Tulsi Gabbard announces she is leaving Democratic Party

Tulsi Gabbard announces she is leaving Democratic Party, calling it an 'elitist cabal of warmongers'
Gabbard ran for president as a Democrat in 2020.
By Isabella Murray and Mark Osborne | ABC News
October 11, 2022, 9:12 AM

Former Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard announced she is leaving the Democratic Party, denouncing it as an "elitist cabal of warmongers," while calling upon other "common sense independent minded Democrats" to exit with her.

"I can no longer remain in today's Democratic Party that is now under the complete control of an elitist cabal of warmongers driven by cowardly wokeness, who divide us by racializing every issue & stoke anti-white racism, actively work to undermine our God-given freedoms, are hostile to people of faith & spirituality, demonize the police & protect criminals at the expense of law-abiding Americans, believe in open borders, weaponize the national security state to go after political opponents, and above all, dragging us ever closer to nuclear war," Gabbard said on Twitter.

Gabbard represented Hawaii's 2nd Congressional District from 2013 to 2021 as a Democrat, and in 2020 she mounted an unsuccessful bid for the party's presidential nomination. In in a video posted to Twitter on Tuesday, she claimed that the party she's exiting stands for the "powerful elite," not the people.

"If you can no longer stomach the direction that the so called woke Democratic Party ideologues are taking our country. I invite you to join me," she said.

Gabbard paired her announcement with the launch of a podcast series on YouTube called "The Tulsi Gabbard Show." The first upload is a 28-minute episode titled "Why I'm leaving the Democratic Party," where she details her entrance into the Democratic party as a young person, "inspired by Democrats who stood up against the war in Vietnam" and those who stood up for plantation workers in Hawaii.

Chief among the reasons her 20-year stint as a member of the Democratic Party will be cut short, she said, is her fear that "President Biden and Democratic Party elites have pushed us to the precipice of nuclear war, risking starting World War III and destroying the world as we know it."

Gabbard said that her entrance into the 2020 presidential cycle was also because of imminent "nuclear holocaust."

"I ran for president in 2020 because I knew that this is where we were headed. All the signs were there. I raised this issue every single day during the campaign and on the national debate stage for those of you who may have come to a town hall or who were watching, I'm sure you noticed, but the politicians and the media completely ignored it," she said.

In her announcement and throughout the episode, Gabbard touted a number of traditionally conservative talking points, repeating right-wing rhetoric like "wokeness" and "elites," and harkening back to phrasing top GOP leaders have regularly circulated.

She accused Democrats for turning American democracy into "a banana republic"-- a term widely imparted by Republican leaders, especially to characterize the FBI's search of former President Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence in August.

"The raid of MAL is another escalation in the weaponization of federal agencies against the Regime's political opponents, while people like Hunter Biden get treated with kid gloves. Now the Regime is getting another 87k IRS agents to wield against its adversaries? Banana Republic," Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis wrote after the raid.

Gabbard has long been a Fox News contributor-- in August, she guest-hosted "Tucker Carlson Tonight," following the FBI's raid of Mar-a-Lago.

"Now, whatever your views are on Donald Trump, there's no denying that the unprecedented raid on his Palm Beach home earlier this week has set our country on a dangerous new course, and there's no turning back," she said on the show.

Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, a Republican, applauded Gabbard on "Fox & Friends" following her announcement, calling her an "independent maverick," and noting that her exodus from Democrats may be an indicator of further movement away from the party.

"I think when she ran for president, she realized how really isolated she was from the great majority of the Democratic Party, which is now, frankly, a pretty weird party. We saw the same thing happen in a slightly different way in Philadelphia last week, where the former deputy mayor, a Democrat, endorsed Dr. Oz for the U.S. Senate and said that John Fetterman is just so crazy on crime and so pro-criminal, he couldn't be for him. So I think you're seeing this drift, and we've certainly seen among Latinos a huge drift towards the Republican Party as they're driven away by the weirder policies of the Democratic Party," he said.

Gabbard did not announce her next steps, or if she'd consider jumping to the Republican Party. She's long spoken out against the two-party system that dominates American politics, however, leaving some to speculate that she may find a political home as an independent or in a third party.

"I will say, with our two party system, I think it is broken. And it's largely broken because of the outsized amount of power that the two parties have, making it impossible for really there to be a viable independent or third party," she said in January 2020 during her run for president.

Temple wrote:

Tulsi Gabbard was Republican for quite a while-
She finally came out ahaa

Quote :

Gabbard ran for president as a Democrat in 2020.

Temple wrote:

Tulsi Gabbard was Republican for quite a while-
She finally came out ahaa

Quote :

Gabbard ran for president as a Democrat in 2020.

The Wise And Powerful wrote:

Temple wrote:

Tulsi Gabbard was Republican for quite a while-
She finally came out ahaa

Quote :

Gabbard ran for president as a Democrat in 2020.

Yes she did and it was a huge fail--
She never fit into the democrat party-
And it really showed..
She was/is a strange one-
The republicans can have her..

Quote :

Yes she did and it was a huge fail--

No worse of a fail than most of that pathetic mob the democrats were running. .. Beto speaking spanish.. Cory Booker trying to .. Gabbard woulda been far better than the stooges in the white house now

Quote :

She never fit into the democrat party-
And it really showed..

Really? ... Wasn't she the vice chair of the DNC or some shit? .. She was like their fukkin rock star.. "The future of the democratic party" .. The dem's media fawned all over her... Until she spoke out about the war in Seria.. Then they claimed she was a Russian asset

Quote :

She was/is a strange one-

Strange is hiring people into the admin based on their gender, race, and sexual preference ...not to mention the transgender freaks they have in office now .. Gabbard is smart, logical, well spoken.. She was a soldier and a major in the military... So yea, that would be "strange" to you

Quote :

The republicans can have her..

