See all of our exciting content on DailyWire+ here: https://www.dailywire.com/subscribe-plus Tulsi Gabbard sits down with Matt Walsh to talk about the future of the country. --- Today's Sponsor: Birch Gold - Text "WALSH" to 989898 for your no-cost, no-obligation, FREE information kit: https://birchgold.com/walsh Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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| The legislation that I introduced in Congress was called the Protect Women's Sports Act. | |
| There were a number of leading Democrats on the House floor with really harmful words, which sends a message to anyone else who's even thinking about the truth, step in line and shut up. | |
| That's the message that they sent, comply. | |
| Are you hopeful about the future of the country, in all honesty? | |
| All right, we're here with a woman who needs no introduction, but I'll give one anyway. | |
| Tulsi Gabbard is a former congresswoman, former presidential candidate, veteran. | |
| Thanks for being here, talking to me. | |
| It's great to be here, Matt. | |
| Thank you. | |
| So I guess we'll start with, obviously, the reason you've been in the news most recently. | |
| You announced that you're leaving the Democrat Party. | |
| I think your exact words were an elitist cabal of warmongers, among other very accurate labels. | |
| Yes. | |
| So can you walk me through that problem? | |
| Even like back to the beginning when you first started thinking that you had to make this move. | |
| Can you kind of walk through that? | |
| It's something that has been building up over time. | |
| I don't think there was one exact specific moment where I knew that this was what had to be done, but going all the way back from when I was running for president and seeing, even in that election in the Democratic primary in 2020, Democrat leaders working with the for-profit corporate media interfering in our democracy by limiting who voters were exposed to. | |
| When I made the decision to run for president, I naively thought, like, hey, you know, I know this is going to be tough. | |
| It's going to be a rough campaign. | |
| We'll have a lot of challenges to overcome, but at least I will have as fair a shot as anyone else running for president on the debate stage, through the media, to make my case to the American people about why I wanted to serve them in this way. | |
| But literally on the very day that I announced my candidacy in January of 2019, The first, like, shot was fired from NBC News starting the whole Russian troll asset nonsense. | |
| And so it was a very eye-opening experience throughout that time. | |
| Are you saying you're not a Russian spy? | |
| That is true. | |
| Okay, alright. | |
| I am not. | |
| I wasn't sure. | |
| For the record, don't believe Hillary Clinton or anything she has to say. | |
| I remember hearing when you were running for president that, I believe I'm correct in this, that after at least a few of the debates you were in, you were the most googled candidate on the stage. | |
| That was obviously the goal, right? | |
| Because coming in hard, you know, most people in the country didn't know who I was. | |
| And so we had hoped that that first debate, I think it had the highest number of viewers than any other debate that followed. | |
| The viewership progressively dropped off over time, I think, as people realized, like, hey, this is just political theater. | |
| There's not actual real substantive debate happening. | |
| But Again, that was a sign of what was to follow when, after I was the most Googled candidate, we had our Google Ads account set up, hoping that that would be the case. | |
| And then Google suspended the account with no explanation, no reasoning, and would not respond to us in our ask to say, hey, tell us what's wrong. | |
| Tell us what we've got to fix. | |
| How do we get our account back up as quickly as possible? | |
| It was radio silence from them until, magically, at one point, Our account was just reinstated. | |
| How long was it? | |
| I don't think I heard that. | |
| How long was it down? | |
| I mean, it was down for at least a day, but it was through that peak period when people were actively searching and looking. | |
| That was why I filed a lawsuit against Google to make that point, that if the permanent Washington, the power elite, big tech, the leaders of the Democrat Party, the big media, they can interfere in voters who are just like, Okay, I saw her on TV. | |
| Let me learn more about her. | |
| A sitting member of Congress running for president, just imagine how much interference and what kind of impact they can have on our elections at any level controlling what the voter is able to see and hear and learn about the people that they want to vote for. | |
