The Cult of Tulsi Gabbard

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Worst Year Ever, a production of I Heart Radio.
Before we get started, I just want to make a
quick correction from last week's episode on Andrew yang Um.
I mistakenly said that his acronym MATH stood for make
America Think instead of what it actually stands for, which
is make America Think Harder. I must have left that

(00:22):
off my notes. I apologize. It's very different um and
and a lot of people let me know, so I
thank you for that. UM thoughts on this new version
of his slogan that's from Sophie's betters Better, It's a
much better It makes much more sense than make America
make America think as math. The acronym is not an acronym.

(00:45):
Make America think harder is an acceptable acronym. I just
don't like acronyms as like, Yeah, I don't. I still think.
I won't adjust my belief that we should not have
make America anything acronyms. Yeah, anybody. I think it's a
little during the selection, but I do apologize. I did
not intentionally misrepresent your acronym. I don't like that. Don't

(01:09):
have consent. When I run for president, my my acronym
is going to be man make America not We're just
we're throwing in the town thattel. I might have to
reconsider my rulegether everything do. Welcome to the worst year ever.

(01:45):
We're not gonna get through it. Ship. I introduced this
bad but I'm Robert Evans and I'm joined as always
by my dear friends Katie Stole, Katie Johnston. I'm very
strung out. I just got off of thirty hours of flights.
I I think I just cough lapped into microphone. I apologize.
This is off to a wonderful year, and I are

(02:06):
both sick ruined, not just six. I think ruined is fair,
Katie forever. This really is a terrible year. Um, we
are not even there yet. Maybe I'll have all of
my um my immune system will be nice and strong
by the time we hit Because it is like the
third cold I've had in the last couple of months.

(02:29):
I've been licking the door to a public restroom every
day just to build myself up for I'm not going
to get a flu shot, but I'm gonna rub my
face on all public services like yeah, I find We'll
just yeah, this is great. I think we're all as
strung out gross people ready to talk about Tulat. No,

(02:52):
I can't imagine that a better mind set for talking
about healthy, better mindset, a better physical So I wrote
fifteen pages about her. Um, this might be a two parter.
We won't know what to get into it. We'll get

(03:12):
through it. I had a lot to say or not. Ye,
Robert had a lot to say about something shocking. Yeah,
this is o Katie, go on. No, I'm just letting
that that fifteen pages is still sinking in my heart.
Sank a bit. It's you. As Cody said before we started,

(03:34):
this is basically a Behind the Bastards episode. Yeah, I'm
pretty sure that. Yeah, I'm waiting to do an episode
of the other show about this. Was like, oh, well,
you might as well do it here. I have been
asked by so many people about Tulsi, so I am
excited to have this out there so everybody can have
a listen. And it was it was written on a

(03:56):
long haul flight from Korea. So I was piste off
and drunk the entire time. And you know how many
times do you get to say that sentence? Actually a lot?
Oh now, Um, this has not been a very pro
politician podcast so far, largely because we're all human beings. UM,

(04:17):
but I shouldn't have them at all. Yeah, yeah, maybe
they shouldn't exist as a thing in our society. UM.
I think our listeners are pretty clear. The last two
candidates we covered, Joseph Robin and Biden and Andrew Yang,
are not our preferences. That said, I certainly feel this way,
and I think y'all will agree that either man would
be an improvement over the current person in office. UM.
I don't think Biden is a bad person. I question

(04:40):
is competence and fitness, but I don't think he's a
bad person. I don't think Andrew Yang is a bad person.
I think he's a good guy and pretty smart. I
just disagree with some of his policies. I think most
of the Democrats running right now, basically all of them
are some variation of that. For me, I don't like
Kamala because I think she did some bad stuff as
a prosecutor, but she's a stable human being and I
don't worry that she's going to nuke a country at night.

(05:01):
I think Buddha Gedge is a kind of a corporate stooge,
but I don't think he's gonna put children in cages.
I can grudgingly accept a presidency from any of the
current candidates, although I wouldn't be excited about most of them,
but I could accept most of them as at least
an iterative improvement, with the exception of one, the one
that we're going to talk about today. Yep. Tulsie no

(05:23):
middle name Gabbert was born on April twelfth, night one
in Lila Loa, Mao Putasi County, American Samoa. She was
the fourth of five children between Mike and Carol Gabbard.
The family moved to Hawaii when Tulsie was two years old,
and if you're looking for details from her childhood, you're
not going to find much. Her Wikipedia has childhood, yeah,

(05:45):
I and she definitely did. She's she, I have hair.
She's not a replicant. We did the void Camp test
on her um and she passed, unlike one of the
candidates that I won't name, um Cloba char Um. But yeah,
her Wikipedia has like no date details in her early life,

(06:05):
and the articles that you read, there's very few, like
actual anecdotes about like her as a child. Um. Most
of what you'll hear is that she like embraced her
Hindu faith, as a teenager. Um. And you know, in
interviews like the one detailed piece of New York Magazine,
I found she prefers to make vague statements about her
personality as a child, as opposed to like talking about

(06:26):
things that happened. Like Biden. You get that anecdote about
him working as a lifeguard. There's plenty of stories about
young Joe Biden, about young Bernie Sanders, about young Elizabeth Warren.
It's harder to find that sort of stuff. For Tulsie.
There's less of it. Um. She tells journalists that she
was homeschooled because the schools in Hawaii weren't very good. Uh.
And she describes her father as an eccentric Catholic. When

(06:47):
she talks about her personal faith, she mostly talks about
the importance of love and the Aloha spirit, which is
obviously fine. Um. She will admit to having been an
anxious child. Her sister, Devon, who helps manage Tulsi's residential
campaign and as a U S Marshal Uh, spoke for
her a lot when they were children. Devon will tell
reporters that she had to talk to cashiers and answer

(07:08):
the phone for her little sister because Tulcie was too
nervous to talk to people. She was very focused on
abiding by the rules and not getting in trouble. So
it's kind of yeah, fine, so far UW. When she
tells kids stuff, um, when she tells her own story,
Tulcie basically hand waves her way through a youth spent

(07:28):
surfing and enjoying her island paradise as a sporty, introverted girl.
This is not untrue based on what I've read, but
it leaves out a lot of extremely important context because
you see, Tulci Gabbard grew up in a cult, and
it's possible that she is still a member to this day.
What this is a real revelation. Yeah, uh, it's it's

(07:52):
it's gonna be a fun episode. Yeah, what's the name
of the coal? I love that, just like sort of
our general vibe in the current days a lotly with cults.
Think what is the name of her cult? I'll get

(08:12):
into that in a little bit. I want to build
to it. So most of you have at least probably heard.
I'm going to guess all of my my co host
have heard of the Hari Krishnas. Now they became famous
in the nineteen seventies for having their shaven headed, robed
followers standing around at like airports and stuff and trying
to convert people. Basically like you could consider them like
Hindu Jehovah's witnesses in some ways in terms of like

(08:32):
the way that they were sort of like standing around
public outreach and stuff like that, exactly exactly now. The
group was founded by a guru named baktiv Danta, who
basically took ancient Hindu religious texts and translated them into
sort of a pop philosophy that white Westerners could easily grasp.

