Democratic presidential candidate Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, answers questions during a presidential forum held by She The People on the Texas State University campus Wednesday, April 24, 2019, in Houston. (AP Photo/Michael Wyke)

Just when you think you’ve got Tulsi Gabbard figured out, she throws you a curveball. I fully expected her to join in the chorus of teeth gnashing over the ouster of Alexander Vindman from the NSC. But nope, she’s pointing out the obvious, something most other Democrats and nearly all the mainstream media can’t bring themselves to do.

Quotes via The Daily Wire.

“You know, the president yesterday, as you probably know, Congresswoman, fired Gordon Sondland, our Ambassador to Ukraine, and Alexander Vindman, top security official,” host Neil Cavuto said. “A lot of people were likening it to another, you know, Friday night massacre akin to what Richard Nixon did back in the ‘70s. Do you agree with that?”

“Ultimately, whether people like or not, there are consequences to elections,” Gabbard responded. “And the president has, within his purview, to make the decisions about who he’d like serving in his cabinet.”

I’ll just note that the question from Cavuto is granting a lot of premises that don’t deserve to be granted, but whatever. Gabbard is rational enough to throw the softball back at his head and point out that the President has a right to choose who serves within his executive staff. Trump has to have faith in the NSC that they won’t undermine him and that they will do their best to carry out his foreign policy.

Alexander Vindman did the opposite. He went outside of the chain of command in order to try to run his own quasi-foreign policy in Ukraine, including actively undermining elements of what the President wanted done. That was not his place. Never mind that he then ran to Adam Schiff to become an impeachment star while also likely leaking classified information to Eric Ciaramella.

There was simply no possible way Vindman could remain employed at the White House, nor should there have been any expectation of such. Of course, intellectually dishonest hacks like Jake Tapper and company are pretending otherwise because that’s what they do.

Meanwhile, Gabbard also let the DNC have it for the treatment they’ve given her, propping up a joke of a candidate like Tom Steyer while icing out Gabbard from the debates. For comparison, Gabbard bests Steyer in New Hampshire by more than a point in the polling average, yet Steyer was allowed to be at the New Hampshire debate while Gabbard was shunned.

“It’s wrong. It’s wrong,” Gabbard responded. “The fact that a billionaire can come in and have that kind of influence to change the rules of the DNC all of a sudden, not coincidently, to be able to benefit Michael Bloomberg while voters here in New Hampshire and across the country are saying, hey, we want to be able to make the best informed decision possible before we go in and cast our vote, understanding the seriousness of this election.”

“But they’re not able to do so so long as both the DNC and some of the corporate media partners are enacting these rules where they are playing favorites,” Gabbard responded. “They are picking winners and losers before voters have the opportunity to do so.”

She’s not wrong.

The DNC’s attempt to put its thumb on the scale has been a really bad look. It’s not just Gabbard, who always was a long shot, but also how the Democrat establishment and the media (especially CNN and The Washington Post) are doing everything they can to sandbag Bernie Sanders.

None of this is going to sit well come November, as the party has been essentially split in several pieces via the ongoing civil war. How do they reconcile? Are Bernie voters going to shrug and vote for Buttigieg? Are Gabbard supporters, even if they only represent a few percentage points, going to run and support Biden? I don’t see it.

Things are in total chaos at the DNC right now and they deserve every bit of it.