| The Labor Department's Consumer Price Index, which catalogs the cost of goods, services, food, and rent, rose 0.4% over the month of August, double what many economists had anticipated. | |
| Perhaps worse, core inflation, which excludes food and gas prices, saw the highest increase last month that it's seen since August 1982. | |
| What is the current administration doing to quell the surge of inflation? | |
| Spending more taxpayer dollars, of course. | |
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| So you talk about, with the Democrat Party, the kind of corruption and this incestuous relationship between the Democrats and the media. | |
| Do you find that you have Ideological differences with the Democratic Party fundamentally or is it mostly? | |
| Very much so. | |
| And increasingly over time. | |
| You know, the party that I joined back in 2002 when I ran for the state house in Hawaii was a party that was still, and especially so in my home state of Hawaii, Very much a Big Ten inclusive party, very much a party that was about fighting for working people. | |
| It was a party that stood up still for free speech, for civil liberties, civil rights, individual freedoms. | |
| Over time, we have come to this point where today's Democrat Party doesn't stand for any of those things. | |
| It's become a party that is of, by, and for the elite. | |
| It has become a party that is actively trying to undermine our fundamental freedoms and rights. | |
| A party that is hostile towards not only free speech, but freedom of religion. | |
| And a party that has become the war party. | |
| Some of the criticisms that I saw coming from Democrat leaders and talking heads when I announced my decision to leave was, oh, of course, she's going to go join those anti-war people. | |
| Obviously not referring to the Democrat Party. | |
| So they've just given up the anti-war. | |
| Apparently. | |
| When I was growing up, that was Iraq War and Code Pink, and Democrats were definitely the anti-war party, but that's not the case anymore. | |
| It is clearly not the case, clearly in the pocket of the military-industrial complex, and that's been evident through, you know, the recent votes that have taken place as this escalation of this proxy war against Russia is going on and sending tens of billions of dollars to Ukraine. | |
| Not a single Democrat. | |
| Not a single Democrat. | |
| Not even those who claim to be the so-called progressive champions voted against that funding. | |
| It was Republicans in the House and the Senate who were the sole opposing voices, or even those just saying, hey, let's answer the basic questions about what is our objective? | |
| What are we trying to accomplish? | |
| Let's make sure we know, if we're sending money to go fund this war, where is that money going? | |
| And how can we be held to account for those taxpayer dollars Are you worried that we're barreling into a nuclear conflict? | |
| Deeply concerned. | |
| And the questions that were being asked were coming from Republicans. | |
| Are you worried that we're barreling into a nuclear conflict? | |
| Deeply concerned. | |
| You think that's a plausible thing to worry about? | |
| I think that is exactly where we are, and we should all be concerned about that. | |
| We should all be demanding answers and action from leaders, people in Congress, and the Biden administration of why they have allowed us to get to this point, where we are closer to the brink of nuclear war than we have been before, and why the Biden administration isn't using its position to push for a negotiated peaceful end To this war. | |
| That is the best way to help the people of Ukraine, and that's the best way for us as Americans in the world to avoid nuclear catastrophe. | |
| What's the reaction been like ever since you made your announcement, particularly on the left? | |
| I don't know if you still had any friends in the Democrat Party. | |
| I do. | |
| A couple. | |
| What was that reaction like? | |
| People, I've gotten some nice messages from a few folks who are Either, you know, still in the Democrat Party or even still holding office. | |
| I've been speaking the truth about my criticisms of the Democrat Party for a few years now, and so those who had a problem with that have stopped talking to me a long time ago. | |
| Which is part of the problem, is an unwillingness to have an honest conversation about how to be better, even as a party. | |
| And focus more on fighting for people rather than power in Washington. | |
| But the thing that has been heartening to me is how many people I've just heard from across the country and different places that I've gone in the last week are people who are Democrats or who were Democrats who say, you know, I've been through what you're going through. | |
