return to power, we are all bracing for the chaos his administration may bring. But know this: here in San Diego County, we are standing strong for justice and decency. We are ready to fight back. For those who need a safe haven for reproductive rights, we are here. For those who believe our diversity makes America stronger, we are here. And for those who believe in democracy and rule of law, we are here.”
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Even before President-elect nominated former Republican Congressman Lee Zeldin of New York as the next administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, the League of Conservation Voters (LCV) rued what might happen to the environment. LCV anticipates such anti-environmental measures from the Trump administration as “eliminating or privatizing the National Weather Service, massively expanding oil and gas drilling and emissions, gutting environmental agencies like the EPA, and giving polluters free rein to poison our air and water.”
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The Republican Jewish Coalition, extolling President-elect Trump’s selection of Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-New York) as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations , predicted she will “swiftly bring much needed reforms at the United Nations, defend the US and our ally Israel in the international arena, and be a strong voice against dictatorships and terrorists. As she proved in the House of Representatives, there is no one better to combat the rot of antisemitism, hold Iran accountable, and help restore American leadership on the world stage with peace through strength than Elisse Stefanik.”
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Christians United for Israel’s founder and chairman Pastor John Hagee said of former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee’s nomination as U.S. Ambassador to Israel: ““Israel will find in Governor Huckabee a leader prepared to listen, learn, and offer an outstretched hand in friendship. I look forward to his arrival in the eternal and undivided capital of Israel. … There is no better person to represent the American people in Jerusalem at this time. Governor Mike Huckabee believes in Israel’s right to self-determination and defense, not because it is politically convenient to do so but because these are immutable tenets of his core beliefs.”
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Donald H. Harrison is publisher and editor of San Diego Jewish World.