Episode 212: Tulsi Gabbard P2 (The Fascist Turn) feat Mike Prysner
An ascendant Indian fascist group finds a friend in Tulsi Gabbard as she returns to her right wing roots. She starts spouting anti-trans talking points, talking about anti-white racism and attacking the Democratic Party. Our guest writer is Mike Prysner (Empire Files, Eyes Left Podcast) who helps us explore Tulsi Gabbard, the cult that she grew up in, and how she gelled as a right wing figure, palling up with Tucker Carlson and the Indian far-right.
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Mike Prysner: twitter.com/mikeprysner / www.youtube.com/empirefiles / linktr.ee/eyesleft
Merch: http://merch.qanonanonymous.com
Music by Anahedron and Pontus Berghe. Editing by Corey Klotz.
Welcome, listener, to Chapter 212 of the QAnon Anonymous podcast, the Tulsi Gabbard Part 2 episode.
As always, we are your hosts, Jake Rokitansky, Mike Preissner, Julian Fields, and Travis View.
All right, welcome to Part 2 of our exploration of Tulsi Gabbard.
In Part 1, of course, we explored the Very cool neckbeard surfer cult figure that basically couldn't be more involved in her upbringing and ideology.
I was like, oh, this will be like a distant figure that she's marginally attached to.
Still very bad.
Somebody should look into this.
And no, it's like he's in business with her parents.
They're running the fucking torture schools in the Philippines.
Like, oh my God.
Oh my Gabard.
I'll go.
Yeah.
I'll go.
I'm fired.
Leave.
Yeah.
And now, to resume part two, Mike Prisner.
So I guess where we left off is Tulsi, who started her political career as this anti-gay local politician, joins the military, goes to Iraq, and then now has this new brand of the one who knows the cost of war and decides that it is the Democratic Party that could finally, for the Science of Identity Foundation, get someone into national office.
Surely they couldn't be such dupes that they would just open arm accept her.
Well, you can't question a soldier, Julian.
So true.
So to start off this path, she gets her commission as an army officer, a good idea for someone with political aspirations because Washington likes officers, not those untrustworthy enlisted class soldiers.
She does something else interesting for someone who would later say she became anti-war on her first deployment.
She changes from the medical branch to military police.
At this time, military police was a job where women were perhaps the most likely to see ground combat, because unlike the combat arms, military police units are co-ed, and because of their convoy security role, they quickly became combat units in the Iraq debacle.
She was signing up for a more eventful second go-around.
This was in 2007, when the war didn't seem to be ending anytime soon.
It was the year of the troop surge.
Tulsi herself verifies this rationale of wanting a more genuine combat experience by saying,
quote, "They didn't allow women in combat arms at the time, so I chose the branch military police
given that it was pretty multifaceted and would allow me to lead soldiers." She ended up deploying
to the peaceful Kuwait instead, training the Kuwaiti army and escorting VIPs in 2008-2009.
Once again, she returns from deployment and jumps right back into politics, running for Honolulu City Council in 2010 and winning easily.
But her new credentials were far too big for such a small seat.
And apparently, she didn't give a shit about that role outside of it being a boost for bigger things.
She was in office literally just a few months when she announced her bid for Congress in Hawaii's 2nd District, where the incumbent Democrat had retired, leaving a wide-open primary.
Tulsi was not the favorite to win.
Early in the primary, the popular former Honolulu mayor Mufi Hanneman was crushing the six-candidate field, but she had an Achilles heel.
By this time, 2011, the National Marriage Equality Movement was making great strides, with mass mobilizations like the Prop 8 struggle in California.
Mufi Hanneman was a Democrat opposed to same-sex marriage.
So an unlikely gay rights champion emerged to exploit this weakness.
Tulsi stopped promoting homosexuality gabbard.
She became a vociferous proponent of same-sex marriage and excoriated Hanneman for her discrimination.
Of course, people change and Tulsi wouldn't be the first to do a 180 on gay rights.
Her explanation for this profound transformation from an extremely outspoken anti-gay rights activist and politician is a little strange.
During the last televised debate, your competitors criticized you for having a change in terms of your views on social issues.
During your time in the legislature, you started off with conservative views in terms of abortion and same-sex marriage, and now you have liberal views.
So, why the change?
And you had also mentioned that it was because of your military service abroad, so why the change?
Yes, you know, some pretty life-changing experiences that I went through, and particularly
in the Middle East, where I saw firsthand the extreme negative effects of what can happen
when a government oversteps its boundaries and attempts to be a so-called moral arbiter
for its people.
And it caused me to reflect about our own conversations and decisions and debates and
policy decisions happening here at home, and really coming to the conclusion that it's
a basic idea of freedom, and government should not have any role in telling people who they
can and cannot love, or telling a woman what she should or shouldn't do with her body in
these most personal parts of our lives.
And whatever rights and benefits, responsibilities government gives, it should be equal for all people.
Even the local news anchor calls out what many people would have rightfully been assuming.
The seat is to fill Mazie Hirono's seat and she is known as one of the most liberal members of Congress.
So was your shift in views to kind of be more in alignment with the shift in political views for the country?
So would you say that you are blowing in the direction of the wind?
Is this correct?
Any of you who may be thinking her 180 on gay rights was insincere, you've already been vindicated.
In 2016, she said in an interview that her personal views—those being hatred—on the issue had never changed, just her belief about imposing it on others like those damn Muslims do.
This is another facet of her ideology rooted in Butlerism.
Her guru is known for hating Muslims as well, and it would be a constant theme while she served in Congress.
Here's Butler on Islam.
In India, hundreds of years ago, the Muslims came in and forced those who were following the Vedic society, Vedic system, forced them by fear of punishment or death, forced them to claim allegiance and accept the teachings of Islam.
The Mohammedan philosophy is so full of violence and it's so low class.
Their teachings are so Mickey Mouse.
What happened?
It's so violent.
Their demons were going, la la la la.
Bullshit.
There's only one reason why Pakistan has not dropped atom bombs on India and that's because there's 200 million Muslims still in India.
If those Muslims leave, immediate boom.
Because you're completely allowed to kill any infidels.
Any infidel.
Anyone who doesn't worship God the way they worship God.
You can blow them up.
Slit their throats.
Doesn't matter.
No problem.
You're doing God's service.
These days, she's forgotten all about not wanting to impose her anti-gay views on others, backing the most harmful legislation for the community in decades.
But in that primary race, she also debuts her angle as an anti-war veteran, claiming she decided to run to end the war in Afghanistan.
I'm Tulsi Gabbard.
I approve this message.
I'll work to end tax loopholes, end the war in Afghanistan now, protect Medicare and Social Security, and work hard to make you proud as your Congresswoman.
And I'll always fight for you.
She has just terrible vibes.
Just a vibe-based assessment of her is something's off.
Yeah, you know, whenever she talks, I always feel like she's a prison guard explaining what my last meal happened to be.
Yeah.
And, you know, the anti-war rhetoric, of course, is actually good, and her rhetoric as a pro-peace candidate was one of her few redeeming qualities.
We'll see later how she was never exactly anti-war, but her own brand, coining the term anti-regime change war, while she admitted she was a hawk in the war on terror and on Iran.
But, her rebranding efforts paid off.
She would end up defeating Hanneman by about 20 points, coming back from a 45 point deficit at the beginning of the primary.
This primary victory changes everything, even before the general election.
Even though she is virtually unknown to the party, with connections to a controversial cult fairly known in Hawaii, and a seriously problematic political past.
She is young, a soldier, a combat veteran, a cool-looking surfer.
She becomes a Democratic Party star overnight.
A testament to how much this political system worships the military, all they needed to see was young, good-looking woman, combat veteran.
As Van Jones put it that year, quote, she's almost straight from central casting.
Tulsi Gabbard, she is going to be the one to watch tonight at the DNC.
She is only 31 years old.
She is not only a veteran of the Iraq War, she has served on the Honolulu City Council, and she is also now a congressional candidate for her state of Hawaii.
Tulsi joined the House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, several other women on stage tonight, and she joins us now.
It is so nice to meet you.
I cannot tell you how many people have mentioned your name and said, this is the one to look out for.
Tell us why.
I mean, people see you as a rising star.
Before she wins her congressional race in 2012, she is a featured speaker at the DNC, personally invited by Nancy Pelosi, who called her an emerging star.
Aloha!
Aloha, fellow humans!
I'm Tulsi Gabbard, candidate for Congress in Hawaii and a captain in the Army National Guard.
When I stepped down from the state legislature where I served and headed to a war zone, I joined a long, proud line of Americans who sacrificed to make us the land of the free and the home of the brave.
As a combat veteran, I know the cost of war.