| Thank you for saying the things that I've been feeling and have been frustrating me. | |
| And really this hunger and desire for Leaders who exercise courage and actually speak the truth, not only about the Democrat Party, but really about a lot of the issues that you've been working on. | |
| The things that are affecting their kids in schools every day. | |
| The things that are affecting our communities with regards to crime and police and law enforcement, borders. | |
| The things that are obvious to most people who are paying attention. | |
| But the things that somehow leaders in the Democrat Party are completely ignoring or creating this rosy fantasy picture of something that just doesn't exist. | |
| Are you going to be a Republican? | |
| It's not something I'm thinking about. | |
| I don't have to think about that. | |
| I am an independent and I'm just going to continue to do what I have been doing, frankly. | |
| If you had to put a label on your On your ideological persuasion, can you put a label on it? | |
| What would you call yourself? | |
| None of the labels that exist have ever worked for me, primarily because they mean such different things to different people. | |
| So I'm on Team America, and I take the oath that I took both as a soldier as well as as a member of Congress to support and defend the Constitution very seriously. | |
| So, that's my foundation, that's my focus, and all of the other labels, to me, don't matter in this country if they're attached to people who aren't grounded in that place, on that foundation. | |
| I don't know. | |
| I don't know. | |
| on one other question, I'm sure you've seen, maybe this is more like fan fiction, | |
| but I've seen, I'm sure you've seen people saying, well, what about Tulsi Gabbard as a VP | |
| on a Republican ticket in 2024? | |
| What do you think about that? | |
| I don't know, I don't know. | |
| I don't really deal in the hypotheticals and it's hard to, I think it's hard for anybody | |
| to really look at 2024 without looking at what's gonna happen in the next few weeks in this election | |
| because it will have such a direct impact on the challenges and the things | |
| that we're dealing with every day now, including nuclear war. | |
| What do you think happens in 2022? | |
| My hope is that there are more Americans who, even if they're afraid to speak up in their everyday lives, at work, amongst friends or family, because of this cancel culture we live in, that they exercise their freedom to go and cast their vote for people who stand for freedom, who stand for the well-being of our country, and against this radical so-called woke agenda that the Democrat Party in power is shoving down our throats. | |
| I also wanted to ask you, you mentioned your situation with Google, and we know what happened with the Hunter Biden laptop story and big tech censorship. | |
| So where do you stand on, does the government have a role in preventing or regulating the sort of big tech censorship, and is there any role there for the government, do you think? | |
| I think that, and this is something I worked on in Congress, that section 230 that provides these big tech social media companies with the liability protection, it needs to be fixed and it needs to be reformed because they have this protection given the fact that they are platforms, but they are acting like they are News companies, essentially, as they pick and choose whose voices get to be heard. | |
| They're not that neutral arbiter of this open marketplace of ideas. | |
| That law is very outdated, and the language is problematic, and that is, I think, the first step that needs to change. | |
| And of course I want to talk to you about the issue that, one of the reasons that you're here, you'll be, well by the time this comes out you will have spoken at our rally in Nashville, the rally to end child mutilation. | |
| When did you start sort of getting invested in that issue and just like talk about your views on that? | |
| Yeah, I mean, it started while I was in Congress. | |
| A good friend of mine is Congressman Mark Wayne Mullen from Oklahoma. | |
| We were elected at the same time. | |
| I've gotten to know—he is running to be the U.S. | |
| Senator from Oklahoma, and I'm going to go and help campaign for him. | |
| But I've gotten really close with him and his family. | |
| He's got three little girls. | |
| All of them are very competitive wrestlers, along with his sons. | |
| And, you know, this whole effort to undermine and redefine Title IX was what started to get me really interested in just the insanity of those pushing for this change. | |
| Rejecting the truth. | |