(08:52):
His annotated version of the bagavad Getter reads like an
instruction manual to life. Avoid meat and spicy food, which
causes misery by producing mucus in the stomach, etcetera. You're
supposed to chant Christiana's name repeatedly because it brings your
soul closer to his divine wisdom. You shave your head bald,
and you wear robes for some reason. I'm sure there's
a justification. No no, no, no, no, yeah no, she's not,

(09:16):
she's not now. One of Baktivedanta's most ardent followers was
a young surfer dude named Chris Butler. Chris lived in Hawaii,
where he taught yoga and surfed. His father was a
doctor and a communist activist who thought the USSR was
basically perfect. As a young man, Chris started reading history
and became aware that this was not, in fact the case.

(09:38):
Chris grew instead enamored with Hindu mysticism and very quickly
turned his yoga business into a cult. When they do
translate pretty easily and all that kind of stuff, like
what if we decided this was a cult now, It's
kind of like how podcasts turned very easily to cults.
And I'm i am excited for us to radicalize our

(10:00):
listeners and get them all voting Kazinski in twenty Yeah,
I'm excited to eventually reveal the real lyrics of the
theme song. Your instructions are forthcoming. Yeah, don't play the
song backwards either, Yeah yeah, yes, yes, I'm fascinated. Please continue.

(10:21):
Yeah uh so. Yeah. When Baktivedanta visited Hawaii in nineteen one,
Chris folded his small group of followers into the Harri
Krishna umbrella in exchange for the title. And I'm gonna
probably get this one wrong too, siddhas Pananda, siddhar Panda
al do my best here. Uh This basically marked him

(10:44):
out as a favored student of Bakti Danta in a
leading member of the Harri Krishna faith. Um. Now, the
pairing between the two cults was not perfectly peaceful. Baktivedanta
had to constantly watch Chris lest he introduced his own
even more bizarre ideas into the faith. Chris Butler, for
his part, didn't understand why initiates couldn't wear normal clothing

(11:04):
or keep their hair. When the Guru died in nineteen
seventy seven, Chris spun off many of his Harry Krishna
followers in Hawaii into his own cult again. He rebranded
the mysticism of Factive Danta into a quasi scientific self
help movement. In nineteen eighty four, he published who Are
You Discovering Your Real Identity, which supposedly used scientific arguments

(11:25):
to prove that the soul was a turnal. So that's nice,
turtle eternal? No uh no again, Katie, you are spoiling
our cult, right, I just got really welcome to the
worst year ever. Our souls will be turtles together. Sorry.

(11:52):
The nineteen seventy issue of the Honolulu Advertiser described Butler
is essentially a dictator um, which is not uncommon for
cold leaders seeking comple lead control over his followers lives.
At that point, he lived with two dozen mostly female
young adults in a quanset hut. Yeah yeah, yeah, now
we're getting let's cute this ship up. When interviewed, several

(12:14):
of the girls around him said that they would happily
kill for him. They also described, yeah, that's what you want.
They also described several of his teachings quote from these
random girls in his cults flowers. Flowers scream when they're picked.
So do trees when they're trimmed. Chris saw lots of
success with his new teachings In short order. He recorded

(12:35):
several TV specials where he dresses a young professor looking
dude and sit on a couch surrounded by students who
would ask him questions. I'm gonna quote next from a
righte up on Tulcie's background in The New Yorker. One
of those students was Mike Gabbard, Tulsie's dad, who had
been interested in Hinduism since the nineteen seventies. Once he corresponded,
with bactive Danta asking for advice on establishing a temple,

(12:56):
and Tulci. Gabbard's name reflects the family's pre existing spiritual commitments.
When the Gabbards moved to Hawaii in nineteen eighty three,
they joined the circle of disciples around Butler. Tulsie Gabberd
says that she began learning the spiritual principles of Vishnava
Hinduism as a kid, and that she grew up largely
among fellow disciples, some of whom would gather on the
beach for kirtan, the practice of singing or chanting sacred songs.

(13:17):
Gabbard recalls her childhood is lively and freewheeling. She excelbent
martial arts and developed a passion for gardening. She was
a serious reader, encouraged by her parents, but a number
of Butler's former disciples recall a harsher, more authoritarian atmosphere.
Defectors tell stories of children discouraged by Butler from attending
secular schools, of followers forbidden to speak publicly about the
group of returning travelers quarantined for days lest they transmit

(13:40):
a contagious disease to Butler of devotees lying prostrate whenever
he entered the room, or adding bits of his nail
clippings to their food, or spoonfuls of sand that he
had walked upon. Some former members portrayed themselves as survivors
of an abusive cult. Butler denies these reports, and Gabbrage
says that she finds them hard to credit. I've never
heard him say anything hateful or say anything mean about anybody,

(14:03):
she says of Butler, I can speak to my own
personal experience and frankly, my gratitude to him for the
gift of this wonderful spiritual practice that he has given
to me and to so many people. That his statement
about it sounds like what a cult leader would say
and do it. And maybe what she says about him

(14:24):
sounds like what cult remember say. Um and and that
was a recent statement that she made regarding him, Yes,
it was. It does sound like someone that didn't quite leave. Uh. Yeah,
we'll continue talking about that. It's it sure does, Katie.

