Has Anyone Checked on J. D. Vance and Tulsi Gabbard?
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You could almost detect the clenched teeth and pursed lips in Tulsi Gabbard’s social-media post. “President Trump promised the American people he would secure our borders, confront narcoterrorism, dangerous drug cartels, and drug traffickers,” the director of national intelligence wrote on X yesterday afternoon, days after the capture of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro. “Kudos to our servicemen and women and intelligence operators for their flawless execution of President Trump’s order to deliver on his promise thru Operation Absolute Resolve.”
It was Gabbard’s first and only comment on the raid. 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.
“The United States needs to stay out of Venezuela,” she posted in January 2019. “Let the Venezuelan people determine their future. We don’t want other countries to choose our leaders—so we have to stop trying to choose theirs.” A few weeks later: “The US needs to stop using our military for regime change & stop intervening in Venezuela’s military.” Still later that spring: “Throughout history, every time the US topples a foreign country’s 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.” She was even clear on why the U.S. kept rattling its saber at Caracas. “It’s about the oil … again,” she wrote. (Justin Amash, another former representative and a critic of U.S. intervention, recently rounded up Gabbard’s past comments.)
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. (Energy Secretary Chris Wright said today that the U.S. would control the Venezuelan oil industry “indefinitely.”) She’s gone from critic of imperialism to agent of it—and if she objects, she hasn’t done so publicly.
Gabbard is not alone as a noninterventionist suddenly cast into a tricky position. Steve Bannon, the president’s 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: “So is this part of overall Hemispheric Defense, and we’re going to clean up this mess in Latin America? Or is this just the neocons talking him into it?” (This position puts Bannon in line with many mainstream Democrats.)
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 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 editor in chief Jeffrey Goldberg, Vance grumbled to colleagues about strikes intended to preserve navigation in the Red Sea. “I just hate bailing Europe out again,” he wrote.
In recent days, though, Vance has been not only silent but absent. He was not present Friday night when the administration set up an impromptu war room 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’t such a transformation after all. Rubio’s ascendance is notable because Vance and Rubio are widely understood as rivals for Trump’s mantle. (“I’ll give you $100 for every person you make look really shitty compared to me,” Vance told a Vanity Fair photographer last year. “And $1,000 if it’s Marco.”)
What all of these figures understand is the importance of staying on Trump’s 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 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.
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’s January 6 anniversary is a reminder of how viciously Trump can turn on a vice president who doesn’t support him in all things—he even watched indifferently while a mob threatened to hang Mike Pence. Vance may not like what’s 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, deeply held principles are fine, but staying in power is even more alluring.
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