The sacrifices made by our troops and military families are immeasurable.
These days, it's often women in uniform.
Moms, wives, even grandmothers who deploy and leave their families behind.
Such heroes and patriots need and deserve leaders who truly understand and care about their hardships and will fight for them.
Leaders like President and Michelle Obama and Vice President and Dr. Biden.
The strongest advocates our military families could ever have.
What a broken party.
What a stupid, broken party.
This is all it takes, and everyone's fucking cheering and hooting and hollering.
Can't argue with a soldier.
So much so that, upon her victory in November 2012, she is such a favorite of the Democratic Party that they immediately give her a seat as Vice Chair of the DNC.
She's also placed on the House Committee on Armed Services and Foreign Affairs, Top Democratic Party officials were not shy about advertising that she was the new face of the party, destined to rise through the ranks.
Tulsi agreed, and apparently she didn't want to wait.
Before she was even sworn into Congress, legendary Hawaii Democratic Senator Dan Inouye passed away.
Gabbard formally applies to take his seat.
This was pretty audacious to presume that she should just be installed in the U.S.
Senate before she even takes her seat in Congress, especially since Senator Inouye had recently listed like eight people he thought should take his seat after his upcoming retirement, and Tulsi was not one of them.
In January 2013, the first Hindu American elected to Congress was sworn into office on the Bhagavad Gita, the same copy she had studied since she was four years old and took with her to Iraq.
The Democrats would end up deeply regretting this investment as things were about to get tense and become all-out conflict throughout her three consecutive terms in the House of Representatives.
Perhaps they wouldn't have been surprised if they had simply looked past the too-good-to-be-true image and looked at the two pillars, cast and shadow, which were holding her up throughout the election.
The first being the cult we've already explored.
We know that Tulsi's past wasn't just a child raised by inner circle cult parents, but was a student of Butler, a regular participant in his ceremonies, worked for SIF organizations, and was even listed as an executive for the SIF business Healthy Inc.
But was science of identity still a factor in Tulsi's life by this point?
According to Tulsi, Yes.
In a 2015 address to the Hare Krishna 50th anniversary, she calls Butler, referring to him in his Hindu name, her quote, Beloved Grandfather and Spiritual Master, with some flair that is a little extra.
Although my attempts to offer praise to my beloved Grandfather Spiritual Master, His Divine Grace A.C.
Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, can be likened to a child offering a small torchlight to the sun.
Out of his kindness, Lord Krishna beckons me to do so for my own edification.
Butler himself, who uncharacteristically gave an interview to the New Yorker in 2019, told them he looks at Gabbard as would a music teacher with a successful protege.
Quote, he's taught one of his students cello, he says, and he sees that, oh, this student of mine is now playing cello in the Philharmonic Orchestra, and it's beautiful.
Hmm.
Playing cello a little different than hating gay people and Muslims, okay?
It's a little bit different.
Butler also said that he had counseled Tulsi on how to explain her religious affiliation as she entered the national spotlight, advising her to use the term transcendental Hindu, which she did try out a couple times.
Yeah, that's clearly a guy who's run a cult his whole life, like, doesn't understand how creepy those words sound.
He's like, this'll pass.
That's a good one.
Transcendental, right?
In 2022, her aunt, Professor Sina Gabbard, said she believed Science of Identity had always been, quote, the patron and primary generator of Tulsi's checkered political agenda, end quote.
She won't, however, answer specifics about Science of Identity, refusing to confirm or deny being part of it.
When journalist Carrie Howley joined Gabbard on the 2020 campaign trail for a major candidate profile in The Intelligencer, Tulsi and the team were friendly until a one-on-one with Tulsi was scheduled.
When Howley emailed that she planned to ask about Butler, Sif, and when exactly Tulsi started identifying as Hindu, the interview was promptly canceled.
Tulsi wrote back, quote, She did appear to confirm that Butler was still part of that relationship, sending Howley a chart of Hindu lineage, which included Sif's jarod guru.
So...
Here, uh, let's clarify things.
We got this guy Butler and a bunch of other stuff before that.
And, um, hope you understand what I believe now.
Won't be doing the interview.
Despite her dodginess, SIF is ever-present in her Congress years.
According to FEC filings, a large portion of her congressional campaign funds came from signs of identity individuals and businesses.
Her 2012 campaign staff, and then her congressional staff, was made up of SIF stalwarts.
Her campaign videographer, Abraham Williams, who Tulsi would later marry in 2015, was, like her first husband, raised in the SIF boarding schools, worked for SIF companies, and had parents who were high-ranking Butler devotees.
Williams' mother, who ran the Butler yoga business, would become Gabbard's office manager in Washington.
A top Butler associate, Sunil Kameni, ran her Indian American outreach.
She hired as her chief of staff the son of Bill Penarosa, the first Butler follower to run for the congressional seat Gabbard now held under Independence for Godly Government back in 1976.
His son became her chief of staff despite the fact that the young prince had zero political experience.
Her team on the trail, and in Washington, and then her 2020 campaign, seemed to be a lot like her.
Science of identity royalty.
As an anonymous source told the New Yorker in 2019, Tulsi's staff was divided between Butler disciples and non-disciples.
Quote, And there's also the issue of money.
The SIF business network is not just found in campaign contributions, but as contractors.
Blue River Productions, run by Science of Identity Affiliates, was paid for her media work $76,000 in 2019.
It gets bigger, though.
The Honolulu Civil Beat uncovered that between 2013 and 2019, over half a million dollars was paid to businesses run by a Science of Identity affiliate named Chris Robinson from the Tulsi campaign.
But they won't explain exactly what he did for them.
Robinson, who also grew up in Butler's boarding schools and lives in a remote cabin in Washington State, owned by a CIFF-connected business.
He received more campaign money than almost any other vendor, only really beat out by Google.
He, nor his digital businesses, had, or have since, ever worked on another political campaign or for another politician.
So just just Tulsi showing up to the party and an entire bus of just cults followers coming off that bus with her welcomed open arms into the DNC.
Just incredible.
Another strong indicator that Tulsi still had tight science of identity involvement through her tenure was the Scientology style harassment reported by that investigative journalist I mentioned earlier, Christine Grillao.
In May 2018, Gerlau, who has a master's degree from the UC School of Journalism, not just a blogger, wrote an open letter to the Democratic Party of Hawaii and the Hawaii ACLU detailing the retaliation she received from CIFF affiliates on and off Tulsi's staff, just for asking the tough questions they so diligently wanted to avoid.
Grillo alleges that when she attended a Tulsi Town Hall, John Bishop, husband of the Science of Identity president, was photographing her the entire time.
The following day, after a video of her critical question to Gabbard was featured in local press, she woke up to two Butler disciples outside her home, sitting in a car and watching her leave.
She recognized both, and one was a close associate of Tulsi's SIF-bred chief of staff.
She says other disciples did the same a week later, this time taking photos of her as she left her home to walk her dog.
She also says after a blog post exposing Tulsi Gabbard, she had numerous cyber attacks on her website.
They also paid $20,000 to a DC communications firm to send emails to the press discrediting Grillao as a journalist and urging them not to publish her work, and filed false police reports with the DC Capitol Police accusing her of impersonating Gabbard's staff.
Wow.
Just for just kind of trying to cover Tulsi and asking some questions.
Being the one, yeah.
She was really the one that was the most committed to uncovering this science of identity thing and then...
You know, if Tulsi wasn't connected to them, why were Science of Identity members outside her fucking home?
Yeah.
I don't know, but maybe we should cancel this episode.
It's not looking good.
What did you bring in our home?
What did you bring?
I did mean to warn you earlier.
You're going to destroy us.
None of this had really become an issue for Gabbard, from her primary in 2011 through her days in Congress, and was barely a blip in her presidential campaign.
Even when establishment media and Democrats had turned on her.
Some online outlets would run articles digging a bit into the cult story, but she never had to face a question in a debate, nor in the numerous TV interviews over so many years.
The closest it came through her tenure to being a scandal was in 2016, when a high-level Butler associate and top Tulsi donor, Cy Hanson, sped his boat through a group of swimmers, killing a beloved local waterman, Sri Shim, and seriously wounding another.
Being a tragedy in Tulsi's district, some constituents, including Cerise Shim's family, were upset Tulsi was silent about the incident, not honoring the revered community elder, which many would consider to be a standard practice on the small island.
While Science of Identity was clearly a driver of her initial run for Congress, bulking up her volunteer staff and providing substantial funding, and remained a central part of her day-to-day operations throughout her tenure, it was not the only secretive organization on which her career stood.
The other leg was even more ignored than her butler connections.
and arguably more controversial.
Oh my god.
The American Song.
Tulsi's primary run began as an underdog, and they needed something more than
science of identity to be successful.