(14:44):
But it's also so much weirder than that. But yeah, okay, so, uh,
it's possible Tulsie's being totally honest there, and she's never
heard him say anything bad. It would not be a
totally new thing history for a charismatic cult leader to
have hidden his worst attributes from one of his beautiful

(15:04):
young followers. Possible. Uh, but there are a lot of
accounts of Chris Butler's brutality, many of them by people
who say they were present with Tulcie at cult gatherings
where they witnessed these things. Magazin, Yeah, yeah, it sounds
like cold stuff. Now New York Magazine did a great
job of digging into this side of things. They talked to,
among others, Greg Martin, a former member of the cult

(15:26):
who claims he was not allowed to play with other
children in the neighborhood. His only social social interactions where
those Sunday worship sessions where the cult members would all
gather on the beach in Kai Lua. They'd wait for
hours for their guru to show up. Tulcie's dad, Mike
would play guitar and lead everyone in hours of chanting.
Greg said, of Tulcie's father, Mike Gabbard, you just knew
Mike was a dick. He carried him obviously, That's just

(15:50):
one person he cared himself with dins Now. Greg attended
numerous worship sessions with Tulsie and her future husband, a Ham,
who also grew up in the cult. Tulsi denies she
attended any of these worship sessions for the record, but
Greg insists he was there and that she was there too,
and the way he describes them as deeply fucked up quote,

(16:11):
You're waiting hours and hours for this dude to show up,
and then when he does, people go absolutely wild. It's
all your family and all your friends singing and dancing
and chanting. You're so excited. Chris could be very charismatic,
obviously and like uplifting, but he could also be profoundly abusive.
Quote from Greg. He would start excoriating people for fucking up,
sound systems not working, cups of water not being cleaned,

(16:31):
people dressed funny, driving poorly. He would publicly mock people.
And when he would do that, that's a form of
Chrishna's mercy. So that's cool. Yeah, yeah, culte stuff. Yeah yeah,
I I I yeah. The author of that New York
magazine profile went on to write everyone I spoke to
who was raised in the group described as children hearing
Butler callman faggots and women cunts. One time in Malibu,

(16:54):
Greg re calls Butler had passed a man on a
beach and a thong on his way to the gathering.
Butler then described in graphic detail what that man allegedly
wanted his boyfriend to do to him. So cool. These
are hippies, and Tulsie's parents are described as being hippies,
but they are not the free love kind of hippies,
dark and seedy type of hippie. Yeah, Chris's colt was

(17:18):
sexually conservative and wildly homophobic. He taught that public schools
were dangerous, which again probably explains why Tulsie was homeschooled.
The guru himself did not believe in most science. When
he traveled, he lined the walls of his homes with
tinfoil to block electromagnetic radiation. So you have to do

(17:39):
literal tinfoil. Yeah, yeah, that's where this is going. So
Chris Butler is not one of those gurus who is
capable being content with a small throng of adoring followers
and a pile of You know, when I say that, um,
I don't know very many cult gurus that are content
with just a small You know, Katie, your anti cult

(18:00):
agenda has been very clear from the beginning, and I
don't think our listeners appreciate it. Yeah, this is a
pro could podcast speaking of cults. You know what's not
a cult? The sponsors of the show. Of course, I
knew that. I knew that. If you I would, I

(18:22):
would actually instead say that if you know people who
are involved in cults and you buy them the products
advertised on this show, they will instantly find their minds freed.
And that is a guarantee, binding guarantee. You can sue
us if it doesn't come true. Sophie, can we promise
that the promise has been well? I did, Yeah, the

(18:43):
promise has been made. Any of that out send them?
Send them? Yeah, oh boy, that could get really uncomfortable
depending on who advertises with us eventually, but not today,
but not today. Together everything, We're back, we're back back,

(19:16):
so as I stated, I didn't work. No, that's good. Continue.
I want to hear about we're back. Yeah, we're back,
so I said. Chris wasn't happy just having like a
pile of followers in cash, and starting in nineteen seventy six,
he started to scheme his way towards political power. His cult,

(19:39):
which he called Science of Identity formed a political party
Independence for Godly Government. They ran candidates in local races
without much success. The chair of the party was Bill
Pinot Rosa, the father of Tulsi Gabbard's current chief of staff,

(19:59):
Koa Peanut Rosa. Yeah In y mag notes that Kanoa
had no experience running political campaigns when Tulsie hired him.
Butler's wife, why Lana, is a prominent yoga instructor in Hawaii. Abraham,
Tolsie's husband, and Tulsie's mother have helped why Lana film
her videos. So there are a lot of connections actually

(20:20):
between the Gathered campaign, and yet more than that. Now,
Butler wanted very badly for Science of Identity, both to
gain political power, but also to become more legitimate and
recognized within mainstream Hinduism. He seems to want very much
for his ideas and teachings to influence public policy. Now,

(20:40):
Tulsie is very disciplined and tight lipped about her relationship
with the Guru and would certainly deny acting as any
sort of vessel for him in politics. But when you
spell out all of the connections between Butler's people and
Tulsie's campaign staff, and family. It's hard to not suspect
that something might be up, and it's entirely possible that
whatever that something is, it's a multigenerational thing. Because Tulcie's father,

(21:01):
Mike the Dick, has been politically active for decades. When
Tulcie was fourteen in the early nineteen nineties, he hosted
a radio show called Let's Talk Straight Hawaii Now, All right,
yeah yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. He also founded a nonprofit
called Stop Promoting Homosexuality America. Sure Sure, really on the

(21:26):
nose now. On his radio show, Mike Gabbard once noted
that he would always hire straight people over queer people.
This caused a public outcry and the Family Delhi, which
was located inside a natural food store owned by Chris
Butler's cult, was picketed and went out of business. The
radio station pulled Mike's radio show after this, but that
did not stop him from continuing to battle tirelessly against

(21:49):
the right of random strangers to marry. He became one
of the faces of anti gay marriage activism in Hawaii
and tried to build a coalition of Catholics, Protestants, Culti Weirdos,
and Mormons to stop the March of Progress. Tulsie's first
political actions were following her dad around and knocking on
doors with him. She helped in his successful campaign to
be elected to the Honolulu City Council and his campaign

(22:10):
for the State Senate, both of which were successful. In office,
Mike Gabbert pursued a dizzying mishmash of right wing social
policy and left wing environmental regular regulation. In n after
a character on Dawson's Creek came out as gay, Mike
flew to North Carolina to lead a protest on the
set of the show Dude, Yeah, It was his favorite

