Tulsi Gabbard, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for Director of National Intelligence, would, if confirmed by the U.S. Senate, oversee the entire U.S. Intelligence Community, encompassing all 18 agencies. Like many of Trump’s nominees, Gabbard, a controversial former Democratic Congresswoman and failed presidential candidate turned ultra-MAGA Republican who, as Mother Jones reports, has numerous political action committees (PACs).

“It’s uncommon for a politician to have three or four separate PACs, though they can be used for different purposes,” political scientist and campaign finance expert Sarah Bryner told Mother Jones. “The most common number is one. Generally the more you have is because of obfuscation. It confuses people.”

Mother Jones’s D.C. Bureau Chief David Corn, writes: “If Gabbard reaches a Senate confirmation hearing, there will be much for the senators to grill her on, especially her sympathetic views regarding Putin and Russia and her support for Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, as well as her efforts to help Edward Snowden and Julian Assange, who each exposed top-secret information that caused damage for the intelligence community.”

“A key question will be whether someone as excessively partisan as Gabbard can be a fair-minded and even-handed overseer of the intelligence agencies, the intelligence they produce, and the covert actions they mount. Senate Intelligence Committee investigators should be sure to examine the network of organizations she has built and the flow of money in and out of her nonprofit. There are few jobs in the federal government as important as managing the sprawling US intelligence community. With no direct intelligence experience, Gabbard deserves scrutiny of all matters that can shed light on her fitness for this post,” Corn warns.

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Former Trump National Security Adviser John Bolton called Gabbard “the worst cabinet-level appointment in history,” and told CNN (video below) it is “an absolute necessity” Gabbard and all of Trump’s nominees have a full FBI background check.

According to Mother Jones, Gabbard’s PACs include Defend Freedom, Inc., which is “is one of a network of organizations Gabbard has assembled in recent years.”

Gabbard also has a Super PAC called For Love of Country, Inc., which “described itself as ‘Tulsi’s vehicle for messaging in the 2024 election, including a national ad campaign to communicate with middle-of-the-road voters, disenfranchised Democrats, and undecided Independents.’ It claimed, ‘For Love of Country PAC will use traditional and disruptive methods to blend the tried-and-true approach with innovation to reach otherwise unlikely voting demographics.'”

“It looks as if this PAC funded by pro-Trump Republican money-bags mostly existed to cover the costs of Gabbard’s political team,” Corn writes.

There is another PAC, Our Freedom, Our Future, and still another, Team Tulsi, along with a nonprofit, We Must Protect.

“Tens of thousands of people,” Mother Jones reports, contributed to Gabbard’s Defend Freedom PAC. “Through mid-October it raised $1.9 million, including a $16,552 transfer from another Gabbard PAC called Team Tulsi.”

But, out of “all the money it pulled in, Defend Freedom, Inc. devoted only $20,000 to contributions for a small number of candidates, all far-right MAGA-ish Republicans: US Senate candidates Kari Lake and Tim Sheehy, and US House contenders Joe Kent, Brian Jack, and Mayra Flores. (Before running for a congressional seat in 2022, Flores published social media posts promoting QAnon.) Where did all the money go?”

“Gabbard’s outfit spent $1.3 million on operating expenses—at least $1 million on fundraising and direct mail, according to its filings with the Federal Election Commission. Like many PACs, it acted mainly as a money-churning machine that generated donations that mostly profited vendors and consultants.”

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Corn also reports that Gabbard’s For Love of Country PAC “banked hefty checks from several big-money Republican funders. The biggest amount came from a donor named David Flory, who sent Gabbard’s PAC a whopping $100,000. On the PAC’s FEC filing, it neglected to note—as it is compelled to do—Flory’s occupation and employer.

Corn details how he tried to track down more information about the donation and the donor.

“Asked about the $100,000 contribution to Gabbard’s PAC and the address tied to it, [Flory] said, ‘Doesn’t sound familiar,’ and he tried to end the conversation. Pressed as to whether he had made a donation to Gabbard, he said, ‘I’m not interested in talking to you about it.’ Sounding irritated, he addressed his wife, ‘Julie, don’t take these calls. Just hang up on them.’ He then left the call.”