The missing piece ended up being a shadowy organization out of India known as the Rashtriya Syam Savak Sangh, or RSS.
RSS is a network of far-right Hindu nationalist organizations opposed to religious and cultural minorities and advocate violence against them in pursuit of a Hindu nation, which, according to the U.S.
Commission on International Religious Freedom, quote, holds non-Hindus as foreign to India, end quote.
The Supreme Leader of RSS maintains that India should be converted into an exclusively Hindu state.
The RSS, which is an armed and uniformed group, has a variety of wings, including its electoral wing, the BJP, today in power with Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
These organizations include sister groups for the Indian diaspora in the United States, known as the American Sangh.
But RSS is the mothership for them all.
RSS affiliates accounted for about 25% of Tulsi's campaign funding.
Those contributions would double when she took office.
A big part of her 2012 run was not campaigning in Hawaii, but jet-setting around the continental United States to places like Texas and Florida to speak at quite numerous and large fundraising events with RSS followers.
The RSS is, without a doubt, a fascist organization.
Tulsi very much hates being questioned about this, although she very rarely has been.
Peter Friedrich is an amazing journalist on South Asia who had his stunning investigation of Tulsi's RSS ties published as the cover story in The Caravan Magazine in 2019 titled, How the American Song Built Up the First Hindu Candidate for President.
I actually interviewed him in preparation for this episode, and his work on the topic was invaluable.
He asked Tulsi about her RSS ties at a town hall in Los Angeles in 2019, and her response is interesting.
You know, the audio is pretty bad, so I only didn't include his full question, but he basically
lists all of the connections and then asks her, you know, what is her relationship with them.
When did your collaboration with the IRSS begin, and how much money did they give you?
I'm a soldier, and I took an oath, one oath, in my life.
That was an oath to serve and protect this country, to put my life on the
lines of the people.
We stand for a whole number.
We stand for diversity.
We stand for peace and bringing people together around these shared ideals of freedom and opportunity for all people.
Thank you everybody for standing in this movement for peace.
Wow.
I feel as frustrated listening to this episode as the guy's asking the question.
He's like, uh, when did your relationship with RSS start?
How much money?
It's crazy, too, because it's like if you're kind of like a Hindu nationalist hardliner, I would think that the butler thing would get in the way.
But I guess she's just she's just great at taking money from terrible people.
Yeah, it was a strategic relationship, for sure.
She's like, nobody else will take money from these folks.
They're offering money.
Why not me?
So how bad is the RSS and how close is Tulsi to them?
The founders of RSS got their start in 1915, as nationalists who viewed Muslims in India as just as much of a problem as the British colonists.
India, to be great, needed to be an exclusively Hindu nation.
As the early 1920s brought the rise of the Nazis in Germany and Mussolini's fascist coup, the newly organized Hindu nationalists were watching, and studying, very closely.
In April 1925, Hitler founded the SS, a paramilitary mobilized to use violence to bring about so-called racial purity in Germany.
Five months later, the inspired Hindu nationalists in India created their own version, the RSS.
SS translated to Protection Squad, and RSS to National Volunteer Organization.
They had the exact same function.
The fascist connection is quite open.
In 1931, one of the founders of the RSS toured fascist Italy and personally met with Mussolini.
He was stoked, saying what they had accomplished through fascism was incredible, and that India needed to do the same thing, and that they already had the force to do it, the RSS.
They also noted that Hitler's Nazi youth program should be a model for raising young Hindu nationalists.
And by the time Hitler came to power in 1933, the RSS leaders were openly saying that India needed a dictator, like Hitler or Mussolini, and that India's Muslims were just like Germany's Jews.
They weren't shy about praising Hitler and the Nazis as they carried out pogroms.
Chief of the RSS, M.S.
Goldwalker, wrote that the Nazi policy towards Jews was, quote, a good lesson for us to learn and profit from.
He would lead the organization until 1973, and his photos still adorn RSS rallies and offices today.
Had the fascists won World War II, we may have seen the RSS get their wish right away.
But they had to start from scratch, with their idols and potential allies defeated and dead.
They did, however, launch their new era in a way that would have made Hitler proud.
With the departure of the British in 1947, the RSS claimed a million members all over India.
In the Indian Unity Territory of Jammu and Kashmir, the RSS joined state forces in a slaughter of Muslims.
According to the Times of London, 237,000 Muslims were systematically exterminated.
Massacres of non-Hindus by the RSS paramilitary would mar the entire history of India's post-colonial existence.
In 1969, a three-day rally led by the RSS used swords to attack Muslims in Gujarat.
The death toll was upwards of 2000.
Holy shit!
From 1970-1989, the RSS militants were involved in massacre after massacre that killed thousands of Muslims.
In December 1992, at the instigation of BJP politicians, a mob destroyed the Babri Mosque, which had stood since the 1500s.
The RSS planned the action, according to the UN investigation.
In the aftermath were more anti-Muslim pogroms, which killed around 3,000.
In 2002, longtime RSS member Narendra Modi is now on the political scene as a minister of a large western state called Gujarat.
According to author Arundhati Roy, the RSS had "systematically penetrated the police,
the administration, and political cadres at all levels."
When a train caught fire, killing 59 Hindus, Modi came out right away and said it must have
been Muslim terrorists, inciting a major pogrom.
Modi's police and government officials, also with the RSS, provided direction to the rioters, even giving lists of Muslim-owned businesses to destroy.
Witnesses say some mobs were even led by BJP elected officials who helped distribute weapons.
Police not only refused to help victims, but were seen firing on civilians as well.
Afterwards, a BJP whistleblower as well as a senior police officer testified that Modi ordered the police to stand down in order to give the mob three days to do whatever they wanted.
So is the idea like she gets political power and builds a better relationship with the Modi government?
So this is like during her campaign in 2012, this relationship starts.
And like through her campaign, they become big funders.
And so, yeah, I mean, it will become apparent what was in it for them.
And what was in it for her literally was just I need more money and a bigger audience and a boost.
And that seemed to be.
And but as we'll see, there was also it's not so much what's in it for her.
It's what's in it for Chris Butler, you know, her master.
And so, you know, this mob, Modi gives his mob three days to do whatever they wanted.
The three day purge, whatever they wanted, often took the form of breaking into Muslim homes, beating men, women and children with hammers, dousing them in kerosene and setting them on fire.
At least 2000 Muslims were murdered, around 20,000 homes destroyed and 150,000 displaced.
Afterwards, multiple RSS leaders were caught by Indian press bragging about their quote-unquote great accomplishment with one RSS chief calling it quote a successful experiment that will be repeated all over the country end quote.
Human Rights Watch investigators likewise confirmed the facilitation and subsequent cover-up by Modi and his local regime.
From 2006 to 2008, there's a wave of terrorist bombings in India, killing hundreds of people.
One of the perpetrators was an RSS officer who said, quote, the violence was directly sanctioned by the RSS head.
They didn't just target Muslims.
In 2008, an RSS leader was killed and a Christian community in Odisha was blamed.
So a BJP elected official led a mob on another pogrom, destroying churches, homes and even Christian orphanages.
At least 100 Christians were murdered and tens of thousands fled as refugees.
So, around 2010, as you can imagine, the RSS is in need of some serious rebranding, seeking legitimacy as they come out of the shadows as a rising political force in India, which itself is becoming an economic force on the world stage.
Nowhere is that more important than in the belly of the global superpower, the United States.
They were already planning to run Modi for Prime Minister, and by 2011 had set up training centers across the U.S.
to campaign for him among the Indian diaspora.
But Modi was banned by the U.S.
from entering the country for his criminal past and a pariah within the U.S.
government.
In the event of a Modi victory, the RSS was very keen on having India given a permanent seat on the U.N.
Security Council, which the U.S.
could be a deciding factor in.
So they very much needed an American politician to help launder their image.
At first, all they could find was a Tea Party freak from Illinois named Congressman Joe Walsh.
Walsh accepted the cash and went right to work on Modi's visa.
Oh, Walsh.
Isn't this the guy that was like the anti-Trump hero that like the resistance?
No.
Who ran for president.
I think they have ended up running for president.
I'm not sure.
Oh, God.
Let's you know, he was the one who kept saying he was going to primary Trump.
That's Joe Walsh.
I think so.
Well, there's a clip of him.
Okay, here we go.
Doing his RSS thing.
This is after he's taken quite a bit of donations from the RSS.
Yep, this is him.
Oh my god.
Welcome to the resistance.
Oh my god.
Yeah, play the fucking clip.
Oh, the fucking Never Trumpers.
Do it again, folks.
Chief Minister Modi has become a hero of mine, a cause of mine, a mission of mine.
