Less than six years ago and before she became President Donald Trump’s pick for Director of National Intelligence, former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, then a Hawaii Democrat, ran for the Democratic nomination for president. She had raised her national profile in 2016 as a backer of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (D-Vt.) campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. During that era, Gabbard was known as a critic of U.S. military interventions and domestic surveillance.
Gabbard dropped out of the race after failing to gain traction following her participation in televised debates and endorsed eventual nominee Joe Biden. After leaving Congress, she became a frequent guest on Fox News, where she criticized the Biden administration. In 2022, she left the Democratic Party, saying that it was “now under the complete control of an elitist cabal of warmongers driven by cowardly wokeness.” Even before she switched parties Gabbard was a controversial figure whose frequent ideological shifts have left many observers wondering about the nature of her core principles.
Has a history of hostility to LGBTQ rights
Gabbard’s father founded an organization called the Alliance for Traditional Marriage that helped pass a constitutional amendment in 1998 that “gave the Hawaii state legislature power to ‘reserve marriage to opposite-sex couples,'” said CNN. She continued to oppose same-sex marriage as a member of the Hawaii state legislature. Her past work and comments about LGBTQ issues came under fresh scrutiny during her 2019 run for the White House. She was “viewed suspiciously by many on the left because of her opposition to civil unions for same-sex couples while a state legislator,” said The Washington Post.
In January 2019, she posted a video apologizing for many of her past views. “In my past, I said and believed things that were wrong, and worse, they were hurtful to people in the LGBTQ community and to their loved ones,” said Gabbard in the video. Gabbard “has repeatedly voted in Congress to protect gay rights,” said Politico in 2019 about her record in the U.S. House. Near the end of her final term in the House, she received criticism from trans-rights organizations “after she joined Republican Rep. Markwayne Mullin to introduce legislation specifying that Title IX protections for female athletes are based on “biological sex,” said USA Today.
Resurrected anti-LGBTQ rhetoric after leaving the Democratic Party
After switching parties, Gabbard’s rhetoric about LGBTQ issues seemed to change again. At the 2023 Conservative Political Action Conference, Gabbard “baselessly claimed that the LGBTQ+ community was trying to gain acceptance for pedophiles,” said the Anti-Defamation League. In 2022, she backed Florida’s controversial parental rights bill that “prohibits schools from discussing sexual orientation or gender identity with students from kindergarten through third grade,” said Fox News. Critics dubbed the law “Don’t Say Gay.”
Connected to a controversial religious leader
Gabbard also has ties to Chris Butler, the leader of the Science of Identity Foundation, who has adopted the name Siddhaswarupananda. The Foundation is “a secretive offshoot of the Hare Krishna movement vehemently opposed to same-sex relationships and abortion, and deeply suspicious of Islam,” said The New York Times. Gabbard’s parents were “both deeply enmeshed in Butler’s movement” and had sent her to a boarding school in the Philippines operated by Butler when she was a teenager, said The Daily Beast. Butler has “a long history of espousing anti-gay rhetoric,” said Honolulu Civil Beat. While Gabbard claims to no longer be associated with the group, she included a blessing from Butler in her 2015 wedding ceremony. “Some ex-members describe the Foundation as an abusive cult,” said Business Insider.
Held a clandestine 2017 meeting with Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad
In 2017, Gabbard participated in a weeklong junket to Syria, which was embroiled in a long-running civil war that had already claimed hundreds of thousands of lives. According to Gabbard, she visited “refugees, Syrian opposition leaders, widows and family members of Syrians fighting alongside groups like al-Qaeda, and Syrians aligned with the Assad regime,” said the Associated Press. She also secretly met with Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, whose embattled regime had repeatedly deployed chemical weapons in attacks against Syrian rebels and civilians in an effort to maintain power. Her visit with Assad drew flak from both Democrats and Republicans. Her visit with Assad was “so dispiriting” because she returned to the United States “with an assessment that undoubtedly pleases the Assad regime,” said National Review. Gabbard “viewed it all as a ‘regime change war’ fueled by the West and aimed at removing the dictator from power,” said the Independent.
Maintains ties to Hindu extremists
While Gabbard’s views on a number of issues have changed over time, “she has held steadfast in her Islamophobia, one of the few consistent commitments in her volatile political career,” said Jeet Heer at The Nation. In her campaigns for Congress, Gabbard received “hundreds of thousands of dollars” in donations from supporters of Sangh Parivar, “a network of religious, political, paramilitary and student groups that subscribe to the Hindu supremacist, exclusionary ideology known as Hindutva,” said The Intercept.
Hindu supremacists are known for their hostility to Islam, particularly in India, where Muslims constitute a significant and persecuted minority. Gabbard is a supporter of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who has been accused of “stoking the othering of Muslims via disinformation, hate speech, opening old religious wounds, manipulating a servile media, silencing progressive voices and empowering Hindu supremacist vigilante groups,” said Time.
Shared Russian propaganda
Gabbard shared false claims from her account on X shortly after Russia’s unprovoked February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, There are “25+ U.S.-funded biolabs in Ukraine, which if breached would release & spread deadly pathogens to the U.S./world,” said Gabbard in the video. There is no evidence to support the claims, which were “widely debunked and identified as Russian propaganda,” said Fox News. “This war and suffering could have easily been avoided if Biden Admin/NATO had simply acknowledged Russia’s legitimate security concerns,” said Gabbard in a post on X immediately following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, a claim which echoed Moscow’s rationale for the invasion. Such comments “were taken seriously in Russia, where the state-controlled media has often praised Gabbard,” said the Associated Press. In an October 2022 episode of her podcast, Gabbard referred to U.S. backing of Ukraine as a “regime-change war that the United States and NATO are waging via their proxy in Ukraine,” said National Review.
Publicly supported leakers of classified information
In 2013, Edward Snowden leaked “a trove of highly classified documents accessed while working as a contractor at the National Security Agency,” said The Guardian. Gabbard has repeatedly declined opportunities to denounce Snowden’s actions since becoming the nominee to lead U.S. intelligence operations. Snowden currently lives in exile in Russia. Toward the end of her time in Congress, Gabbard cosponsored a resolution with Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) asking for all charges against Snowden to be dropped. During her Senate confirmation hearings, a number of senators “pressed Gabbard to call Snowden a traitor. She steadfastly refused,” said Time. Instead, she “conceded Snowden broke the law and that she would no longer push for his pardon,” said Responsible Statecraft.