On social media, Corn adds: “An investigation of Tulsi Gabbard’s PACs shows much of the funds raised have gone to fundraising & to pay her advisers, not the stated mission of the PACs. Plus, she won’t reveal the donors to a charity she runs. All this needs vetting.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

It is an absolute necessity that Tulsi Gabbard & other top-level appointees have a full FBI background investigation. This isn’t discriminatory against Tulsi Gabbard; everyone should have a full background check, especially the nominee for Director of National Intelligence. pic.twitter.com/qS4Opg9amQ

— John Bolton (@AmbJohnBolton) November 25, 2024

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Image via Shutterstock 

Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for U.S. Secretary of Defense, has expressed opposition to the United Nations as a “fully globalist” entity and attacked NATO as “a relic” that should be “scrapped and remade in order for freedom to be truly defended.” He has also advocated for the United States to ignore the Geneva Conventions, which govern humanitarian treatment in war. He has suggested that America’s military should tell Al Qaeda if they do not surrender, “we will rip your arms off and feed them to hogs,” while calling for a new “American crusade,” according to The Guardian.

“Our present moment is much like the 11th century,” Hegseth, a weekend co-host on Fox News’ “Fox & Friends,” wrote in his book, “American Crusade.”

The Guardian calls it “a striking passage” in which “he presents his support for Israel as a renewal of medieval crusades.”

“We don’t want to fight, but, like our fellow Christians a thousand years ago, we must. We need an American crusade,” Hegseth wrote. “We Christians – alongside our Jewish friends and their remarkable army in Israel – need to pick up the sword of unapologetic Americanism and defend ourselves.”

“For us as American crusaders, Israel embodies the soul of our American crusade – the ‘why’ to our ‘what’.”

RELATED: Hegseth Vetting Questioned Amid Sexual Misconduct Allegation

“Faith, family, freedom, and free enterprise; if you love those, learn to love the state of Israel. And then find an arena in which to fight for her,” he added.

Last week, news broke of Hegseth’s tattoos, one of which includes the words, “Deus vult.”

“Several experts have cited the use of ‘Deus vult’ by extremist groups,” according to The National Catholic Reporter. “The phrase — attributed to Pope Urban II ahead of the First Crusade in 1095, which sought to regain Christian control of the Holy Land from Muslim rule — has become an online hashtag, and has also appeared in anti-Muslim graffiti, with two Arkansas mosques defaced in 2016 with the text.”

Earlier this month The Bulwark noted that Hegseth “has made clear that he sees himself and Donald Trump—whom he has approvingly called a ‘Crusader in Chief’—as leaders in a holy war to reclaim America.”

They cite this passage from Hegseth’s 2020 book:

“Like crusaders and patriots past, Donald Trump’s red hat rebellion demonstrates that unapologetically going on offense is the only tenable strategy for the defense of our republic. Surrounded by the Left, with the odds stacked against us, only a crusade will do.”

The Guardian also reports that in his book Hegseth “asks bluntly: ‘Why do we fund the anti-American UN? Why is Islamist Turkey a member of Nato?'”

Hegseth “has attacked several key US alliances such as Nato, allied countries such as Turkey and international institutions such as the United Nations in two recent books, as well as saying US troops should not be bound by the Geneva conventions,” and “has tied US foreign policy almost entirely to the priority of Israel, a country of which he says: ‘If you love America, you should love Israel.'”

“Elsewhere,” The Guardian adds, “Hegseth appears to argue that the US military should ignore the Geneva conventions and any international laws governing the conduct of war, and instead ‘unleash them’ to become a ‘ruthless’, ‘uncompromising’ and ‘overwhelmingly lethal’ force geared to ‘winning our wars according to our own rules’.”

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In his 2024 book, “The War on Warriors,” Hegseth asks: “What if we treated the enemy the way they treated us?”

“Would that not be an incentive for the other side to reconsider their barbarism? Hey, Al Qaeda: if you surrender, we might spare your life. If you do not, we will rip your arms off and feed them to hogs.”

“We are just fighting with one hand behind our back – and the enemy knows it,” Hegseth complains. “If our warriors are forced to follow rules arbitrarily and asked to sacrifice more lives so that international tribunals feel better about themselves, aren’t we just better off winning our wars according to our own rules?!”

“Who cares what other countries think?” he concludes.

The Guardian also points to Hegseth’s successful efforts to have Donald Trump, during his first term, “pardon US soldiers charged or convicted of war crimes.”