(22:32):
show up till then, up till then Hear about It.
In two thousand, Tulsie's mothered Carol, won a place on
the state Board of Education. It might be fair to
say that Chris Butler saw the Gabbard family as the
most successful wing of his plan to gain political influence
for his cult. Now. As she grew into a young adult,
Mike encouraged his daughter to turn her love of the

(22:53):
ocean into a political career. Close ran for her first
public office. What we all love the Ocean and in
trouble and turning it into a political career That I'm
fine with that part. If if all she cared about
was the ocean, I wouldn't have an issue with TULSEI
gaverge actually could use a couple of ocean candidates. It's
just that made me like a very funny sentence. But yeah,
taking like I love the ocean, you should do politics

(23:15):
about it. Yeah. Sure, there's some problems relating to politics
in the ocean. Somebody, somebody could stand to do more
about that. Get some more politicians about the ocean. Yeah,
fuck it, look into it now. Tulsie ran for her
first public office at age twenty one, and this is
one of the few parts of her back story that
she will go into detail about two reporters, She claims

(23:37):
that running for office was one of the major turning
points in her life as an anxious, introverted child. Quote
from Tulsie, there was a turning point when I first
ran for Congress where I had a realization that this
anxiety was coming from a selfish place and thinking about,
you know, my own fears and how people are going
to respond to me. I don't want to bother people.
That felt like it was coming from an inward looking place,
a selfish place, rather than my seeing them as beautiful

(23:58):
opportunities to share my aloha. Once I realized that that
changed everything completely. Okay, cool, okay, okay, to overcome your
overcome absolutely absolutely. In two thousand two, Tulsi became the
youngest person ever elected to the Hawaii House of Representatives.
Like her father, she supported a wide variety of environmental

(24:19):
issues and socialist issues, But like her father, she was
also a socially conservative nationalist, a lot of nationalism mixed
in with her socialism. In two thousand three, she voted
against a bill that would have required hospitals to quote
provide emergency contraception immediately to rape victims. Her reasoning was
that the bill did not include a conscience clause to

(24:39):
allow religious doctors to opt out of providing care. In
the wake of nine eleven, she also supported widespread government surveillance,
stating in one speech that the demand for unfettered civil
liberties would make America less safe. Yeah, I hate civil
liberties personally. Yeah I didn't know, um, but now I do.
Thank you for growing in. In two thousand four, Honolulu

(25:03):
magazine emailed Tulsi's father to ask about his ties to
that weird hindoo ish cult thinging, uh, they could stuff
from before. Tulsie replied on his behalf and accused the
magazine as acting as a conduit for the Honolulu Weekly
and other homosexual extremist supporters of ed Case, her father's opponent.
Later that year, she testified against civil unions for gay people,

(25:25):
saying it was dishonest, cowardly, and extremely disrespectful to the
people of Hawaii to claim that they that civil unions
were different from same sex marriage, which is like kind
of right for the wrong reasons, Like it was a
backdoor way of making gay marriage legal. But having a
problem with that is kind of dumb, unless your argument
is that no, we should just push for full mayyor

(25:46):
very recent yeah, not long ago, long ago. Yeah, that
said she was against gay marriage at the same time
Barack Obama was, So I mean, yeah, she's against gay
marriage around the same time. I'm most politicians still were. Yeah.
So it's one of those things. There's an extent to
which you do have to remember where things were at

(26:08):
the time, but also remember all the other things, all
the other things radio. It just seems like they've come
from a really a very homophobic and vocally so family. Yeah,
I guess my point be fair. So uh Toulci finished

(26:28):
one term as a state representative and then shocked everybody
by joining the Army National Guard and volunteering for duty
in Iraq. She spent twelve months there as a medical
specialist at a logistical support base called Anaconda. Now. That
base achieved the nickname Mortaritaville due to frequent insurgent mortar
attacks and also the mortarita's, which were delicious they only

(26:51):
served on on Fridays. I don't like the reason, but
clever alright, good nickname? Yeah yeah. According to a New
York Magazine write up quote, every day at nine am,
she scrolled through an Excel spreadsheet of casualties. These were
American troops for whom she was supposed to organize treatment.
That daily task. It left an indelible impression on me,
she says, understanding behind every one of these names as
a soldier sailor. Seeing the volume of people paying the

(27:13):
price for war, it caused me to think about those
who made a decision to start this war. I wondered
if they ever thought about these people. Their families like it?
Like it? That's well, yeah, so I think one of
the things about her that draws people to her. Yep,
that sort of outspoken uh, anti imperialist, anti like regime

(27:34):
change wars, just like the understanding the cost of war
and not thinking it's a cost that's worth it. Yeah,
now that's fair and it's it's definitely good to have
people in politics who were in wars this country waged
and understand the human cost all ra ra about it.

(27:55):
That said, it's worth noting that whenever she talks about
the human cost of war, she talks specifically of out
its cost on American soldiers and American families, and that
is very much her focus and that will become much
more relevant in a little bit. So by all accounts, yeah,
a little bit. By every account I've read, Gabbett was
a very good soldier. She deployed a second time to

(28:17):
the Middle East to Kuwait, this time as a military
police officer, and she left the army as a major.
Once she was clear of the military, her political career
took off in earnest. She was elected to the Honolulu
City Council in two thousand eleven and introduced a measure
to reduce parking restrictions for food truck vendors. Her other
major legislative achievement was Bill fifty four, which allowed city
employees to confiscate private possessions left on public property as

(28:41):
long as they gave twenty four hours notice. That's an
odd bill, Yeah, the a c. L You protested Bill
fifty four, but Tulsi succeeded in getting it passed. Now today,
interestingly enough, her campaign website frames the bill as part
of her commitment to combating homelessness, saying it was quote
concerned with the cleanliness, public safety, and accessibility of public

(29:02):
sidewalks for elderly children and the disabled. Okay, So combating
homelessness in the fact that we don't want to see
that problem around with atment to our society. So let's
clear it away so that no one sees it. Cool. Yeah.
I should also add that at the time, Gabbert's political

(29:23):
opponents UH opposed Bill fifty four because they suspect that
it was introduced to allow cops in Honolulu to shut
down that city's occupy protest and confiscate intents and other
property from activists. Now, interestingly enough, Gabried braggs today that
the bill quote provided a twenty four hour notice before
confiscating property stored in the public right of way, which