| Rejecting the truth that there are biological differences between men and women and then seeing how that has progressed to what we're seeing now where, you know, the Director of Health and Human Services is essentially threatening Child Protective Services to come and take your child away unless you as a parent provide this gender-affirming care which leads to, you know, these hormone treatments and irreversible surgeries that More and more we're seeing cause such incredible and long lasting harm to kids. | |
| Essentially this administration pushing for and approving of child abuse. | |
| And so I think like a lot of people, the more I've learned about it, the more incensed I've become in that this is happening and that we're not even allowed to talk about it. | |
| We're not even allowed to raise concerns about it, as you showed in your documentary, that there's no conversation or dialogue that they will allow around this. | |
| When did this, from the perspective of a lot of people that I talk to, it's sort of, what I always hear is, oh, it seems like this stuff started five years ago, and it came out of nowhere. | |
| Gender ideology and gender is fluid and all that kind of thing. | |
| Now, of course, in reality, like what I get into in the film, you could trace it back to the mid-20th century. | |
| You can actually go even further back than that if you want to. | |
| But it does seem as though five, six, seven years ago is when it kind of exploded onto the mainstream. | |
| And that's especially when it seems as though the Democrat party became totally invested in gender ideology. | |
| When did you start to notice that within the Democrat party? | |
| Because the Democrat party, when Barack Obama was running for president, this never came up. | |
| I don't remember him ever talking about how men should be in the women's restroom. | |
| So when did you start to notice? | |
| I think it was around that time. | |
| It was a few years before I left Congress when these topics started to come up. | |
| And I think previous to that, it was always just like, hey, You go live your life however you want to live your life. | |
| It's a free country. | |
| But once that turned into something that was impacting the safety of kids in bathrooms and locker rooms, obviously impacting kids competing in sports, you know, scholarships, future professional opportunities, and then now what we're seeing with people really pressuring kids and parents into these kinds of treatments that will harm them for the | |
| rest of their lives, you know, at ages where they're not equipped to make these | |
| decisions. | |
| And that's, again, that's what was so great about your film was | |
| making those comparisons of like, okay, well, as a kid who's 5, 6, 7, 8 years old, you know, | |
| on any given day, they may be Superman, or they may be this, or they may be that. | |
| How do you then sit there and tell them, okay, well, you're gonna go and have this change made to your body that you can't come back from? | |
| I'm curious to get your insight on this. | |
| Again, as someone who spent so much time around elected Democrats, why are they so focused on this issue now? | |
| The Daily Wire just reported on a poll that showed that 80% of Americans are opposed to gender transitions for minors. | |
| 80%. | |
| Including a majority, slim majority, but a majority of Democrats. | |
| And then like 97% of Republicans. | |
| The vast majority of independents. | |
| So it seems like it's a very unpopular position, certainly to be as gung-ho about it as they are. | |
| Yeah. | |
| So why have they made this? | |
| What's going on? | |
| Why are they doing this? | |
| You know, it doesn't make a lot of sense. | |
| There's just, what I can say is there is so much fear that has been created because, you know, when I talk about how the party is being controlled by this elite cabal of warmongers and radical woke ideologues, They won't allow anyone to disagree. | |
| They won't allow anyone to express concern or ask these kinds of questions. | |
| And so they're pushing their agenda, of which this is a central focal point. | |
| And other Democrats see how people like I'm treated and smeared and attacked both online and in the media, and they're afraid. | |
| They're afraid to say anything, even though I believe in their heart. | |
| They know that this is not right. | |
| It doesn't make sense. | |
| And it's really dangerous in the effect that it's having on kids and parents and families. | |
| But this culture of fear and These fanatical ideologues saying it's not enough to say, okay, fine, yes, we want to take care of everyone and make sure no one is harmed. | |
| They've got to go out there and you've got to stand on the street corner, you've got to march and hold the sign and use the bullhorn and prove how much you believe in whatever their narrative of the day is. | |