We had them turn off the music about five minutes ago and we said, no music until Modi is here.
No music until Modi is here.
But the Republican lawmaker was not the most compelling character and was expected to be out of office in the 2012 election.
And then they find Tulsi Gabbard, a young, progressive woman touting military credentials, Hindu-ish but non-Indian, a bright future, and in need of a little financial boost.
RSS affiliates became a financial cornerstone of Tulsi's political career.
The in-depth investigation by Peter Friedrich found that at least 28 high-ranking RSS executives contributed a lot of money, with many more followers in RSS-linked fundraising events.
She became an instant celebrity in RSS circles and media.
This is when it appears she began identifying as Hindu and Hindu-American for the first time in her political career, which had started nine years prior.
For a disciple of Chris Butler, this arrangement was a great way to serve him.
Overnight, Tulsi became an ambassador of American Hinduism to the religion's motherland, establishing Chris Butler as part of that Krishna family tree.
In 2016, when the Indian government issued its prestigious Padma Awards, only two non-Indians received it.
One was Chris Butler's wife.
Tulsi's presentation to the ISKCON conference in India we played earlier, praising the name of her spiritual master, exposed Butler to a community where he was virtually unknown.
You know, interesting point, Butler reportedly sent missionaries around the world but supposedly forbid his followers from ever visiting India, presumably out of fear a more appealing guru would poach from his herd.
But now building relationships with powerful Hindu leaders, Tulsi brought Butler's obscure faction face-to-face with Hindus mainstream.
When Tulsi married in 2015, several of Prime Minister Modi's closest collaborators in the U.S.
attended her wedding.
These little bits of ego boosts for Butler, plus a hefty chunk of cash for Tulsi, was a small price to pay for what Tulsi provided in return.
The RSS had made a very smart investment.
Tulsi, who became co-chair of the Congressional India Caucus, used her pulpit to intervene multiple times in the interest of the RSS.
In 2013, Democrats and Republicans in the House issued a resolution recognizing the RSS violence against Muslims in Gujarat in 2002, that three-day purge, and against Christians in Odisha in 2008.
Tulsi jumped into the fray in opposition.
Saying on the House floor that, quote, it is critically important that we focus on strengthening ties between the two nations, being India and the U.S., and I do not believe that this resolution accomplishes this.
Oh, God, I really it's like cult cut out or open fascist.
I can't decide which one defines her better.
I mean, why not both?
When Modi was running for prime minister in 2014, the U.S.
Congressional Human Rights Commission held a hearing on the dangers his victory could pose to religious minorities.
Tulsi was the lone dissenting voice against it, denouncing the hearing as quote, trying to influence the outcome of the election.
As Modi's success mounted, so too did campaign contributions to Tulsi from the American song.
The day Modi won his election in 2014, Tulsi personally called to congratulate him.
Modi stacked his cabinet with RSS militants, 41 of the 66 seats.
That year, according to Frederick, 25% of her donations came from known song figures.
She continues to tour the country, as she had prior to the election, speaking at pro-BJP events, which were celebrations of his victory.
Three different times, she was photographed wearing a BJP scarf, posing with prominent RSS leaders, as she continued to speak at RSS-affiliated events nationwide.
She later pretended to not know what it was.
Somebody put something around my neck and snapped a picture without my really knowing what it was.
I didn't know what it was.
Oh, man.
Dang.
Got a little necklace from the Nazis.
And there's also a link to the photos if you want to see them.
See if you find it plausible that she didn't know what it was.
Yeah.
I mean, a couple hours before the... And it just says BJP in big letters on all of them.
Look, a couple hours before the live show in Brooklyn, somebody handed me this Nazi flag and told me to wear it on stage.
Whoops.
I did.
I wore it throughout the entire show and, you know, didn't really know what it was.
Just a gift from a fan, you know?
God.
The guy's also, like, literally holding up a picture of Modi in the photo also.
He's like, I don't know who this guy is.
They're both smiling and she's, like, helping him hold the pamphlets.
Now allowed a diplomatic visa to the US, the new Prime Minister held a large rally in New York City.
Passing by the large protests outside, Tulsi attends and hands him a very sentimental gift, the copy of the Bhagavad Gita she carried through childhood, carried in Iraq, and was sworn into Congress on.
It's hard to imagine a more meaningful gesture of loyalty.
From her high-profile position as DNC chair, Tulsi was the single biggest—and basically only—advocate in Washington for Modi.
In just the two years after his victory, Tulsi would travel to India four times to meet with him.
During her first trip, she spoke on a plenary of Hindu nationalists alongside anti-Muslim extremists who called for a, quote, reconversion campaign to, quote, liberate Muslims from Islam.
In 2017, she accepted the offer to chair the World Hindu Congress, which is run by the RSS.
She backed off after Washington reminded her that the CIA had placed the RSS on its naughty list of religious militant organizations.
That same year in India, one anti-RSS journalist and two anti-RSS academics had been assassinated.
By 2019, the marriage of the RSS and Science of Identity was no longer necessary for either party.
Tulsi, having just won another re-election and planning a bid for president, no longer wanted to be dogged by her connections to the fascist movement, like the protest signs which had greeted her at a speaking event at an HBCU reading, Tulsi, mascot of India's KKK.
The RSS didn't really need her anymore either.
When Modi fully solidified power with his re-election in 2019, the RSS came out of the shadows of the Indian state.
He fast-tracked their agenda, implementing a series of far-right nationalist policies, launched Gestapo-style raids on Muslim neighborhoods, kidnapping and torturing Muslim youth, oversaw more pogroms across the country, and could easily repress dissenting activists, journalists, and academics.
RSS militants had become dominant throughout the government, police, and armed forces.
When the RSS first invested in the Gabbard campaign, both Tulsi and Modi were outliers, in need of building reputation and political influence.
By 2019, both were in a very different place.
Modi had a tight grip on power, and Tulsi aiming for her own, which would undoubtedly raise her controversial connections.
Though she would stay loyal to Modi.
At a 2019 town hall, an audience member asked her about Modi's role in the horrific 2002 Gujarat pogrom.
Tulsi shot back, quote, Do you know what instigated those riots?
End quote.
Echoing the RSS line on blaming the massacred victims on what was considered the worst state-sponsored atrocity in modern Indian history.
They essentially parted ways that year, and it never really haunted Gabbard in the press.
The liberal media and Democratic Party establishment would instead focus on her meeting with Bashar al-Assad and the Hillary Clinton-led accusation that she was a Russian agent.
In 2019, media watchdog group FAIR.org wrote In addition to the BJP being stewards of neoliberal restructuring
in India, which is favored by the U.S. political and media establishment, that quote, "it's much harder for the media
to focus on Gabbard's very real connections to the Indian far right than her more fanciful connections to Moscow,
because RSS simply doesn't stir up emotions the way Russia does in a population still seemingly influenced by decades
of Cold War propaganda."
If she was a Russian agent, that would be better.
That would be better than what the reality is.
Listen, you can't smear someone in America by connecting them to a Nazi group, okay?
That would probably just help her.
We gotta focus on the fact that she's a secret communist.
When you think about it, it makes sense her opponents and the Democrats and their
friendly media would never use her science of identity and RSS connections against her
in favor of the Putin-Assad line, which she was always easily able to turn back around on them,
because her relationship with those two disturbing cults link back to when she
was that Democratic Party darling, a favorite of Nancy Pelosi and the like.
If they try to expose her on those connections, they expose themselves for their vapid negligence in elevating such a clearly problematic person.
Most of Gabbard's congressional record in general paints a picture of a progressive Democrat.
She supported and co-sponsored numerous bills for LGBTQ rights, as well as gun control, including a total assault weapons ban.
She introduced the Off Fossil Fuels Act to transition to 100% clean energy by 2035, while she joined protesters at Standing Rock.
She sometimes partnered with Republicans to co-sponsor bills, but for issues the left wouldn't really take issue with, like abolishing the Patriot Act, dropping charges against Edward Snowden, ending the arming of sketchy militias in the Middle East, and the No More Presidential Wars Act, which would make it harder for any administration to attack another country without congressional approval.
Her biggest surge in progressive popularity was when she made the very bold move of torching her bridges with the Democratic Party Establishment in 2016, resigning her chair position on the DNC in order to endorse Bernie Sanders in the primary.
Her reasoning is foreign policy.
Aloha.
I'm Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard.
As a veteran of two Middle East deployments, I know firsthand the cost of war.
I know how important it is.
That our Commander-in-Chief has the sound judgment required to know when to use America's military power and when not to use that power.
As a Vice Chair of the DNC, I'm required to stay neutral in Democratic primaries, but I cannot remain neutral any longer.
The stakes are just too high.