Nobody said anything about her running for any office as a republican.. I'm sure they'd gladly trade her for Liz Chaney or some other RINO in the party if it was possible ... But the fact that she left the democratic party doesn't automatically make her a republican
... She had damn good reason for leaving the party...but you wouldn't have any interest in that .. Just talk shit about her ... I'm sure your leftie rags will be doing a few hit pieces on her now that will be more to your liking

Tulsi Gabbard: Campaigning with Republican not a move towards joining GOP, says 'I'm an independent'
Fox News, PAUL STEINHAUSER
October 17, 2022, 1:31 PM

Emphasizing that former Army Gen. Don Bolduc puts "country first," former Rep. Tusli Gabbard of Hawaii urged the lunchtime crowd at the Eggshell Restaurant "to support" the Republican Senate nominee in the battleground state of New Hampshire "and to bring at least 10 of your friends along with you when it comes time to vote."

Gabbard, who made history as the first Hindu member of Congress and who ran unsuccessfully for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, made headlines last week by announcing that she was leaving the Democratic Party that she charged "is now under the complete control of an elitist cabal of warmongers driven by cowardly wokeness, who divide us by racializing every issue & stoke anti-white racism."

Fast-forward less than a week and Gabbard, a former Democratic National Committee vice chair, is in New Hampshire, on a two-day campaign swing with Bolduc, the outsider, MAGA-style Republican, who's challenging former governor and first-term Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan in a Senate race that's among a handful across the country that may determine if the GOP wins back the chamber's majority in next month's midterm elections.

But Gabbard, who had become over the past year and a half a vocal Democratic critic of President Biden, says her support of Bolduc isn't a step towards joining the Republican Party.

"I'm an independent, and I've laid out the reasons why today's Democratic Party, that is controlled by fanatical ideologues, that stands against freedom, why it's a party I can no longer be associated with. I'm here campaigning with Don Bolduc because I know he's committed to putting country and the American people first, and I think that more politicians more people running for office would be smart to do the same," she emphasized in an interview with Fox News.

Asked about her unusual pairing with Bolduc, Gabbard responded that "it's only an odd couple you're paying attention to the wrong things. I think it makes every bit of sense when you look at two people who've dedicated our lives to serve our country, both in uniform and now in public office. It makes every sense when you look at the things, the fundamental foundational things that we share in common, which is the constitution, it's freedom. It's the Bill of Rights. It's taking care of serving the needs of people here in New Hampshire and across the country."

Both Bolduc and Gabbard share a military background. Bolduc spent more than three decades in the military and served ten tours of duty in the War in Afghanistan. Gabbard, who serves as a captain in the Hawaii National Guard, was deployed in the war in Iraq from 2004-2005.

Gabbard camped out in New Hampshire ahead of the February 2020 presidential primary, when she finished in seventh place. But she said her return to the state which for century's held the first primary in the White House race isn't about presidential politics.

"It is not at all on my mind, nor should it be on anyone else's because right now people are struggling just to pay their heating bills just to make ends meet," Gabbard said when asked about the possibility of launching another presidential campaign. "We need to focus on the here and now and start bringing about the changes that will protect our freedom and our future."

The trip by Gabbard to New Hampshire is grabbing plenty of national attention for Bolduc, who currently trails Hassan by the mid-to-upper single digits in the latest public opinion polls. He argued that her presence "helps me with everybody. I think it helps me with Republicans, Independents, Democrats, Free Staters, Libertarians. It helps me across the political spectrum."

Gabbard, during her years in Congress and during her presidential campaign, was a strong supporter of the single-payer health care plan championed by longtime Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, the 2016 and 2020 runner-up for the Democratic presidential nomination.

But Bolduc said he can put his policy differences with Gabbard aside because the two agree on the urgency of this political moment.

He stressed that amid soaring inflation "people can't pay the grocery bill. They can't pay the heating bill. Retirees are coming out of retirement to get two and three jobs to be able to make ends meet. We can agree on that. We understand that we have more in common than not. She's a military person. I'm a military person. We understand leadership. We understand putting people first, we understand the most important job for a leader and a public servant is to serve others and that quite frankly, that's not being done right now."

The two-day swing by Bolduc and Gabbard comes on the eve of the first of three debates between the Republican challenger and Hassan.

Bolduc told Fox News he plans at Tuesday's first debate to "show the big differences between me and Senator Hasson and that is that she is 100% behind Joe Biden's agenda which has hurt Granite Staters and Americans. And I do it respectfully. And I do it in a way that really demonstrates that what she's done for Granite Staters has hurt Granite Staters, and that she is not going to change — that it's all about status quo for her. And it's all about change for the better from me, economy spending safety and security of Americans. And I think that's really easy to do, given how she's voted."

Bolduc created a controversy in recent days after he called the disposal of embryos during in vitro fertilization process "a disgusting practice," in a conversation recorded by a Democratic operative and obtained by Vanity Fair.

The Hassan campaign on Friday, in a release, wrote that "Don Bolduc wants to ban IVF treatments — a medical procedure used by countless women seeking to become pregnant."

Asked on Monday by Fox News if he supports a ban, Bolduc stressed, "I fully support Americans' women's ability, family's ability to have children, however that is, and so there shouldn't be."

"My wife is a nurse who works for a law firm, and she screens medical records for in vitro fertilization. Right. So, talking to her, I know what the process is, and I fully support women, families, who are looking to adopt or use science to have children so that they can have families," he added.

And Bolduc charged that "I don't know where she's [Hassan] getting this ban thing from. But she just lies."