(29:44):
kind of makes it sound like the purpose of the
bill was to mandate that homeless people had to be
warned before their property was confiscated, which is a clever
way to reframe the fact that she pushed a bill
that allowed the police to take homeless people's property in
the first place, right, saying yeah, it's introducing a bad idea,
but then saying, but at least there's a warning. At
least we told them. Yeah. Yeah, And it makes it

(30:05):
seem like the bill was to mandate the warning as
opposed to the warning just being part of her letting
the cops take their ship. Yeah. Cool. Um. Yeah, It's
like introducing a bench that like, yeah, has spikes pop
out unless you give it money. Yeah, But then being like,
but like, we give receipts for the bench, we are

(30:29):
allowing homeless people to pay to not be impaled. Exactly exactly. Eleven. Hm.
I love governments and may have two thousand eleven. Tulci
Gabbert announced her candidacy for the incumbent Democratic seat on
the House of Representatives forty district. Despite being seen as
the underdog, Gabbard one with of the vote. She immediately

(30:52):
set to work pushing for progressive legislation. In two thousand twelve,
she supported the restoration of the Glass Stiegel Act. She
fought against cuts to Medicare or social Security. She attacked
Obamacare for not going far enough, and has consistently been
an advocate for universal health care. She is anti nuclear energy,
which I personally think is dumb, but is very consistent
with most liberal voters in this country. Um to her credit,

(31:16):
by the time she took national office, Toulci had moved
further left on a number of important issues. She now
pushed to stop the n Essays Bolt collection of data,
a significant reversal of her earlier policies on surveillance. She
also came around on gay marriage now. Toulci claimed that
this was actually due to her experiences in Kuwait, and
she wrote this on a blog in two thousand eleven.

(31:37):
The contrast between our society and those in the Middle
East made me realize that the difference, the reason those
societies are so oppressive is that they are essentially theocracies,
where the government and government leaders wield the power to
both define and then enforce morality. I began to realize
that the positions I had previously. I had held previously
regarding the issues of choice and gay marriage were rooted
in the same premise held by those in power in

(31:58):
the oppressive Middle East regimes. I saw. Now it's good
that she came around on that issue. Um yeah, that's
one thing I like when politicians are actually honest about
their term. Yeah. I mean like, yeah, I used to
think this and it was bad, and now I think
this and oh no, oh no. She turned around on

(32:20):
what she thought should be allowed, not on what she thought.
And she turned around on what she knows is expected
of her publicly versus what you personally believe is right
versus wrong. Yeah. Now, she also turned around on abortion
rights and received an endorsement from Emily's List during her
two thousand and twelve run. I do want to state that,

(32:41):
and taken on the surface, this is all laudable. Um.
I I think, you know, you have to give people
a lot of leniency when they grow up with parents
who are crazy extremists. I have a lot of respect
for people who can make honest change. But as I
kind of hinted it and stated pretty directly, uh, Telsey
didn't actually change her my at that point about the
morality of gay marriage, just about whether or not the

(33:03):
government should legislate it. Um. She still thought it was wrong.
She just didn't think it should be illegal anymore. That's
obviously better than opposing gay marriage. UM. I don't think
it's great, but it's better. Um. And there's some evidence
that she's moved on since, although a lot of l
GPT groups don't really think she's had a mental change
about it. I don't know personally. Um, she's she says

(33:24):
the right things now. Um. Yeah, Now. Tulsi's election as
the first Hindu American congresswoman and youngest. Uh. Tulsi was
elected as the first Hindu American congresswoman and the youngest
congresswoman in history. She was thirty one at the time. Um.
Her status is a veteran, and the fact that she was,
you know, pretty hot made her an instant darling of

(33:44):
left wing politics. And I don't bring that up to
be uh what's the word? Um? Yeah. I bring it
up because something comes up constantly in writing about her.
People who write profiles about her have to talk about it.
Um after her A let should Suzanne Malvo told her
this on CNN. I can't tell you. How many people
have mentioned your name and said this is one to

(34:05):
look out for. Tell us why, I mean? People see
you as a rising star. That exact terminology rising star,
was used by The Washington Post in the ABC two.
She was the recipient of a Vogue profile which described
her as having a fit physique and a smile so
warm it's no surprise websites have offered polls rating her hotness. Yeah. Now,

(34:27):
the DNC chose her to be its vice chairman. Nancy
Pelosi asked her to speak at President Obama's reelection convention
in two thousand twelve, and for a while it looked
too many people like Tulci Gabbard was the bright, shining
and shall we say fit future of the Democratic Party. Yeah,
because of her smile. Now, that seems seems great at

(34:48):
this point, and she definitely seemed like in two thousand
and twelve like, oh ship, Maybe in another like five
ten years, this could be a presidential candidate. Um, you
can see why people would think that. But problems with
miss Gabbard cropped up rather quickly. Her battles with the
Democratic establishment started over her frustration that President Obama refused
to use the phrase radical Islamic terrorism when talking about

(35:10):
the problems of terrorism around the world, Tulsie's time in
the military had given her what some might call a
rabid distrust of Islam and Muslims. Her hawkish attitude towards
Islamic terrorism earned Tulsie Gabbard regular appearances on Fox News,
who gleefully embraced her attacks on the Obama administration. I'm
gonna quote from a Jacobin right up here called Tulsi
Gabbard is not your friend. Quote. In one interview, she

(35:34):
told the host that the vast majority of terrorist attacks
conducted around the world for over the last decade had
been conducted by groups were fueled by this radical Islamic ideology,
a statement that may be technically true due to the
violence and instability plaguing Middle Eastern countries, but as wildly
misleading considering that non Muslims make up the vast, vast
majority of terrorist perpetrators in both Europe and the United States.
Um now. The National Review published a profile of Tulsi

(35:57):
in April two thousand fifteen. It included quote from the
president of a right wing think tank called the American
Enterprise Institute saying he likes her thinking a lot. Uh Now,
The president of the a EI invited her to that
organization's closed door retreat later that year. She Corey Booker,
and John Delaney were the only Democrats to secure invitations There.

