Washington: Tulsi Gabbard, a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, has spoken to Republican frontrunner Donald Trump and his advisors about the country’s foreign policy, keeping her options as the former President’s 2024 running mate ‘open’, media reports suggested. The first Hindu in the US Congress left the Democratic Party in 2022, calling it an “elitist cabal of warmongers” and accusing its leadership of “cowardly wokeness”.

Now, with the country likely set for a Trump-Joe Biden rematch in 2024, the talks with Gabbard focused on how the Defence Department should be run in case of a second Trump term, The Washington Post reported. Also, with Trump telling his advisors and donors time and again that his personnel choices at the Pentagon cost him, there were broader conversations on how Trump 2.0 would manage things differently.

A military veteran, who served in the Iraq war between 2004 and 2005 for the Hawaii Army National Guard before entering Congress, Gabbard has long been critical of US intervention overseas and has also blamed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Biden’s failed foreign policy.

“She appeals to Republicans who are skeptical of intervention overseas, which is now a majority of Republican voters,” GOP strategist Andrew Surabian told Newsweek. While appearing on Fox News’ Fox and Friends recently, the former Hawaii representative said she would be “open” to a conversation with Trump on running as his 2024 running mate. “I’d be open to that conversation. My mission in life is to serve our country and serve the American people and find the best way to be able to do that,” Gabbard said.

Gabbard recently inked a deal with Elon Musk to host a show on X to “defend free speech”, saying she will be sharing stories of those whose “voices have been silenced”. Trump, bulldozing his way to grab the crucial GOP nomination for the 2024 presidential race, is yet to announce his vice-presidential pick. While media speculation throws up several candidates, Trump has said very little about whom he or she he has shortlisted or even what qualities he’s looking for in a potential candidate, media reports said.