Who's Tulsi Gabbard, the renegade Democrat who just endorsed Trump?

The lineup of former Democrats endorsing Donald Trump for president is getting longer.

After getting nods of approval from Robert F Kennedy Jr and Elon Musk, prominent figures who self-identify as former Democrats, Trump recently received a ringing endorsement from Tulsi Gabbard.

The four-term congresswoman from the US state of Hawaii sought the presidential nomination from the platform of the Democratic Party in 2020.

Gabbard served in the House of Representative from 2013 to 2021. She quit the Democratic Party in October 2022 after accusing it of being under the "complete control" of an "elitist cabal of warmongers" who were driven by "cowardly wokeness."

She is the first Hindu to serve in Congress. But she has no ancestral connection with India. Her Indiana-born mother, a convert to Hinduism, gave Hindu names to all her children.

Here's a quick look at Gabbard's unique brand of politics that sets her apart from the mainstream politicians of both major political parties in the US.

Anti-war, but pro-Israel

Gabbard cemented her Zionist credentials after October 7 by pledging her unconditional support for Israel's war on Gaza. She claimed pro-Palestinian college protesters calling for a ceasefire of the Gaza war, which has killed more than 40,000 people since October, were "puppets" of a "radical" organisation.

She's also opposed to BDS—meaning boycott, divestment and sanctions—a movement that seeks to force companies, institutions and governments to change their pro-Israeli policies.

But as a combat veteran of the Iraq War, Gabbard wants the US to follow a "non-interventionist approach" in which Washington stays away from engaging in regime change wars.

She has called for engaging with Syria, Russia and North Korea—countries that are usually considered adversaries of the US. Her meeting with Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad in 2017 drew significant criticism, with detractors arguing that it legitimised a dictator accused of war crimes.

But she defended her action by emphasising that her position was "one of a soldier, where I've seen the cost of war first-hand."

Gabbard remains sceptical of military alliances and interventions under the banner of NATO—a view that aligns her with the isolationist approach often championed by Trump.

Anti-Muslim views

While Gabbard opposes regime change wars in the Muslim world, she hasn't shied away from airing her anti-Muslim views.

Gabbard said it was "mind-boggling" that former president Barack Obama didn't associate terrorist organisation Daesh "with the Muslim religion."

"[Obama] is completely missing the point of this radical… ideology that's fuelling these people," she said in 2015.

Her criticism of the president as a young Congress member from the Democratic Party's platform was so unusual that it evinced immediate backlash from Obama loyalists.

"I take serious issue when somebody who's done a little non-fighting time in Iraq, and is not a Middle East or Islamic scholar, claims to know better than our President and Secretary of State how to fathom the motivations of terrorists," wrote one pundit at the time.

Ties with Hindu nationalists

From the beginning of her career in politics decades ago, Gabbard received financial support from people associated with the Sangh Parivar—a network of religious, political, paramilitary, and student groups that subscribe to the Hindu supremacist, exclusionary ideology known as Hindutva.

An analysis of Gabbard's financial disclosures from 2011 to 2018 by news website Intercept revealed more than 100 members of US Sangh affiliates and their families donated "hundreds of thousands of dollars" to her campaigns.

No wonder then that she opposed in December 2013 House Resolution 417,which urged India to protect "the rights and freedoms of religious minorities." The resolution referred to incidents of mass violence against minority Muslims under India's Hindu nationalist premier Narendra Modi.

"There was a lot of misinformation that surrounded the event in 2002," Gabbard told the press, referring to riots in Modi's home state of Gujarat in which more than 1,000 Muslims lost their lives.

In Trump's camp, finally

Even though she was serving in the House of Representative on the Democratic Party's ticket at the time, Gabbard was briefly considered for a cabinet position in the Trump Administration of 2017-2021.

There are unconfirmed reports that she's once again being considered for a cabinet appointment in case Trump wins the November election. Trump has announced that Gabbard will be on his transition team if he wins the presidential election in November.

Her stock within the Trump camp went up recently as the former president reportedly engaged her as a "sparring partner" in mock debates to prepare for the much-anticipated face-off on national TV with his Democratic opponent Kamala Harris next month.

Trump picked Gabbard to help sharpen his attacks against the Democratic nominee because she ostensibly got under Harris's skin in a televised primary debate back in 2019.

Gabbard shamed Harris for putting "over 1,500 people in jail for marijuana violations" but laughing about it when someone asked her if she ever smoked marijuana herself.

The exchange "knocked Harris on her heels" as Gabbard was widely credited for eviscerating Harris in a "memorable onstage encounter."