| There's a lot of people who are really afraid to stand up and say what is obvious to most others, which is the truth. | |
| When you were actually in Congress, you talk about the backlash you get on social media and the media, but did you have... | |
| Actual leadership of the Democratic Party coming to you and saying, you need to get in line? | |
| Yes. | |
| They did? | |
| Yes. | |
| The legislation that I introduced in Congress with my friend Mark Wayne Mullen was called the Protect Women's Sports Act. | |
| And it was really just centered around, it didn't mention the word trans or gender identity or anything else. | |
| It just said, we need to uphold the original intent of Title IX that was created out of a recognition of the biological difference between males and females, the male and female sex. | |
| And there were a number of people, leading Democrats on the House floor, who came up to me after we introduced that legislation with really, really harmful words, I'll say, to me. | |
| Harmful and critical words of how dare you introduce this legislation. | |
| Again, no room for any dialogue, no room for any conversation. | |
| about it whatsoever. | |
| The backlash was strong, both in the house as well as online and in the media. | |
| Again, which sends a message to anyone else who's even thinking what we were doing, | |
| the thinking about the truth, shut up. | |
| Stand, you know, step in line and shut up. | |
| That's the message that they sent, comply. | |
| Being there for eight years, is it, is the corruption in DC a threat? | |
| as bad as just regular Joes like myself assume? | |
| You know, we have no inside knowledge, but when you use a word like elite cabal... | |
| Speaking as someone who was in DC for eight years, that means something because it's like you were there. | |
| So is that really how it works? | |
| It is as corrupt as you would imagine, but the problem is it is the norm there. | |
| So it's not seen as something that's bad. | |
| When you look at all these stories about insider trading and the decisions that are made by leaders, Kind of the normal day-to-day practice of the wheeling and dealing. | |
| It is their norm. | |
| And they don't see anything wrong with it, which is exactly the problem. | |
| They're so far out of touch with reality and what is obvious to most Americans across the country that they're going about their daily lives. | |
| And if you were to tell them, like, yeah, what you're doing is corrupt, they would be like, how dare you? | |
| This is not who I am. | |
| I'm doing this for the right reasons and all of this other stuff. | |
| Do they believe that? | |
| I do. | |
| They believe it about themselves. | |
| I do, yes. | |
| I believe that when they look in the mirror, they got no issue with who they see looking back at them. | |
| That's even more frightening. | |
| It is. | |
| In a lot of ways. | |
| It is. | |
| Are you hopeful about the future of the country, in all honesty? | |
| I am very concerned, but what gives me hope is the hearts of the American people. | |
| I have had the opportunity, it's what inspired me when I ran for president, sitting in the room, standing in the room with people from all different ends of the political spectrum who really, truly, deeply love this country. | |
| And who share the same concerns that I do about our future. | |
| It's what I've heard from people over this last week from all ends of the political spectrum. | |
| And so my hope lies in the hearts and the hands and the votes of the American people that more and more people are realizing who we choose as our leaders matter. | |
| And it has a direct impact on our kids and our communities and our future. | |
| And so the hope that I have is in the people and our ability to make change, but we've got to do it. | |
| That's a strong place to end, but I do have to ask you one other question that I ask every single person that I ever meet, really. | |
| Okay. | |
| I have to ask you is, you know, we hear a lot about UFO sightings. | |
| So where do you stand on that? | |
| Where do you stand on aliens, UFOs? | |
| Have they been, have they visited? | |
| I don't doubt, I don't know. | |
| I'm a big believer, by the way. | |
| This is, I'll tell you, this is not my area of expertise, but I believe that they are out there. | |
| Do you think they've been? | |
| Whoever they are. | |
| Some of these UFO sightings that we hear from the military? | |
| Yeah, it doesn't surprise me. | |
| It doesn't surprise me. | |
| Again, I don't spend time looking at this stuff or reading about it, but I see the headlines and I see stories come out and it doesn't surprise me. | |
| Good. | |
| Well, I'll mark you down as a true believer. | |
| That's not quite accurate, but Tulsa Gabbard, thanks so much for talking to me. | |
| Thanks, Matt. |