Former Democratic representative and Kamala Harris rival Tulsi Gabbard on Monday formally endorsed former president Donald Trump in the 2024 race for the White House.
"If you love our country, as I do, if you cherish peace and freedom as we do," Gabbard said during a National Guard Association meeting in Michigan, "I invite you to join me in doing all that we can to save our country and elect President Donald J. Trump and send him back to the White House to do the tough work of saving our country and serving the people."
Before denouncing the Democratic Party and becoming an Independent in 2022, Gabbard ran in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, outlasting Harris by four months and ripping her during an MSNBC debate for her record as a California prosecutor.
"She put over 1,500 people in jail for marijuana violations and then laughed about it when she was asked if she ever smoked marijuana," Gabbard said of Harris during the 2019 debate. "She kept people in prison beyond their sentences to use them as cheap labor … she fought to keep the cash bail system in place that impacts poor people in the worst kind of way."
Less than two weeks after the debate, Harris was forced to suspend her campaign. Gabbard dropped her campaign in March 2020 and endorsed Joe Biden.
Gabbard, however, left the Democratic Party in 2022, saying at the time it's "now under the complete control of an elitist cabal of warmongers driven by cowardly wokeness."
"[The Biden-Harris] administration has us facing multiple wars on multiple fronts in regions around the world, and closer to the brink of nuclear war than we ever have been before," Gabbard said Monday. "This is one of the main reasons why I am committed to doing all that I can to send President Trump back to the White House."
Earlier this month, Trump called on the former Hawaii congresswoman to help him prepare for the debate.
Karoline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for Trump, told the New York Times that the former president "will continue to meet with respected policy advisers and effective communicators like Tulsi Gabbard, who successfully dominated Kamala Harris on the debate stage in 2020."