That's why today, I'm endorsing Senator Bernie Sanders to be our next President and Commander-in-Chief of the United States.
We need a Commander-in-Chief who has foresight, who exercises good judgment, and who understands the need for a robust foreign policy which defends the safety and security of the American people, and who will not waste precious lives and money on interventionist wars of regime change.
Such counterproductive wars undermine our national security and economic prosperity.
As these elections continue across the country, the American people are faced with a very clear choice.
We can elect a president who will lead us into more interventionist wars of regime change, or we can elect a president who will usher in a new era of peace and prosperity.
How much of this is just her being like, don't fuck with Modi?
Like, I don't like regimes changing now that fascists have properly... Secured their spot.
Formed a chokehold over one of the biggest nations on earth.
So that got her a piece of what any aspiring politician wanted at the time, the affection of the Bernie mass movement.
She campaigned for him focusing on ending wars and using that money to meet human need.
And this, Florida, is the clear choice that we have before us.
We can cast our vote for Hillary Clinton, who we know, through her actions and through her words, will continue to take us down this path of spending trillions on regime change wars.
Or we can, for Bernie Sanders, end these costly, counterproductive wars and use those resources to rebuild our community and our future here at home.
Because we cannot afford to do both.
Throughout her time in Congress, her anti-war soldier brand was central.
Fighting for some good veterans legislation, her public speeches never omitted reminders that she was a soldier and Iraq veteran.
Seriously, it's very heavy handed.
She does it probably more than Any politician I've ever seen.
And also as an advocate for ending the endless wars.
This reputation was the main talking point of her very dedicated, albeit tiny, base of supporters later on.
Credit where it's due, her rhetoric against Obama's disastrous Libya war, the dangers of pursuing a US regime change operation in Syria, and calls for a swift end to the Afghanistan war were good to hear and stood out in a war-loving Congress.
But in practice, she was frequently at odds with the actual anti-war movement, Behind her progressive-friendly legislative record and constant rhetoric about endless war, there was another side, mostly fueled by the anti-Muslim sentiment she shared with Chris Butler, as well as the RSS nationalists.
Her line was more, we should not police the world so we can instead focus on defeating Islamic extremism.
It's about the mission to take out these Islamic extremists.
So what I'm really hearing you say is that For the United States to get involved in somehow policing other countries is actually distracting from the main mission to combat the origins of terrorism.
Just like in every country, as Prime Minister Modi's priority here in India, as is our President of the United States, the number one priority needs to be keeping our people safe.
Without that safety, without that security, you don't have stability.
Without the stability, you don't have any opportunity for education,
for quality health care, for economic opportunity.
So that needs to be the number one priority.
The United States, I believe, should not be policing the world.
It's not effective.
We have limited resources and it's not the right place.
There is so much that we can do.
We should find partners who we can work with, and again, remain very focused on that mission.
Who is threatening?
Who is providing this great threat to the world today?
Wow.
Yeah.
No, it's so clear, you know, with all the context, what's happening, but... The Muslims.
That's who the threat is.
Yeah.
At closer look, her positions on everything from Putin to Assad to Iran to Libya to drone warfare, it really comes down to this.
If they are fighting Muslims, she wants a strategic alliance.
And if they are Muslims, well, fuck them.
There was always the dumb analysis that she liked quote unquote strongmen, but it was really about this.
Netanyahu, Sisi, Assad, Putin, it all came down to whether or not they were fighting
and killing Muslims.
It really is her worldview, and she thinks we've wasted too many good American boys
doing what allies, bombs, special ops, and sanctions can do.
Probably the reason she coined the term "anti-regime change wars" is so she never had to say
that she was just anti-war.
She opposed closing the Guantanamo Bay torture camp and even releasing any detainees, most
of whom were innocent, and defended the CIA torture program when its report was released
in 2014, asserting she would support any torture necessary to keep Americans safe.
Let me ask you in the end, as a soldier, how do you respond to the much-discussed report on the CIA's use of torture and what some Americans have called a blot on American values?
Do you share that opinion?
Or as a soldier, do you have a very different perspective on the use of torture?
Um, very bluntly I'm conflicted.
I'm conflicted on this report.
There are, I think the jury is still out on the report itself.
There have been comments that there are things missing or it was incomplete and there are differing opinions on the report itself.
But I, as I think about it myself, Clearly, we would not like to see any human, any person around the world being treated inhumanely.
On the other side, I can also understand that any of us, if we're in a situation where our family or our community, our state or our country is in a place where, let's say in an hour, a nuclear bomb or an attack will go off unless this information is found, I believe that if I were the President of the United States, That I would do everything in my power to keep the American people safe.
The ticking time bomb scenario.
If you were, let's say, Jack Bauer, and you had, let's say, one hour, approximately one episode out of 24 of them, obviously we should be torturing.
She said it was, quote, mind-boggling that Obama had chosen not to start bombing Syria, risking a wider war, and was frequently on Fox News attacking Obama for refusing to use the words radical Islamic extremists.
And what is so frustrating now, as we look at the situation there, our administration refuses to recognize who our enemy is.
And unless and until that happens, then it's impossible to come up with a strategy to defeat that enemy.
We have to recognize that this is about radical Islam.
This is as much a military war as it is an ideological war.
And we've got to understand what that ideology is and challenge it, understand it, so that we can defeat it and protect our citizens, protect the American people.
Yeah, mind you, this at a time when Obama and the entire Democratic Party were not using that phrasing, radical Islamic extremism, for, you know, to repair their image after the Bush era.
And she said it plainly to the Hawaii Tribune-Herald in 2016, quote, when it comes to the war against terrorists, I'm a hawk.
Yep.
Anti-war.
Yeah.
Funny enough, for being the biggest Obama foreign policy critic in the Democratic Party, the foreign policy vision she articulates is closer to his than any other.
She argues for a special operations unit to fight wars in the shadows rather than conventional units.
That's the Obama model.
Even her good rhetoric about bringing troops home from Afghanistan was really about the use of drones and special ops in their place, which was the Obama plan as well.
And she was also criticizing Obama from the right, wanting him to go harder, expand the special operations, etc.
She consistently advocates for the use of drone strikes, even after it was learned they had a, like, over 90% civilian casualty rate, even after the 2021 war crime that marked the end of the Afghanistan war, where a U.S.
drone strike killed seven children and three adults who were completely innocent.
It was actually, you know, that one's so tragic because it was a guy loading water to his trunk to bring home to his family, and the U.S.
said that it was a guy making a bomb, and so they just blew him up with his entire family.
Tulsi went on Tucker Carlson's show right afterwards to give a wholehearted defense of drone warfare, which was just a disgusting thing to do.
Congressman, thanks so much for coming on.
So you get to lie, I mean this will not shock you because you've seen it so much, but you get to lie about the loss of human life, you get caught, and nothing happens to you?
What kind of system is that?
I mean, this kind of accountability is critical.
I want to point out first that anytime there are civilian casualties in war, it is tragic and terrible.
War is a terrible thing, and I think it's important for the American people to understand that Islamist jihadists are continuing to wage war against us.
And the Islamist ideology, not the same as the religion of Islam, but this Islamist ideology, which is a political ideology that inspired the terrorist attacks on our country on 9-11, is the greatest threat that we're facing right now in this country and the world.
It is the foundation of governance of so-called Islamic countries like Turkey and Iran and Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.
And it's what's behind the discriminatory policies that they have in these countries against Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, atheists and others.
So as long as these Islamist jihadists are waging war against us, we have to work to defeat them.
militarily and ideologically. And militarily, we have two choices in how we do that. Number one,
we can continue to invade and occupy and nation-building countries around the world,
just as we did in Afghanistan at great cost. Number two, we can take a targeted approach
using airstrikes, using our special forces to go in and go after these terrorist cells.
The reality is that the cost, the cost to the American people, the cost to our troops, the cost to civilians will be far less if we take this very targeted approach to go after these jihadist terrorist cells than if we continue making the very same mistakes that we saw in Afghanistan and other parts of the world of invasion, occupation and nation building.
Yeah, it's interesting to hear her talk about, you know, how Christians are oppressed in these Muslim nations when she was like associated with the RSS that literally did a pogrom on Christians.
Yeah.
Never shy about what drove her foreign policy views, she would always explain when she says her positions were shaped by, quote, seeing the true cost of war.
She means the cost on American soldiers while maintaining we have a great enemy, Islam itself.
The president refers to an organization or an ideology.
Do you think the type of killing that's been evidenced today, and I guess this occurred a couple of weeks ago, changes everything and puts pressure on the president to sort of wake up and realize what's going on?
Well, I think the danger of calling it an organization misses the point that this isn't about one specific group.
