Tulsi Gabbard Had No Clue What Trump Was Doing in Venezuela
Did President Donald Trump actually cut Tulsi Gabbard out of the White House’s preparations to invade Venezuela?
Starting last summer, the White House began excluding Trump’s director of national intelligence from the government’s plans to kidnap Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday. Vice President JD Vance denied the reporting later that day.
A few White House aides even joked that Gabbard’s title as “DNI” stood for “Do Not Invite,” three people told Bloomberg. A White House spokesperson denied that the director was actually a punchline.
In the days preceding the large-scale operation, Gabbard posted from Hawaii, hundreds of miles away from Trump’s makeshift situation room at his Mar-a-Lago estate. “My heart is filled with gratitude, aloha and peace,” she wrote in a post on X, as the president prepared to invade.
Gabbard was reportedly kept in the dark because in the past, she had repeatedly expressed her strong disapproval of American intervention—specifically in Venezuela.
In January 2019, she wrote on X that the United States “needs to stay out of Venezuela.” A few weeks later, she wrote that the U.S. “needs to stop using our military for regime change & stop intervening in Venezuela’s military.”
She voiced her criticism again a few months after that. “Throughout history, every time the US topples a foreign country’s dictator/government, the outcome has been disastrous,” she wrote. “Civil war/military intervention in Venezuela will wreak death & destruction to Venezuelan people, and increase tensions that threaten our national security.”
Days after the Venezuela operation, Gabbard finally posted a brief statement on X.
“President Trump promised the American people he would secure our borders, confront narcoterrorism, dangerous drug cartels, and drug traffickers,” she wrote. “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.”
The Trump administration is sticking with ICE.
Vice President JD Vance on Thursday vehemently defended a federal agent’s decision to kill Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis, shifting blame to practically every entity beyond the ICE agent that held the gun—including Good herself.
During a hostile White House press conference, Vance claimed that Good had been “brainwashed” by left-wing politics, and argued that the 37-year-old mother was to blame for her own death.
“There’s a part of me that feels very, very sad for this woman. Not just because she lost her life but because I think that she is a victim of left-wing ideology,” Vance said.
“What young mother shows up and decides they are going to throw their car in front of ICE officers that are enforcing legitimate law? You have to be brainwashed to get to that point to where you’re willing—not just to protest, that’s fine—but throw your vehicle in front of law enforcement officers,” he continued, adding that he believed “to get to that point you have to be radicalized in a very, very sad way.”
Yet administration officials—and fans of the president’s violent immigration agenda—seem to be the only ones who interpreted video footage of the attack that way.
Video evidence of the incident suggested Good was letting other vehicles pass her on the road before she pulled out, in an attempt to comply with ICE’s orders, but was momentarily halted when the masked agents approached her window.
As she began to move her vehicle away from the agents, an officer standing in front of the red Honda Pilot sidestepped the car, moving toward her open driver-side window before he pulled the trigger multiple times, video recording illustrates.
The officer then extended his arm and chased after the vehicle, signaling that he was not injured. Her SUV then accelerated down the road, seemingly uncontrolled, before smashing into several parked vehicles.
The Minnesota Star-Tribune reported Thursday that the attacking ICE agent is named Jonathan Ross.
Agents then prevented her petrified neighbors from assisting her, one of whom identified themselves as a physician.
Eyewitnesses to the shooting told MPR News that Good posed “no threat” to the agents.
But Vance insisted on excoriating reporters who verbally described the attack the way it was depicted.
“You still believe that she deliberately tried to ram him despite this video?” prompted one incredulous reporter.
“We’re not going to get the chance to ask this woman what was going on,” Vance replied. “But she accelerated in a way where she rammed into the guy.
“Everybody that is repeating the lie that this is some innocent woman who was out for a drive in Minneapolis, when a law enforcement officer shot at her, you should be ashamed of yourselves,” he added.
JD Vance had a complete meltdown Thursday over the media’s coverage of an ICE shooting in Minneapolis that left a U.S. citizen dead.
At a White........© New Republic

Toi Staff
Sabine Sterk
Gideon Levy
Mark Travers Ph.d
Waka Ikeda
Tarik Cyril Amar
Grant Arthur Gochin