The support from Gabbard, a former Democrat who ran for president against Vice President Kamala Harris in 2020 and served in the Army National Guard, came as the two marked the three-year anniversary of the airport bombing in Kabul, Afghanistan, that left 13 U.S. service members dead.

“This administration has us facing multiple wars on multiple fronts and regions around the world and closer to the brink of nuclear war than we ever have been before,” Gabbard said. “This is one of the main reasons why I’m committed to doing all that I can to send President Trump back to the White House, where he can once again serve us as our commander in chief.”

Gabbard, who has been helping Trump prepare for his debate against Harris, served in Congress from 2013 to 2021 and left the Democratic Party in 2022 because it had become what she called an “elitist cabal of warmongers driven by cowardly wokeness.” She has since stumped with Republicans on the trail, including in the 2022 election.

Her endorsement of Trump centered on foreign policy and avoiding armed conflict overseas. Describing the United States as on “the brink of war,” Gabbard said Trump “understands the grave responsibility that a president and commander in chief bears for every single one of our lives.”

“He exercised the courage that we expect from our commander in chief in exhausting all measures of diplomacy, having the courage to meet with adversaries, dictators, allies, and partners alike in the pursuit of peace, seeing war as a last resort,” Gabbard said. “We cannot be prosperous unless we are at peace. And we can’t live free as long as we have a government that is retaliating against its political opponents and undermining our civil liberties, weaponizing our very institutions, against those they deem as a threat.”

The rally in Detroit came after Trump and Gabbard attended a wreath-laying ceremony earlier that day at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington Cemetery in the Washington, D.C., region with family members of some of the service members killed during the withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Critics of the Biden administration have sought to tie the chaotic and deadly exit to Vice President Kamala Harris in her campaign against Trump.

“We were going to do it with dignity and strength,” Trump told rallygoers. “We gave it up. We gave them everything.”