And until we recognize that it is this radical Islamic ideology that's fueling this, the name of the group Change.
The tactics may change based on a different geographic location or based on what's happening on the ground.
And again, we see this because we have ISIS, we have Al Qaeda, we have Boko Haram and other various groups, especially in the Middle East, but people who are operating around the world.
Each of them have the one commonality of being fueled by this radical Islamic ideology.
So we can't say well this is about one organization only because if we do that then there's no way we can defeat this enemy and defeat this ideology both militarily and ideologically.
Her belief that terrorism was a product of the Quran itself, not blowback from colonialism and imperialism, made its way into her policies on refugees as well.
In 2015, she was one of 47 right-wing Democrats who joined the entire GOP in voting for the SAFE Act, which would basically halt all admission of refugees from Iraq or Syria two months prior.
She had personally introduced a resolution that would prioritize Christians and Yazidis for refugee status, which is basically the same as Trump's Muslim ban.
So if you're from Iraq or Syria and you're a Muslim, you could not come in, but if you're a Christian, you could come in.
Barely two years after Egyptian dictator Abdel El-Sisi commanded a raid onto a Muslim protest camp in Cairo, massacring over a thousand civilians, according to Human Rights Watch, Tulsi visited him and praised him for his effort to fight Islamists.
She advocated a racist plan of sectarian disaster, which Joe Biden was derided for a decade prior, of imposing a partition of Iraq into three countries along ethnic and religious lines.
While in 2020 she introduced a resolution condemning sanctions as quote modern-day warfare, she previously voted in favor of punitive sanctions many times, in particular on Iran and Russia.
She co-sponsored the 2013 Nuclear Iran Prevention Act aimed at reducing Iran's oil production to 80% and escalating tensions.
She spoke at the AIPAC conference the year they were mobilizing against the Iran nuclear deal, and she constantly defended Netanyahu and Israel's wars against Palestinians before having to pretend for a little bit during her 2020 run.
During the brutal massacre of Gaza in 2014, she co-sponsored two separate bills pledging uncritical support for Israeli quote-unquote self-defense and authorizing more military funding.
She voted to send weapons to Ukraine after the 2014 coup, which Obama resisted calls to do, while today she says Democrats doing so is risking World War III.
Also, the self-described civil liberties champion voted in 2019 for a House resolution condemning the boycott-divestment-sanctions movement for Palestinian human rights, as it was being banned in anti-free speech legislation in most states across the country.
She opposed measures to reduce spending on aircraft carriers, submarines, and wasteful war spending, and repeatedly voted to increase the behemoth Pentagon
budget. The anti-war congresswoman would take a nice reward for those votes. Her two largest
donors in 2016 were military industrial complex powerhouses Boeing and Lockheed Martin. She would rake
in more from others like Raytheon and BAE Systems. She also served as a five-year term member
on the Council of Foreign Relations, a highly problematic think tank that acts more like a cabal
think tank policy generator with longtime board members like Henry Kissinger.
There's also the issue that the Winter Soldier stayed in the army, rising through the ranks.
Again, it has to be stressed how contradictory it is for her brand as the anti-war soldier to stay in the military if she believed these were wasteful, counterproductive wars.
So there was always quite a bit of honesty behind the progressive veil she put on back in 2012 and wore through three terms.
Tulsi's foray into the 2020 presidential election marked a switch in her branding, but it would not be the last.
She backed off some of Bernie's core platform, but stayed to the left of the slate of liberal cutouts and joined them in attacking Trump.
It's why I enlisted after 9-11.
I've served as a soldier for over 16 years, deployed twice to the Middle East, and serve in Congress now for almost seven years.
I know what patriotism is, and I've known many great patriots throughout my life.
And let me tell you this, Donald Trump is not behaving like a patriot.
Oh, why?
Why has this become the entire fucking Democratic platform?
We love the military.
We're better patriots.
You're traitors.
Oh, fuck.
Well, she does it like nobody else.
Yeah.
One of the more bizarre... You know what?
Fuck it.
She should be leading the whole party.
She has the perfect profile to be leading this party.
One of the more bizarre elements of her campaign was that she began every campaign event with the Pledge of Allegiance, which, like, having been in the Army, like, you don't say the Pledge of Allegiance in the Army.
It's like a thing you just do in, like, school.
Yeah, great time.
There's no time after high school that you say the Pledge of Allegiance as a group, right?
But she said it all the time and even put it in a campaign ad.
I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, Under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
I'm Tulsi Gabbard. I'm running for president and I approve this message because I love our country.
It's why I decided to enlist after 9/11, why I serve in Congress, and why I'm offering to
serve as your commander-in-chief. To protect you, our Constitution, our freedom.
Can you imagine? Psychotic.
Can you imagine if she won?
Well...
She's still my... She's still... She's still around, Jake, and she... She was just in the wrong... She's got a hit podcast, you know?
She's gonna be with us for a while.
She's fucking guest-hosting Tucker Carlson.
Yeah, she's young.
She's only like two years older than me.
She also posted, like, a lot of workout videos.
79% of her donors to her presidential campaign were men, which is higher than normal, generating some spikes in Google searches by getting some dunks in on Cop Mala and Mayor Pete during the debates.
Her only justification for staying in the race, polling at 1% or less, was that only Tulsi, with overseas experience, could finally end the endless wars.
Her supporters argued Bernie was just not up for that task.
Oh, you fucking rubes.
Yet Bernie outflanked her on the issue as actual crises broke out throughout the race.
When the Trump admin backed a far-right coup deposing Evo Morales in Bolivia, a regime change operation, Bernie came out the same day denouncing it.
Tulsi remained silent for two weeks until she was trolled into making a statement.
When Trump risked reigniting the Iraq War by bombing a convoy of Iraqi militia allied with the government against ISIS and rushed 4,000 US troops to Baghdad to prepare for a fight, Tulsi called for quote strategic purpose, echoed the neoconservative line that Trump had attacked an Iranian militia, and said nothing of the troop deployment.
And when Trump put us on the precipice of a major regional war with the brazen assassination of General Soleimani, the most beloved figure in Iran, Tulsi was left twiddling her thumbs over her tough-on-Iran legacy while Sanders held a major press event to rally the country against any further U.S.
military action.
By the end, all the catchphrases she had tried to put out to win popularity in the primary—ending regime change war and opposing the neolibs and neocons—would fall by the wayside as she set herself on a whole new path.
The Final Rebrand Her confusing Biden endorsement can probably be explained by two motives.
One was on the off chance that she would get a position in the Biden administration.
The other being maybe just a fuck you to Bernie whose politics she could finally stop pretending to share.
But something interesting happened as she sat as a lame duck in Congress.
A new Tulsi began to emerge.
While the right wing liked her in the past for her tough on terror talk and owning the libs, they would now begin to love her.
Suddenly, issues that did not appear at all in her primary campaign or congressional record, but were popular with the MAGA movement, became her new cause.
In her final weeks in office, Tulsi co-sponsored four blatantly pandering right-wing trash bills with Republicans.
The first was called the Break Up Big Tech Act to quote-unquote stop censorship by repealing Section 230.
While stopping censorship is not a right-wing issue, Section 230 is.
Trump had just refused to pass the military budget without the repeal of Section 230, which his base loved.
Tulsi praised him for it and backed the repeal.
As Mike Masnick put it, who's an expert on tech laws, quote, Tulsi Gabbard would do well to understand that it's the First Amendment she's mad about, not Section 230.
Removing 230 would not stop sites from taking down content.
It will encourage more of it.
Then she joined this dipshit Republican named Rodney Davis to introduce the Election Fraud Prevention Act aimed at stopping so-called ballot harvesting.
Uh-huh, yeah.
She's going full 2,000 mules, folks.
Yeah.
So ballot harvesting, of course, is the right-wing trope that has culminated in armed right-wing militiamen posting up at ballot drop boxes throughout this last midterm elections.
In her announcement of the bill on social media, she shared a video from the far-right hoax group Project Veritas as evidence.
The video was a highly racist attack on the top target of the MAGA crowd, Congressman Ilhan Omar.
It was a 100% staged incident, so-called assumingly proving that Omar had won only through ballot harvesting.
Tulsi, of course, knew who Project Veritas was and their reputation, but the dog whistle mattered more than the eventual debunking.
I do wonder, like, she's burned everyone before, but the thing with the MAGA people on the right is that they actually kind of align with her politics.
Maybe she's here to stay with that.
She's finally able to be who she is.
Yeah, I think so.
Their masks came off just enough that she felt comfortable in, you know, aligning them.
And you think back to when her career started, it was the way to get power for her was you're in a blue state of Hawaii.
Yeah.
