Tulsi Gabbard: evaluation

Transcript context

…Friendly competition. One of the things I love about the 20th century is the friendly, sometimes not so friendly, competition between the Soviet Union and the United States in space, in the space race. That’s created some incredible engineering and scientific breakthroughs and all of this, and also made people dream about reaching out to the stars, and war destroys all of that, or damages it. Hopefully just damages it. Hopefully the Phoenix will rise again. Well, let me ask you about the criticism you’ve mentioned. It’s probably the most common criticism of you, that you love Putin. So just to linger on it, what do you think is the foundation of this criticism? Well, I’ll tell you when it began. My first day in Congress was January 3rd, 2013. I believe it was the third, fourth, fifth, somewhere around there, and my last day was January 3rd, 2021. I had been given my experience of serving as a soldier in the Middle East, and the motivation that really drove me to run for Congress in the first place. I served on the Foreign Affairs Committee and the Armed Services Committee for almost eight years, the eight years that I was there, with my drive and motivation to actually be in a position to challenge the influence of the military industrial complex, to try to prevent us from needlessly going to war. And so the likes of Hillary Clinton and the cabal of Warmongers in Washington, they weren’t fans of mine to say the least. I can’t say it was a total surprise, but it was disheartening nonetheless that the very day that I announced my candidacy, that I was running for president, which was in February, 2019. The hour that I walked up onto that stage to announce my candidacy, it was in Hawaii and I gave my announcement speech, NBC News published a hit piece that planted the seeds of suspicion in voters’ minds that somehow, I was a darling of Putin and Russia and whatever. It was baseless, all of it baseless. And that continued like a steady drumbeat throughout my candidacy, but that really was escalated when in a podcast with David Axelrod, Hillary Clinton said, “Oh, well, the Russians are grooming her.” And this came from a very influential person. She was the former Secretary of State, the former US Senator, former First Lady, someone who wielded and continues to wield a lot of power in the Democratic Party and amongst voters, and that took it to a whole new level. What is the basis for this? Nothing. It is a tired yet dependable playbook that is used not only by people like Hillary Clinton, but also people like Mitt Romney and others to try to smear, discredit and destroy the reputations of people who have the audacity to question their objectives as they call for one war or another, or have the audacity to say that this is not in the best interest of peace, or in our country, our national security. They keep going back to this playbook as they do today, because again, they’re not willing to debate the substance of one position versus another, which is what we should have. If people feel so strongly that we should be going and waging this war, that war, okay, great. Go make your case to the American people. Go stand on the floor of the United States House and actually have this debate. Allow those who are saying, “No, this is not a good idea,” to also stand freely and make that argument. Instead, they resort to the kind of name-calling that tells voters, “Hey, you can’t trust this person or anything that they say.” this is not a good idea,” to also stand freely and make that argument. Instead, they resort to the kind of name-calling that tells voters, “Hey, you can’t trust this person or anything that they say.” Myself and some of my other colleagues got the same treatment when we tried to pass legislation in Congress that would have taken out provisions from the Patriot Act that are most egregiously violating our Fourth Amendment rights and civil liberties, authorities that have allowed our government to illegally surveil Americans without a warrant. And as we did so, we were called traitors. We had other members of Congress on the house floor saying that if you pass this legislation, you will be responsible for another nine-eleven style attack on our soil. These are all distraction tactics to try to divert our attention away from what’s actually happening, and instead, just tell voters, “Hey, you can’t trust these people.” Obviously, this has happened to Trump. It’s happened to Bobby Kennedy. It’s happened to people like Rand Paul and others. There’s a small group, but a growing number, at least I’m on the Republican side at this point, people who are actually willing to stand up and challenge the military industrial complex, challenge the warmongers in both parties.…

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