Two-Faced Tulsi

By Cliff Kincaid

December 31, 2022

On March 19, 2020, then-Rep. Tulsi Gabbard dropped out of the presidential race and endorsed Joe Biden for president. Now she is a paid contributor on Fox News lecturing the public about “integrity” in politics.

“Tulsi Gabbard calls out lying politicians: ‘No greater form of disrespect of democracy’” was the Fox News headline about her grilling of Rep.-elect George Santos, R-N.Y., on “Tucker Carlson Tonight.”

A long-time Democrat who supported socialist Bernie Sanders for president in 2016, she left the Democratic Party in October, after previously endorsing Biden, and then campaigned for Republicans. However, her career includes attacks on President Trump’s foreign policy and her determination to see him defeated in 2020.

This notorious flip-flopper is supposed to be an example of honesty in politics.

Emphasizing Santos’ deceptions about his background, she said, “George Santos’ lies are inexcusable, but let’s be real. He is a small fish in a sea of sharks in Washington who’ve been deceiving us for a very long time and at great cost and consequence to the American people, our security and our freedom.”

Let’s take a look at Gabbard’s career.

Significantly, she was against Biden before she was for him, leading observers on the left and the right to question Gabbard’s history of controversial statements and flip-flops.

A socialist website noted that in her video endorsement of Biden posted to her Twitter account, Gabbard heaped praise on Biden, stating, “I know that he has a good heart and he’s motivated by his love for our country and the American people… So today I’m suspending my presidential campaign, and offering my full support to Vice President Joe Biden in his quest to bring our country together.”

Biden replied, “I’m grateful to have her support and look forward to working with her to restore honor and decency to the White House.”

Then she abandoned him.

President Barack Obama endorsed her congressional run in 2012 and she was given one of five vice chair positions on the Democratic National Committee after her victory. She was at Obama’s inauguration in 2013, saying she was honored to lunch with Obama, Biden, and others.

Although she is now sounding like a Republican, she was a Democrat for 20 years and supported Barack Hussein Obama and his vice-president Joe Biden and their policies.

When 181 House Members in 2015 filed an amicus brief in court to support Obama’s Immigration Executive Actions, Gabbard was among them. “Immigration is a tremendous economic benefit for Hawai’i and our country as a whole,” she said, advocating the “Dream Act” for illegal aliens.

Running for Congress, she answered various surveys about her views, demonstrating that she was a committed leftist.

Asked if working illegal immigrants be given temporary amnesty, she answered, “Yes, create a simple path to citizenship for immigrants with no criminal record.”

Asked if the U.S. should build a wall along the southern border, she said, “Yes, but make it a high-tech surveillance barrier instead of a physical one.”

Gabbard supported Obamacare and wanted it expanded. In fact, she demanded “a mandatory single payer system,” saying it “would be even better.” That was the Bernie Sanders or socialist approach.

She had a 10 percent lifetime score from one conservative group. Yet, now she is a paid contributor on a “conservative” news channel.

Gabbard holds the distinction of being one of the few national politicians supporting the legalization of “sex work,” otherwise known as prostitution.

Gabbard “publicly expressed support for decriminalizing prostitution,” reported Reason magazine, saying, “If a consenting adult wants to engage in sex work, that is their right, and it should not be a crime. All people should have autonomy over their bodies and their labor.”

Reason said, “Gabbard is the only one [presidential candidate] to get a good grade on a recent report card put out by the group Decriminalize Sex Work (DSW).”

When she ran for president in 2020, the journal Foreign Affairs noted that she criticized President Donald J. Trump’s “confrontational stance toward Beijing” and warned “about the downsides of escalating tensions with China.” The journal added, “She says the United States must maintain a cooperative relationship with China in order to address climate change and other areas of mutual concern.”

In another foreign policy matter, Gabbard filed a defamation lawsuit against Hillary Clinton in January 2020 over an interview in which Clinton called Gabbard a favorite of the Russians. Her lawsuit declared, “Tulsi has been harmed by Clinton’s lies — and American democracy has suffered as well. With this action, Tulsi seeks to hold Clinton, and the political elites who enable her, accountable for distorting the truth in the middle of a critical Presidential election.”

Then, suddenly, she dropped the lawsuit.

Reuters news service reported, “Gabbard and her campaign filed a notice of dismissal that said they ‘remain certain of the action’s legal merit’ but wished to focus on the coronavirus crisis and ‘defeating Donald Trump in 2020, rather than righting the wrongs here.’”

You can read her notice of dismissal in this court document, in which she said she was determined to defeat Trump.

Gabbard was sensitive about the charge of being a Russian agent, since she served two tours of duty in the Middle East and continued her service as a major in the Army National Guard.

The controversy stems from Gabbard emerging as an independent and dissident voice in the Democratic Party who was willing to blow the whistle on Obama’s pro-terrorist and pro-Muslim Brotherhood policies in the Middle East, which contributed to a civil war resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands. She took to the House floor to say that Obama’s CIA had been aiding the Islamic terrorist groups ISIS and al-Qaeda for the purpose of overthrowing the Syrian regime. She introduced legislation to curb the Obama administration’s pro-terrorist policy, calling it the Stop Arming Terrorists bill.

It was Trump, opposed by Gabbard when he ran in 2020, who terminated that policy.

Gabbard’s problem in making her well-documented claim about CIA support for terrorism was that she visited Russian-backed Syrian dictator Assad in Syria in early 2017. “Gabbard is attempting to provide legitimacy to Bashar Assad and his Iranian and Russian allies who have murdered hundreds of thousands of Syrian civilians,” declared the Syrian American Council.

Her career is marked by a series of flip-flops that make her current statements on Fox about political integrity ring hollow.

“Do you have no shame?” she said to Santos. Good question. But what about Tulsi Gabbard, a flip-flopping politician who supported Sanders and opposed Trump but now has landed a paid gig on a “conservative” channel?

E-Mail Cliff Kincaid: kincaid@comcast.net