It's got to be the Democrats. Yeah, I talk liberal. You can't hate gay people, but now there's a new path
Mm-hmm, and also that's just this is what she spent all her remaining
You know someone who supposedly like cares about all these big things that you talked about in our campaign
It's like, okay. Well, you're out. You got like two months left. What are you gonna do at the time?
This is all she fucking did with the time just nothing about war and all that. Well, she was building a podcast
audience So another sector she was obviously pandering to she
introduced amendments to strengthen these so-called Born Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act.
This absurd law is meant to play into the right-wing delusion that healthy babies are being aborted in horrific ways right before being born and the methods are so crude that some are surviving it.
The act mandates that doctors have to save the lives of these survivor babies as if there are doctors in this country providing post-birth abortions.
Insane.
The only point of Tulsi introducing these amendments is to excite a new base, one she's never had, anti-abortion extremists.
Lastly, a return to her anti-gay roots, and the issue that most defines her political brand today.
Gabbard wrote and introduced the Protect Women in Sports Act, which bans trans women from playing on women's athletic teams, including in high school.
This was basically at the beginning of the upswing in trans panic that has manifested in terror and violence across the nation, including the recent massacre at the popular drag club in Colorado.
The bill caters to the hysteria over a false belief that men are pretending to be women so they can dominate women's sports.
Like the other three bills, this one is proposing a solution to a totally made-up issue solely meant to gin up far-right excitement.
It's extremely notable that not a single one of these issues, which she spent all her remaining time on in Congress, were things that she raised during her presidential campaign just a couple months prior.
While some may have assumed her career was over, she was clearly setting herself up for a whole new path to celebrity.
Her rising star was finally about to really take off, just in a different universe.
This pivot was so strong and sudden, it seems to indicate that maybe she had a new advisor.
Perhaps it was Steve Bannon, the notorious behind-the-scenes operative who once puppeteered Sarah Palin.
The Hill reported in 2016 that Bannon quote, loves Tulsi Gabbard, and arranged for her to meet with Trump right after he was elected, presumably to audition for a cabinet position at Bannon's recommendation.
And Tulsi did take that meeting.
Or maybe it was Grandfather Butler providing his continued guidance, having abandoned the idea that for her to achieve power and influence, she needs to say what you have to say to play the electoral game in the blue state of Hawaii.
Now she can go back to her embrace of virulent homophobia and now transphobia.
There is a new media ecosystem, one that immensely rewards former liberals turned right, and a Republican electoral field that is open to the most bizarre characters.
Even easier, her right-wing celebrity status could earn her a cabinet position in the next Republican administration, and you can already buy Trump-Gabbard or DeSantis-Gabbard 2024 t-shirts online from a few different vendors.
She started building in the right-wing ecosphere right away.
She's on Truth Social, of course, and she joined Dave Rubin's right-wing Patreon called Locals, not just as a founding content creator, but apparently also as an investor.
She spent the next year or so focusing primarily on anti-trans and anti-democratic party videos, frequently appearing on Fox News and doing Twitter videos of herself, and also she seems to get more religious.
Aloha everyone.
On this Easter Sunday and during Holy Week, I just wanted to send you and your loved ones my love and best wishes.
Today, I'm taking the opportunity to meditate on the will of Jesus Christ, to love God with all my heart and my being, and to love others as I love myself.
I pray for His grace that I can be a vessel for such love.
I'm convinced that only by resting our hearts in God's unconditional love can we actually find relief.
Jesus, huh?
Wow!
A sociopath as well, eh?
Haven't really heard about that guy from her.
Exactly.
2019 would be the first time she refers to Jesus Christ on social media and since does it pretty regularly.
And says His with a capital H. Yeah.
I mean, that's the... When she says Jesus Christ, she is picturing an elderly bald man with a very hairy neck.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, when she... Being the first Hindu American in Congress was good branding for her rising the Democrats.
But now that she's appealing to a far-right crowd, being Hindu is probably not so much helping her.
Yeah.
So you got to start throwing Jesus in there.
In her new era, she remained silent when issues that Congresswoman Gabbard would have no doubt chimed in on, like SCOTUS overturning Roe v. Wade.
She said nothing about it.
But she would have plenty to say on other issues.
For example, she helped lead the backlash against Netflix for a QAnon-inspired conspiracy
about the film Cuties, tweeting, "Child porn cuties will certainly whet the appetite of
pedophiles and help fuel the child sex trafficking trade."
I just...
Oh my God, she is...
wet the appetite. What is what is wrong? She also shared a photo from it too. So it's like
just trying to so if she thinks it's wetting the appetite of pedophiles, why are you sharing
the provocative photo? She she got a permanent gig at Fox News led several rallies for her
new hallmark policy of stripping trans athletes of their right to play. It is the height of
hypocrisy that as we stand here today, there are those who claim to be feminists who claim
to be champions for women's rights, who are at the very same time simultaneously denying
the fact that we exist.
Denying the fact that there is a woman that is biologically distinct from a man.
The Biden administration's actions today are seeking to erase the entire female sex and reject the objective reality that there are biological and physiological differences between men and women.
Yeah.
My conspiracy theory is that, uh, that white streak is dyed.
I think it's fake.
Oh, really?
I think it's fake.
Only a monster like this would be like, I want one single streak of silver in my hair and I'll say that it's natural and I'll say that I keep it to remember the soldiers.
This, that is a psychopath.
I'm sorry.
I've also never seen anyone with a grey hair patch like that.
It's a perfect streak!
It's like X-Men Storm's streak.
Or Jean Grey.
Yeah, it's just, it's not...
War is funny that way.
Change your hair in very specific manners.
I mean, she does say that that's where her hair started going gray in that spot, was in Iraq.
Yes, because of the stress, yes.
I've got one strand of white hair for every Muslim I've gummed down.
There's also kind of a funny part from her speech at the end-child mutilation rally where she seems to imply that maybe she would have been trans herself had she grown up in this era.
Because our kids are having their childhood stolen from them.
I think there are a lot of you who are here who may be able to relate.
Women here.
I grew up a tomboy.
I thought the boys were having all the fun.
I cut my hair short.
I wanted nothing more than to be a boy.
Because it was cool.
And it was fun.
But guess what?
Life moved on.
I moved on and I grew up.
I cannot imagine the kinds of pressures that are happening with our kids today, with our young girls who are tomboys.
What the fuck?
What the?
Oh, God.
Yeah, this is a pretty consistent sort of anti-trans talking point.
The belief that if you were a girl and you were into traditionally masculine things, and then you moved on from that particular phase, that if you were like that today, then you would be pressured into becoming trans, which is, of course, ludicrous.
Yeah.
She also speaks at CPAC.
Our freedom comes from God, not from any other person.
Not from anyone in government.
Our freedom comes from God, and to recognize others as children of God is to appreciate that we belong to God and no one else.
Then, on October 11, 2022, she had a major announcement.
She was officially resigning from the Democratic Party.
Her rationale was in language catered to a QAnon MAGA evangelical audience.
I can no longer remain in today's Democratic Party that's under the complete control of an elitist cabal of warmongers who are driven by cowardly wokeness, who divide us by racializing every issue and stoking anti-white racism, who actively work to undermine our God-given freedoms that are enshrined in our Constitution, who are hostile to people of faith and spirituality, Who demonize the police but protect criminals at the expense of law-abiding Americans.
Who believe in open borders.
Who weaponize the national security state to go after their political opponents.
And above all, who are dragging us ever closer to nuclear war.
Now, I believe in a government that's of the people, by the people, and for the people.
Unfortunately, today's Democratic Party does not.
Instead, it stands for a government that is of, by, and for the powerful elite.
I'm calling on my fellow common-sense, independent-minded Democrats to join me in leaving the Democratic Party.
If you can no longer stomach the direction that the so-called woke Democratic Party ideologues are taking our country, then I invite you to join me.
So while once she used the formulation of fighting the neolibs and neocons, she's now fine with the neocons and is singularly focused on the Democratic Party as the enemy.
While now claiming to be independent, maybe an independent for godly government, in the 2022 midterms she backed a slate of reactionary freaks, 12 Republican candidates, no Democrats of course, including Kerry Lake, J.D.
Tom Barrett, Blake Masters, and funny for her constant appearances on Tucker about
how the Democrats have been too much of warmongers on the Ukraine war, she
endorsed Superhawk General Bolak who argued for a US invasion of Ukraine to
fight Russia head-on. Her independence, like her previous affiliation, is what is
useful to the right-wing and to her career. "Not a Republican who
agrees with Republicans." In this video she has a very new story for how she
became a Democrat in the first place.
And so when I was 21 years old, I decided to run for Hawaii State House so that I could actually be in a position to do that, to protect the environment.