(36:19):
She got to hang out with famously fund dudes like
Dick Cheney, Bill Crystal, Mike Pence, Rupert Murdoch and the devices.
That's good Yeah, good company, good company. You know what
else is good company and trustworthy and trustworthy. The companies
that support this show with their advertising. Patriot all advertisements. Yes,

(36:40):
that is good company. Yeah, if I were to hear
an advertisement from a company of such high reputation, but
use my money for the whatever it is and stuff,
promo codes, money, funding, finances, bank accounts, all good things. Wait,

(37:01):
also good products. Together, we're back talking about tocy gabber
tea gabs, gibby gabs, gebby g t s, a little

(37:23):
bit of TolC t o, tann green gab birds. I
was going to be like, like the kids say tea
for for for drama these days, right, That's that's how
it goes. The kids. They're like, I'm gonna spill some
tea and that's the and tolcie is a kind of tea.

(37:43):
You're spilling some tolci t Yeah, let's spill is that, Sophie?
Are the Are the kids listening now? The kids are
definitely listening. The kid. We've got the kids attention. Alright,
someone say TikTok and then we'll move on TikTok. All right,
nailing it now, gab uh, I love all of you.

(38:04):
Gabbard became an outspoken opponent of President Obama's Iran deal.
She went on Fox to express her cynicism and agree
with gretav An Sustern that the Iran deal was basically
the same thing as never Neville Chamberlain's Munich Agreement, which
is famously seen as enabling Hitler's rise to power, or
not rise to power, but you know, rise to being
a warlord. I'm gonna quote Jacobin again here. Breitbart gleefully

(38:26):
quoted her in headlines expressing many and great concerns over
the deal as it was being negotiated. On the daily
agreement was finalized, she issued a statement saying we cannot
afford to make the same mistake with Iran that was
made with North Korea, citing North Korea's abbrogation of the
Agreed Framework Agreement it had signed in n when Israeli
Prime Minister Benjamin Netan Yahoo delivered his unprecedented speech to

(38:47):
Congress in March two thousand fifteen in an attempt to
torpedo the deal. Gaber didn't join the significant number of
Democrats who boycotted the speech, so she attended it. So
a bit of a hawk on certain things now. Afterwards,
after attending the speech and taking a hard line on
the Iran issue, she received a Champion of Freedom Award

(39:08):
from the Jewish Values Gala, an event held by the
World Values Network, which is run by a Trump loving
rabbi named Schmooley bow Teach. At the event, she was
photographed with Schmooley and with Sheldon Adelson's wife, Miriam. So
that's good. These are these are good people to be
connected to. That's all I'm saying. Through it all, Tulsi
continued to slam the Obama administration for not blaming Muslims

(39:29):
for terrorism, saying this failure was why the administration couldn't
come up with a way to stop terrorism forever. We're
just not calling it Muslims. Yeah, that's why that's gone forever.
She's actually fine with drone strikes and special forces raids
and stuff. It's the not blaming Muslims. That's like everyone,

(39:53):
every expert is like, don't call it that because it
plays into their narrative, like it enhances this like macro
nationalism of like it's the West versus Islam and that's
and we're in this existential like battle now, and it
elevates it to that level. Also, it's what's the word xenophobic, racist, whatever,
you know, it's lumping all Muslims as terrorists like that

(40:19):
in a way that actually makes it harder for us
to work with forces in the region. Like, speaking as
someone who's been shot at by Muslim extremists, the people
who were with me at the time, and in some
cases putting themselves in between me and my friends in
the line of fire, were also Muslims. Interesting. Yeah, um,
now through it all? Oh right, yeah, I already said

(40:41):
that part. So yeah, I have a question that maybe
you'll get is this I love quick questions. Still her stance,
Maybe it's not. Oh yes, so that hasn't evolved, No,
it has not. Um. Now, Tulsi told Neil Cavudo that
the problem of terrorism around the world was fundamentally about
this radical Islamic ideology, which she said needed to be

(41:01):
beaten military, lee and ideologically. Bright Bart soon picked her
up as a favorite Democrats, like saying, we need to
beat up this religion. Yes, yeah, we needed, we need
to match Jesus Um. That's actually way more Hitlery than well,
there's some shades of Hitler dam although Hitler was actually

(41:26):
very pro Islam because he was very anti Jewish and
there's a lot to say about that, but not and
I just meant beat them militarily and you know, philosophically,
whatever the words you used, you know what for being
against the Iran Deal, because it's similar to the Yes Deal.
With Hitler, it's you know, she's an interesting character. Yeah,

(41:48):
there's a lot of this going around where you have
like an opinion or a stance and it's like, but
you know that that's like just because you're replacing like
the Jews with Muslims and like these sort of things,
doesn't mean that the overall point isn't very similar, right, No,
it does not. Anyway. In two thousand, fourteen and fifteen,

(42:12):
Gabbert pushed for several deeply regressive bills. In two thousand fourteen,
she introduced a bill to halt the visa waiver program
for citizens of nations whose people had left to fight
with extremist groups. This is one of the things where
if you just explain it that way to people, you
can get a lot of folks on board with UM.
But if past, this bill would have forced people from
the UK, Germany, France, and basically all of the EU

(42:34):
to apply for visas to enter the United States, which
is insane. Maybe UM now. In two thousand and fifteen,
Tulsi supported a bill that would have banned those on
the no fly list from buying guns. And this may
sound perfectly reasonable to many liberals who tend to support
anything that they see is restricting the number of people
who can buy guns, but the implications of introducing gun

(42:55):
control in this way are actually very terrifying to me.
The no fly list opera rates with zero accountability and
does not respond to due process and the right to
bear arms, whether or not you like it, is part
of the Bill of Rights. Legally, it's just as protected
as your right to free speech. And allowing the government
to take away some one of a human beings fundamental
rights via a system with no due process is a

(43:17):
very bad precedent. Um. It's scary when you think of
the actual implications. It's it's again, these are all things
that you can get a lot of liberals on board
with when they don't think through the implications. It's like, oh, yeah,
stop people from you know, require visas for people to
come here from countries that you know there are people
have joined extremist groups. It's like, okay, but you mean
the UK shouldn't be able to come here with that

(43:38):
a visa. You mean Canadians should require visa to enter
our country. Yeah, that's wild. Um. And I don't know
much about the no fly list, but I don't trust
that everybody that gets um and like it speaks to
like her being supportive of that, of the surveillance state
early on, yes, um and stuff even like with gun control,
like uh, people always really on board with Like whenever

(44:01):
anyone mentions, uh, mentally ill people it's a problem, you
can take their guns away when again, you're not really
thinking that through and what that means and who is
categorized as what. Yeah, and if you do think it through,
there are questions that come up, like can anyone name
a single person who has carried out a mass shooting
in this country and was on the no fly list.

