Tulsi Gabbard has questioned the credibility of US intelligence and denounced successive presidents, including Donald Trump, over military interventions.
Now she has been asked to serve by Trump — and lead US intelligence.
Like few others in US politics, Gabbard defies simple party categorization — a war veteran who denounces war, a Democrat turned Republican, a vegan climate activist who denounces liberal values, and now an establishment skeptic sent to head part of it.
With her prolific media appearances and articulate, undistilled speaking style, Gabbard has built a loyal following in segments of both the right and the left.
In an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal in 2019 explaining her presidential ambitions, she said she wanted the United States to stop “trying to police the world, no more overthrowing governments, an end to the new Cold War and nuclear arms race, and redirecting our resources to urgent needs at home.”
Rejecting the term isolationist, Gabbard denounced both Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Hillary Clinton for, in her view, believing that “the only way to interact with other nations is by bombing them or starving them with draconian sanctions.”
Her skepticism has also led to heavy criticism of her judgment from more traditional US policymakers.
In 2017, she publicly questioned US intelligence that found that Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad had used chemical weapons to kill dozens of people. Trump responded with a retaliatory missile strike — boasting of toughness in contrast to his predecessor Barack Obama, who opposed intervention in Syria even though he had explicitly warned Assad of a “red line” against using chemical weapons.
Gabbard pointed out that US intelligence had been wrong about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the stated reason for Bush’s war.
On Syria, she told CNN at the time that on chemical weapons she did not want to “blindly follow this escalation of a counterproductive regime-change war.”
She traveled to Syria to meet Assad, whom the United States was trying to isolate over the brutal civil war, saying that she wanted to find ways to reach peace.
Gabbard did not spare Trump from criticism in his last term. When he ordered a strike in Baghdad that killed top Iranian Revolutionary Guards commander Qassem Soleimani, Gabbard said Trump carried out an “illegal and unconstitutional act of war.”
Leading Hindu in US politics
Gabbard has direct experience with war, having served in Iraq with the Army National Guard of her native Hawaii.
Her father, born in American Samoa, continues to serve in the Hawaii State Senate and, in his own maverick stance, remains a Democrat despite prominently opposing LGBTQ rights.
Gabbard’s mother, born on the US mainland, embraced Hinduism and raised her children in the tradition.
Gabbard, whose first name Tulsi is a sacred plant in Hinduism, is a lifelong vegetarian and swore her oath to enter Congress on the Bhagavad Gita.
Gabbard got married in a Hindu ceremony to a Hawaii-based cinematographer, Abraham Williams, who met her while shooting her campaign advertisements and proposed to her while surfing in the sunset.
Her outspoken embrace of India’s Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi has alienated her from some of her left-wing supporters.
However, during her tenure in Congress, Gabbard took a number of staunchly progressive domestic positions, calling for a complete transition away from fossil fuels to save the planet from climate change and advocating for the national legalization of marijuana.
But in 2022, a year after leaving Congress, she announced that she was exiting the Democratic Party, saying it had turned into an “elitist cabal of warmongers driven by cowardly wokeness” that stokes “anti-white racism.”
Her strident tone led critics to believe she was auditioning for roles in a future Republican administration, a view reinforced when she appeared beside Trump in his latest campaign and announced she was becoming a Republican.
Trump had welcomed her, she said, and had turned the Republicans into “the party of peace.”