I had never had any interest in running for office.
Before that, I was not politically affiliated.
But as I was filling out the paperwork to go and file my election papers, I had to choose which box I would check.
I had to choose which party I would affiliate with.
So before doing that, I thought, I need to do my research.
And I did that.
And as I read more and learned more, I was inspired by Democrats who stood up against the war in Vietnam.
I was inspired by those who here in Hawaii fought for plantation workers who were being abused and exploited by wealthy landowners but had nobody to stand up for them and be their voice.
I was inspired by leaders like Martin Luther King Jr.
Basically, the only reason she was a Democrat is because she just she filled out her paper.
She's like, do I check Republican or do I check Democrat?
I mean, I don't know.
I'm thinking about my beach cleanups.
I guess I'll be a Democrat.
Yeah, that was her issue, as we learned in her youth was beach cleanups.
Yep.
So she went on Joe Rogan right afterwards to explain why she had finally had enough with the Democratic Party.
That's the danger of it, is the people in charge of the Democratic Party, whether they actually hold positions or they just are influential in the Democratic Party, have created this cult-like atmosphere and fomented this fear so much so that people who are really in a position to impact this, to stand up against it and say, hold on guys, this is literally insane and needs to stop.
They're too afraid to do so because of what the ramifications will be.
The Democratic Party of the past, the Democratic Party that I joined, doesn't exist anymore.
The party that was, you know, the party of JFK, of Dr. Martin Luther King, the party of inclusivity, the big tent party that welcomed and encouraged this marketplace of ideas and conversations and people who held different views.
The party that championed women and equality and the rights of people in our society.
That party just doesn't exist anymore and instead we have a party that's being led by people who have gone insane with this ideological fanaticism.
And there are a lot of different issues, a lot of different examples, you know, the whole issue of biology.
I mean, one thing that is consistent with her is that she is always super full of shit.
Yeah, she strikes me as a PR robot that's just like been created in a...
Like, honestly, and I know that, you know, given what we've like heard about her upbringing,
but she like strikes me as somebody who like never had a childhood,
because of course she was abused, you know, within this cult and, you know, brainwashed, however you want to say it.
But yeah, she, when she speaks, she looks like someone that is like doing their very best to sound like they're a human
being.
To me, the funny part about her big announcement was it wasn't really an announcement that she was leaving the Democrats because that had been pretty much assumed for a while.
Right.
And she's not in political office.
So the only real meaning is that she's like changing her party affiliation as a registered voter, which is, you know, not super important.
Yeah.
But it was really an announcement of her new YouTube channel.
The Tulsi Gabbard Show launched the same day.
In her first episode, she debuts her new nine point political program.
Um, so there's, I don't think we should play all of these.
I mean, it's from that same video you're playing.
It's like she has these, she has these new nine points that are her new platform, the new issues that she really cares about.
Nuclear war, rule of law, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, right to bear arms, which is funny because she was a pro-gun control person when she was in in civil liberties, but they all are in complete right-wing
framing. Like on freedom of religion, it's Democrats don't believe in freedom of religion and
they're trying to repress.
They want to take God out of the Pledge of Allegiance and shit like that, which is
not happening. Under rule of law, she talks about how crime is skyrocketing, murder skyrocketing.
And as her main example talks about how the DOJ under Biden is prosecuting pro-life activists who took over an abortion clinic and blocked access to an abortion clinic and how terrible that is.
It's all about critical race theory.
I mean, her point on racism is wild.
I mean, maybe you should play the beginning of the racism one because it kind of speaks to her full transformation now.
Today's Democratic Party racializes everything and blatantly foments anti-white racism.
Modern-day segregation in schools is being promoted by racial profiteers like Robin DiAngelo and the corrupt self-identified cultural Marxists who lead Black Lives Matter.
Cultural Marxists.
Here we fucking are.
Yeah.
She has a another one of her points is anti-women, which she says the Democrats are.
Of course, that other line we heard Democrats erasing the existence of women as a category and saying that the Democrats are trying to get rid of the word mother, which they're not.
But the anti-woman thing is, of course, nothing about reproductive rights.
It's all that.
anti-trans stuff. Another, her final point is the family and how Democrats are trying to undermine
families. By that she means not letting families dictate school curriculum, meaning parents aren't
allowed to decide that critical race theory shouldn't be taught in schools.
Public school districts are implementing policies that sexualize kids as young as
five or six years old. Taxpayer dollars are being used to bring in drag strippers and encourage
gender transition surgery in minors, all kept secret from their parents.
Teachers not being allowed to talk to parents about what's going on with their children at school.
She also goes on to say they're encouraging chemical castration of kids.
Wow.
Fully transformed and the butterfly is beautiful.
General Tulsi.
There is one final move that Tulsi made after leaving office that is noteworthy.
She's not just strategizing her continued rise through the ranks of media and politics, but through the ranks of the military as well.
She left the Hawaii National Guard for the Army Reserves, a unit based in California, where she of course does not Live in order to join the Civil Affairs and Psychological Operations Command.
This unit is, to put it lightly, fucking shady, and feels pretty on-brand for someone who has always felt like a psy-op anyway.
A likely reason for doing this is career advancement as well as deployments.
The National Guard doesn't really deploy overseas like it did when the wars were going badly.
Funny coincidence, her new unit, the 351st Civil Affairs Command, was once led by General Paul E. Valley, who is, as you know, a QAnon-er.
In the summer of 2021, she deployed with a special forces unit to the Horn of Africa on a mission to, as she proudly worded it on Twitter, quote, go after Al Qaeda-affiliated jihadists.
On that deployment, she was promoted to lieutenant colonel, which means, for those unfamiliar with the military ranks, she's just two promotions away from becoming a general.
Oh, good, yeah.
Let's follow in the path of Flynn.
Hopefully we can get a new Flynn.
Give her some stars.
Yeah, Tulsi's quest for power is far from over.
Maybe this isn't the last iteration of Tulsi's image that we'll see, or maybe she's settled into one that will really deliver for her.
Either way, she's not going anywhere.
Hopefully, as her celebrity grows, she won't be able to evade the two cult connections that she has mostly dodged so far.
I have a feeling she will be able to dodge those.
This has been quite a two-parter.
Obviously, this podcast is going to take down Tulsi Gabbard.
She will be done.
You will no longer have to tune into her highly successful podcast.
It gets way more listens to this.
And you won't just sound crazy when you're at a dinner party with your family ranting about this stuff.
But it's real, and yeah, thanks Mike for, you know, painting a big arrow to who we are for a group of clearly psychotic Scientologists that are somehow more fascist than Scientology.
Sorry, sorry.
Sorry, but my pleasure as well.
Yeah, it's really astonishing.
Her path, 10 years, but it also paints such a good, I think, picture of the American political system that can allow someone like this to operate and just continue to ascend.
It is truly impressive.
You know, she was raised in this cult, she is beholden to it, and she is willing to go
in whatever direction is necessary to serve the needs of that cult leader or the ideology
that she was born in.
And that's how she can go up there and seem so rehearsed, and it seems like such a performance.
It's how she can get on video and profess her love for Jesus Christ, because that doesn't
really matter to her.
And I would bet that Chris Butler is the kind of guy who would pat her on the shoulder and
You know, if you need to go out there and profess your love for Jesus Christ because that will net you more influence and more funding and we continue whatever it is our agenda is, then you know what?
Krishna would want you to do that in service of Him.
So, Mike, tell us a bit about your work and where people can find it.
Yeah, sure.
Well, you can listen to my show, The Eyes Left Podcast, which is a military anti-war socialist podcast that is hosted by myself and other veterans.
I also have a show called The Empire Files that's both video on YouTube and podcast as well that I do with my partner, Abby Martin.
We have a film called Gaza Fight for Freedom, and we're working on another climate change documentary right now, which you can find out about at earthsgreatestenemy.com.
Yeah, can't wait to check that out.
And go and investigate Mike.
Do not investigate us, listener.
Especially if you are Tulsi Gabbard.
Thank you for listening to another episode of the QAnon Anonymous podcast.
You can go to patreon.com slash QAnon Anonymous and subscribe for five bucks a month to get a whole second episode every week, plus access to our entire archive of premium episodes and our extra shows like Trickle Down and Man Clan.
If you're already a subscriber, thank you.
It helps us stay advertising-free and editorially independent.
For everything else, we have a website, QAnonAnonymous.com.
Listener, until next week, may the Deep Dish bless you and keep you.
It's not a conspiracy.
It's a fact.
And now, today's auto-tune.
I've been practicing yoga sanas and yoga meditation for most of my life.
Beginning my day with yoga, the rise of the morning sun, and ending it with yoga meditation, I find peace, tranquility,
