Will Gabbard’s pattern of embracing rightwing regimes extend to the Trump Administration?

State Representative Angus McKelvey (House District 10, West Maui, Māʻalaea, North Kīhei) thinks Congresswoman Gabbard should stand with fellow U.S. House Democrats against the appointment of Stephen Bannon as President-elect Trump’s chief strategist. In a letter written to Gabbard, the Maui lawmaker questions the Congresswoman’s lack of support in condemning the appointment.

“Your refusal to stand with other Democrats in solidarity infers that you not only support Trump’s appointment, but are shifting your political views to fall in line with the incoming administration,” said McKelvey in his November 17 letter.

Last week, Rhode Island Congressman David Cicilline circulated a letter condemning the appointment, which at least 169 House Democrats—the majority of them—have signed. Both of Hawaiʻi’s senators, Mazie Hirono and Brian Schatz, have also condemned the appointment.

Bannon, the former executive chairman of the rightwing website Breitbart News, is supported by a host of individuals and groups that can only be described as racist, xenophobic, chauvinistic, and decidedly supportive of fascism. The content published on the Breitbart website reflects these views and amplifies them to an audience of roughly some 20 million unique visitors. His appointment has been cheered by groups identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as white nationalist hate groups.

McKelvey says he is “perplexed as to why [Gabbard] would not join our congressional delegation, and other House Democrats, in opposing this disturbing appointment.”

In light of recent national reports that Congresswoman Gabbard has met with Trump, McKelvey says Hawaiʻi’s residents have a right to know if Gabbard stands in opposition to Bannon. 

“President-Elect Trump asked me to meet with him about our current policies regarding Syria, our fight against terrorist groups like al-Qaeda and ISIS, as well as other foreign policy challenges we face,” Gabbard said in a statement released today. “I felt it important to take the opportunity to meet with the President-elect now before the drumbeats of war that neocons have been beating drag us into an escalation of the war to overthrow the Syrian government—a war which has already cost hundreds of thousands of lives and forced millions of refugees to flee their homes in search of safety for themselves and their families.”

She added, “While the rules of political expediency would say I should have refused to meet with President-Elect Trump, I never have and never will play politics with American and Syrian lives.”

According to CNN, Gabbard is being considered for jobs at the Defense Department, State Department and the United Nations. Gabbard is not the first Democrat to meet with the president-elect. Trump met last week with corporate education reformer Michelle Rhee, the former schools chief of Washington, who is being considered for education secretary.

Gabbard was a supporter of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders’ bid for presidency, even stepping down from her post as a vice chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee when it became clear early on that the party establishment favored a Clinton candidacy. In California, where Sanders was approved as an official write-in candidate, Gabbard served as his hypothetical ticket-mate.

At the same time, however, she was reluctant to criticize then-candidate Trump’s Islamophobic rhetoric throughout the course of the divisive campaign. In contrast, Gabbard was a vocal critic of President Obama’s policy of refusing to directly associate ISIS and other terrorists with the Islamic faith (something Islamophobia watchdogs groups have lauded as a commitment to protecting the civil liberties and safety of Muslims in America).

As early as February 2015, Gabbard was appearing on Fox News programs to criticize President Obama for saying that “poverty, lack of access to jobs, lack of access to education” is contributing to radicalization. “They are not fueled by materialistic motivation, it’s actually a theological [issue], this radical Islamic ideology,” she said on Neil Cavuto’s “Your World.”

In perpetuating the idea that Islamic teaching and radicalism are one and the same, and criticizing President Obama for emphasizing that poverty and lack of access to opportunity has contributed to the rise of ISIS, Gabbard ignores the very material fact that people of Syria and Iraq have been through years of brutal civil war, have had their economies wrecked, and have endured massive displacement. In her words, the only reason for the rise of extremism in the region is because of Islamic theology itself.

Gabbard is also a supporter of India’s rightwing prime minister Narendra Modi of the Hindu nationalist Indian Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Since her election to Congress, Gabbard has tied herself closely to this party, which has a history of condoning hatred and violence against India’s Muslim minority. When Modi was governor of Gujarat, he presided over deadly riots that left multiple Muslim Indians slain and did little to prevent the violence.

Modi has slowly been changing his country’s stance on the Israel-Palestine situation as well. India has historically been supportive of the Palestinian position, but this has changed since Modi’s election to the position of prime minister. Gabbard is also staunch supporter of Israel’s security programs. Election donor records show that significant stateside donors to her campaigns have been supporters of this pro-Israel, anti-Muslim shift, and of the BJP philosophy, which disdains secularism and promotes religious sectarianism.

In November 2015, Gabbard, along with 46 other Congressional Democrats, voted for a Republican bill called the American Security Against Foreign Enemies Act. This bill would have required new screening requirements for Syrian and Iraqi refugees and would have made the already arduous process of applying for refugee status in the U.S. nearly impossible. It passed the House but was voted down in the Senate.

During the same month, Gabbard co-signed a letter to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas accusing him of inciting violence between Israelis and Palestinians. The letter reads in part:

…statements made by you, other political figures, cleric and official PA media have undoubtedly served to inflame the current situation. False claims about changing the status quo on the Temple Mount or accusations of Israel executing an attacker—when, in fact, he is being treated in an Israeli hospital—only encourage more acts of terror. The abhorrent and deadly rhetoric—including calls for knife attacks on Israelis—must stop. 

While the letter was correct to point out that the attacker in question was, in fact, alive, the “false claims” about the Temple Mount status quo turned out to be propaganda-parroting. Israel was at the time, and continues today, to question Jordanian authority of the Temple Mount and al-Aqsa Compound in East Jerusalem’s Old City. Hard-line rightwing settlers have made repeated attempts to pray on the Muslim-only Temple Mount, under escort of Israeli authorities. Israel annexed East Jerusalem, including the Old City, in 1967 in a move still not recognized by the international community.

And at the time of the letter, more than 85 Palestinians had been killed by Israeli troops or settlers—including unarmed protestors and bystanders. In the same period, 12 Israelis were killed.

When Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu showed up at the U.S. Congress uninvited to speak against the Iran deal before a largely GOP audience, some 30 Democratic members of Congress publicly boycotted the speech. Gabbard was not one of them. After Netanyahu’s speech, Gabbard released a statement echoing Netanyahu’s criticisms of the Iran deal: 

While there is hope that a negotiated solution to this problem remains within the realm of possibility, I am cynical. There are a variety of issues, including having already conceded allowing Iran to enrich uranium, Iran’s breakout capacity, and the continued lack of transparency and access for UN inspectors, that are of genuine concern. The objective must remain at the forefront: we must work together to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran,” Gabbard said, adding, “The United States’ relationship with Israel must rise above the political fray, as America continues to stand with Israel as her strongest ally.

Gabbard’s supporters have already taken to social media to insist that she is being pragmatic and that her meeting with President-Elect Trump was nothing more than a smart political play. But Rep. McKelvey’s question remains unanswered: for a Democrat whose supporters often point to her antiwar stance as evidence of her progressive nature, why is Gabbard cozying up to rightwing, racist regimes in India, Israel and here in the United States?