This is an adapted excerpt from the Nov. 13 episode of "The 11th Hour with Stephanie Ruhle."
President-elect Donald Trump has already put forward a flurry of Cabinet picks for his incoming administration. On Wednesday, he picked Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii who is now a Republican, to serve as his director of national intelligence. During his campaign, the Army National Guard veteran touted Trump as the antiwar candidate.
“I am confident that his first task will be to do the work to walk us back from the brink of war,” she said at a Trump campaign event in August.
Trump is not antiwar. His administration will lead us down a path of abandoning our allies. It will be so incredibly erratic that it will likely drag the U.S. into war.
Look, Tulsi and I are friends. We served together in Congress — and I don’t want to be overly mean here — but the thing that disappoints me about her is not that she’s antiwar; it’s the fact that she has used that cause as a vehicle to get behind a reckless individual and a reckless movement.
Trump is not antiwar. His administration will lead us down a path of abandoning our allies. It will be so incredibly erratic that it will likely drag the U.S. into war. That will cause serious harm to our young men and women in uniform and Tulsi has made a grave mistake by aligning with Trump.
Furthermore, I think Trump is making a mistake with a majority of his Cabinet picks. He thinks this is a movie. He wants to nominate people who are good communicators but lack the basic qualifications for the job.
For defense secretary, he nominated Pete Hegseth. Two weeks ago, the Fox News host’s principal challenge was trying to get conservatives through their morning cup of coffee. The network wouldn’t even put him on weekdays and that’s the guy Trump wants to be in charge of our military.
Trump says he doesn’t want to drag us into war. But decisions like naming Hegseth as defense secretary or John Ratcliffe, a contributor to Project 2025, as the CIA director are exactly the kinds of moves that won’t walk us back from the brink of war but actually bring us much closer — and that’s what scares me.
Allison Detzel contributed.