(44:23):
I certainly can't. Yeah. Now, In two thousand fifteen, Tulsi
introduced a resolution that called for the US to prioritize
religious and ethnic minorities when granting refugee status, basically prizing
Yazd's and Christians above Muslims when it came to declaring
people refugees. Now, it's interesting to me that so many
people on the left supporter for her supposed anti war stance,

(44:43):
because if you really dig into her, it's clear that
she holds basically the same views on unrestricted drone warfare
as every other neoliberal politician, as well as a lot
of the same views on how to treat Muslims as
many right wing politicians. Um. Here's Jacobin again discussing Gabbert's
responses in an interview the website truth Out. Responding to
a question about drones, Gabbard said that there is a

(45:04):
place for the use of this technology as well as
smaller quick strike special force teams versus tens, if not
hundreds of thousands of soldiers occupying space within a country. Now,
she's repeated this point again and again. Responding to questions
from Honolulu Civil Beat in two thousand twelve, Gabbard said
the best way to defeat the terrorists is through strategically
placed small, quick strike special forces and drones, the strategy

(45:25):
that took out Osama bin Laden. She told Fox in
two fourteen that she would direct the great military that
we have to conduct unconventional, strategic precise operations to take
out these terrorists wherever they are the same year, she
told Civil Beat that military strategy must put the safety
of Americans above all else and utilize our highly skilled
special forces, work with and support trusted foreign partners to

(45:46):
seek and destroy this threat. Uh it was quick strike
special forces conducting a strategic strategic precise operation. Jacobin notes
that a little less than four months ago killed thirty
civilians in a botched rate in Yemen. You might also
notice that eight years of these policies under Obama didn't
stop ISIS from happening. Sure, I had noticed that, Yeah,

(46:08):
a lot of these operations seemed to increase the number
of people who leaned towards terrors organism. I think that
a lot of these drone stripes kind of radicalized people
like pull them into Yeah, well I would be like,

(46:28):
thank you for the help. Oh no, I think you'd
be yeah, exactly, who doesn't want their wedding? Sorry? The
groom was like, this is a special day and it's
really magical. But what if there were a thermobaric missile
hitting my mom? That would make it even better than

(46:50):
they were going for the terrorists and they missed, But
thanks for trying. So weird that she's like, you don't
get the sense that she's actually anti war. She's just
an American soldiers dying, which I understand that aspect of it,
but what about that generally anti regular people dying, um,
and that includes American soldiers. But like, it's it's this

(47:12):
thing she frames herself as being like this radical anti
war candidate. But if you're just saying the same, like
you're saying a mix of the same ship Obama did
for eight years with very mixed at best success, and
a lot of the ship people in the right have
been saying for years with no success, and it's like
that's not different. Yeah right, it's frustrating to me. Yeah. Yeah,

(47:35):
it just seems like she would support various wars as
long as we could just do exclusively from here and
special Forces raids. Special Forces raids of course. Yeah. Now.
In spite of all this, or perhaps because of it,
Toulci Gabbert's popularity among leftists continued to grow right up
until the two thousand sixteen election. She was an enthusiastic

(47:57):
backer of Bernie Sanders, and he seems to genuinely like
her as a person and a candidate. Toulcie attacked the
d n C for its treatment of Sanders during the election,
which is very fair, and gave Hillary Clinton just about
the most tepid endorsement imaginable in August of two sixteen.
Given the remaining yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm not slamming
her on this, Given the remaining choices like Bernie Sanders,

(48:18):
I will be casting my vote for Hillary Clinton, which
is basically what I say whenever I have to eat
at Jimmy John's, giving the remaining choices like Bernie Sanders,
I guess I'll eat it. Jimmie donah, I will have
bread and cheese and a meat. Yeah. The alternative is
a Sissler. So yes, I do know scissors got some shrimps. Yeah,

(48:44):
is not the one. Yeah, this is gonna be what
ends this podcast we can even recover from we will
not get through this together, that we're gonna get picketed
like Toulci Gabbard's family Delhi after her dad attacked gay
people on the air. A nice call back. Thank anything
that happened. Now. Of course, Hillary Clinton did not become

(49:07):
the president, and oddly enough, this turn of events worked
out very well for Tulsie's career, at least for a while.
Shortly after Trump's inauguration, Steve Bannon set up a meeting
between Tulsie and the new president. Sources at the time
told The Hill that Bannon loves her and wants to
work with her on everything. He saw her as a
possible ambassadorial pick or perhaps a good pick for the cabinet,

(49:28):
saying she gets the foreign policy stuff, the Islamic terrorism stuff. Yeah,
he does, and this is distinctly untrue. See Tulci Gabbard's
beliefs on how to fight terrorism are at their very
best incoherent. She has repeatedly railed against the idea that
improving living conditions and parts of the world that hosts

(49:48):
terrorist groups could do anything to reduce the recruitment of
those groups. Said that that's not viable option. What, yes,
the most basic thing you can do stop violence and crime?
What the fuck? Yeah, she's she is not supportive of

(50:09):
that um and again that Jacobin right up, uh does
a really good job of picking this apart. In February
two fifteen, Gabert had the chance to question the Director
of Defense Intelligence Agency, Vincent Stewart. She asked him about
the debate over how this ideology, how this motivation must
be identified, and what common elements existed among different Islamic
terrorist groups, including ISIS, al Qaeda, and boco Haram. She

(50:31):
then went on Fox and reported that Stewart had identified
very clearly that it is this radical Islamic theology that
is fueling these groups, but Gabard had heavily distorted what
Stewart actually said. Well, he did call ISIS a radical
ideology that must be countered with a moderate ideology. He
also pointed out that the common elements that had produced
such groups were ungoverned states, weak government institutions, economic and stability,

(50:52):
and poverty. When Secretary of State John Kerry spoke at
Davos and said that some terrorists were lured into extremist
groups by the promise of regular their meals a paycheck.
Gabbett attacked him on CNN. She said he completely missed
the point, calling it a huge mistake, a mistake to
think quote that somehow, okay, well look if we give
them ten thousand dollars and give them a nice place
to live, that somehow they're not going to be engaged