Attorney Adam Cohen, Vice Chair of Lawyers for Good Government, pointing to The Guardian’s report writes: “The man Trump picked to be SecDef Said ‘The military and police..will be forced to make a choice’ Because ‘there will be some form of civil war’ So MAGA should start ‘an AMERICAN CRUSADE’ To ‘mock, humiliate, intimidate, and crush our leftist opponents’ HE MUST NOT BE CONFIRMED”

Cohen was pointing to another article at The Guardian on Hegseth, from Friday, that reads in part:

“In one of his five published books he wrote that in the event of a Democratic election victory in the US there would be a ‘national divorce’ in which ‘The military and police … will be forced to make a choice’ and ‘Yes, there will be some form of civil war.'”

“Hegseth’s 2020 book exhorts conservatives to undertake ‘an AMERICAN CRUSADE’, to ‘mock, humiliate, intimidate, and crush our leftist opponents’, to ‘attack first’ in response to a left he identifies with ‘sedition’, and he writes that the book ‘lays out the strategy we must employ in order to defeat America’s internal enemies’.”

Fred Wellman, an Army veteran of 22 years who served four combat tours, is now a political consultant and the host of “On Democracy.” Responding to Cohen’s post, he writes: “Pete Hegseth must step aside.”

READ MORE: ‘One of the Smallest Margins Since the 19th Century’: NYT Crushes Trump’s ‘Landslide’ Claim

Image by Gage Skidmore via Flickr and a CC license

Donald Trump, his team, his allies, and his supporters in the right-wing media have been calling his presidential win “historic,” and a “landslide,” while using those provably false claims to declare a mandate. The voting from the election earlier this month is still not complete but Trump’s slim margin of victory is likely to shrink even further.

As The New York Times reports, the results prove Trump’s election claims are false.

Calling it, “The ‘Landslide’ That Wasn’t,” The Times’ Peter Baker reports the “latest vote count shows that Donald J. Trump won the popular vote by one of the smallest margins since the 19th century. But Mr. Trump claims a ‘powerful mandate.'”

Trump claimed falsely on election night, “America has given us an unprecedented and powerful mandate.”

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But Trump’s “margin over Vice President Kamala Harris was about 1.6 percentage points, the third smallest since 1888, and could ultimately end up around 1.5 points.”

Trump won less than 50% of the popular vote, meaning he did not win a majority. His popular vote margin, according to the Cook Political Report’s vote tracker, is now at a slim 1.62 percentage points, or just less than 2.5 million votes. Some states are still counting, including California which has over 350,000 ballots left to process.

“Asked about the president-elect’s characterization of his victory,” The Times adds, “Mr. Trump’s campaign sent a statement by Steven Cheung, his communications director, attacking The Times and repeating the sweeping claims. ‘President Trump won in dominating and historic fashion after the Democrats and the fake news media peddled outright lies and disinformation throughout the campaign,’ he said.”

What is an actual landslide?

“Real landslides have been unmistakable, including Lyndon B. Johnson’s in 1964 by 22.6 points, Richard M. Nixon’s in 1972 by 23.2 points and Ronald Reagan’s in 1984 by 18.2 points. In the 40 years since that Reagan victory, no president has won the popular vote by double digits,” The Times reports.

The Times also refers to Trump’s history of similar false claims.

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After winning the 2016 election, Trump “declared that he secured ‘the biggest Electoral College win since Ronald Reagan,’ which was true only if one did not count George H.W. Bush, [Bill] Clinton and Barack Obama, each of whom won larger totals in the Electoral College.”

“A year later, Mr. Trump claimed online to be ‘the most popular Republican in history of the Party,’ which again was true only if one did not count five other Republican presidents who were more popular since World War II, according to polls. And he regularly boasted at rallies that he won the women’s vote in 2016, which was true only if one did not count women who were not white.”

NPR’s Brian Mann commented, “Remarkable how readily Democrats ceded the narrative to Trump. One of his many talents is convincing people -including his political enemies – to view small things (a 1.6% win) as incredibly big things (a mandate to reshape American civic life).”

Daily Beast columnist Wajahat Ali, also responding to The Times’ report, writes, “Divisive president who never got 50% of popular vote now leads divided nation. He’s going to be a mess. Pure chaos.”

In his election night remarks (video below) Trump declared, “This was a movement like nobody’s ever seen before, and frankly, this was I believe this was the greatest political movement of all time. Thee’s never been anything like this in this country and maybe beyond.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

“We overcame obstacles that nobody thought possible.”

Former Pres. Trump addresses supporters at Election Night headquarters: “This was a movement like nobody’s ever seen before, and frankly, I believe this was the greatest political movement of all time.” pic.twitter.com/spWMwVgAci

— ABC News (@ABC) November 6, 2024

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