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Tulsi Gabbard: evaluation

2 Apr 2024 Lex Fridman Podcast #423 – Tulsi Gabbard: War, Politics, and the Military Industrial Complex

“There are very serious problems within both of our political parties, specifically coming from politicians who are driven by this desire for power and who are so afraid of losing that power that they’re willing to do whatever they feel they need to do, which centers around taking away our freedom because the more free we are to make our own decisions, even if they may end up being the wrong decisions, but to learn from those things and know that we’ve got to live with the consequences, the beauty and messiness of what a free society looks like.”

— Tulsi Gabbard

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Everything needed to verify it.

Speaker
Tulsi Gabbard
Attribution
Verified speaker
Claim type
evaluation
Recorded
2 Apr 2024
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

Transcript context

…[inaudible 01:26:18]. And I’m glad you brought this up. The book details why, after 20 or so years as a member of the Democratic Party, I decided to leave. But also… And it goes through my experiences and things that I have seen and learned along the way, but I also point out exactly that fact in the book. But from the very beginning what the prologue is we should not be naive to think that this only exists within the Democratic Party. There are very serious problems within both of our political parties, specifically coming from politicians who are driven by this desire for power and who are so afraid of losing that power that they’re willing to do whatever they feel they need to do, which centers around taking away our freedom because the more free we are to make our own decisions, even if they may end up being the wrong decisions, but to learn from those things and know that we’ve got to live with the consequences, the beauty and messiness of what a free society looks like. They’re so afraid of us because they see us as the people and our freedom as the central threat to their ability to remain in power. I think the difference that we’re seeing today is that, unfortunately, we talked about this a little bit how the Democratic Party has become a party where you must walk in lockstep with the leadership of that party or risk being faced with your reputation being destroyed and smeared and all of these different attacks. And the reason why they do that is to put people like me and Bobby Kennedy and others up as an example of saying, “Hey, if you step out of line, if you challenge us, this is what we’re going to do to you.” The Republican Party has also done that, and they also have politicians and leaders who are more interested in feeding the thriving system in the Washington establishment. But we are also seeing that the Republican Party also has some voices and, I would say, increasing voices of people. And I would put Donald Trump in this category who are challenging the, quote, unquote, norms of the Republican Party that are represented by people like Nikki Haley or Mike Pence, for example. The Republican Party is not a monolithic entity, and it means different things to different people. And that’s where I think the real challenge in this next election is less… it’s really less about one political party over another, and it’s more about our opportunity as voters to select leaders… First of all, to fire those who are against freedom and who are warmongers, who, by their essence, are willing to take away our freedom in the name of national security and vote for people… Nobody’s perfect. We shouldn’t hold anybody up on a pedestal, but vote for those who are committed to the Constitution and who hold those values that represent the interests of the people. I am not a fan of this choice, but here we are, Biden versus Trump. So let me ask you sort of a challenging question of pros and cons. Can you give me pros and cons of each? What’s the biggest strength and biggest limitation of, let’s say, Biden?…

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