(51:13):
in this fighting now so frustrating. This ignores a lot,
including the fact that extremist groups like Hamas and Ice
has explicitly used the promise of wealth to draw in
young recruits. You only need to read a couple issues
of Debeik from around the height of the Islamic State
to see that isis sought to drag draw in poor
young men by promising them that they'd be able to
live like nobility and give mansions and quote cars and money. Likewise,

(51:37):
Hezbollah in Lebanon owes at least some of its power
to the fact that it provides schools and hospitals to
people whose government often fails to provide them with basic services.
But Tulsi doesn't think helping people is the way to
reduce extremism. What does she think will work well? She
hasn't been consistent about that. In one speech, she stated
the problem had to be confronted ideologically by spreading a

(51:59):
consciousness of love. Her actual actions, though, suggest that she
prefers a somewhat less hippie dippy tactic, supporting violent dictators
over their people when those people are Muslims. M hmm.
It's like like Marian Williamson's approach, but like not, but

(52:20):
I don't know, that's just I mean nothing like Marilyn
was the idea of this. That's just something that she
grew up with from her CULTI past. That is a
talking point that can be said, like, yeah, we come
at this with love, but the practicality is is that
she's supports drone strikes and taking out Muslims, right, just

(52:41):
like the like, oh, we're gonna solve this with the
idea of love, but not actually materially improve anyone's life.
What does that mean? Like and add love to their life.
We're just gonna be like you're hey, good good going.
It was like, what are you going to be like
a missionary? It's thoughts like yeah, and there's like beach

(53:02):
love thing. Yeah anyway, Yeah, it's it's frustratily because if
you look at some of the stuff that actually helps.
Like one thing that that is tried in a number
of places is like, um, there's some some really heroic
people who have started like after school soccer programs and
stuff and very poor parts of the Middle East, because
it's like, look, if you these kids need something to
fucking do. That's part of what makes them so recruitable
is there's fucking nothing. There's no money, there's no opportunity.

(53:24):
If you give them fucking something, it makes them less
likely to be drawn in by these ideologies. So let's
let's try and like that is an example of somebody.
I mean that's confronting the problem with love but also
with time and with providing something. Right when I was
in Ireland and Northern Ireland, you know when they're talking
about before the end of the troubles, like that was
a thing that you had to like have give the youth, uh,

(53:49):
soccer games, things that they can go invest in and
like maybe get to know people they don't necessarily agree
with your energy, So why football was Yeah, well yeah,
I talked with back when we're working at corrected at
a series of articles with a former i RA a
terrorist who got jailed for mailing bombs two dozens of people.

(54:12):
And when we're talking about what he radicalized him, Yes,
a good reason to get jailed. And when he was
in jail, he was visited by a Protestant priests and
priest in a British member of parliament who de radicalized
him just by sitting down and treating him like a
human and talking to him for months. It was like,
that was what pulled me out of it was these
people meeting me as human beings and like wanting to

(54:33):
know what had gone wrong in my life and ship
just yes, for the most part, we paint things. If
we don't have access to it in our daily life,
you start to get a general picture of what it
is instead, and you lose the humanity of who people are. Yeah. Anyway,
So all of this is to say love can absolutely
confront terrorism, but it has to be paired with things

(54:55):
besides drone strikes. Drone Uh now, I mean, look, I've
sucked a lot of predators and uh yeah, the predator
that the of the drones easily the second or third sexiest.
Oh okay, yeah, yeah yeah good drone really context for that,

(55:17):
But I am sure I agree with you. Yeah, I'll
hook you up with the drone dating app that I use.
Uh damn it. I I should have had a good
name for a drone based dating app. Oh I got
a boom? Okay Yeah. In two thousand fourteen, Indian Prime

(55:45):
Minister Narendra Modi visited the United States. Toulcie Gabbard greeted
him warmly and gifted him with her own personal copy
of the Bug of a Gita. Moody gave her a
beautiful message of Krishna for her wedding, and Tulsie gave
him a CD of music from her wedding. In response,
Mr Modi invited her to India. Congresswoman Gabbard visited and
had a friendly meeting with the r s S, a

(56:06):
right wing Hindu fascist paramilitary organization that Modi supports. The
group views India as a fundamentally Hindu nation where citizens
of other religions should not hold the same rights. Now,
that's all pretty fucked up, but the whole situation is
much darker than that. Narendra Modi is not just a
far right politician with a paramilitary group at his beck
and call. He's a mass murderer. I'm gonna quote now

(56:28):
from a writeup inherits. In two thousand two, Modi was
the chief minister of the Indian state of Guahara. G
u j A r A t I I I always
funk up pronouncing it when fire broke out in a
train full of Hindu pilgrims. This is how the Guardians
Aditya Chaka Borti describes what followed. Within hours, and without
a shred of evidence, Modi declared that the Pakistani's secret
services had been to blame. He then had the charred

(56:51):
bodies paraded in the main city of Amnabad and let
his own party support a statewide strike for three days.
What followed was mass bloodshed, a thousand dead on official
s to bits more than two thousand by independent tallies.
The vast majority of those who died were Muslim. Mobs
of men dragged women and young girls out of their
homes and raped them. One of the ringleaders boasted of
how he slit open the womb of a pregnant woman.

(57:11):
There were clear signs that the attackers benefited from state
level support. The attackers, armed with swords, machetes or iron bards,
carried computer print outs listening the addresses of Muslim families
shops and businesses. According to her report in the Telegraph,
across the province, a hundred and eighty mosques were destroyed
or damaged, along with thousands of Muslim owned businesses and homes.
Colors to police stations were told, we don't have orders

(57:34):
to save you, and we cannot help you. We have
orders from above. Not thanking me a little emotional? What
year was this? Two thousand and two? Wow? When the
massacres brought up to Tulci Gabbard, she tends to say
things like there was a lot of misinformation that surrounded
the events in the event, is a fun way to

(57:55):
refer to thousands of people being murdered and raped. Yeah.
In two thousand fifteen, Tulsie Gabbert opposed House Resolution four
one seven, praising India's rich religious diversity and commitment to
tolerance and equality, and reaffirming the need to protect the
rights and freedoms of religious minorities. The bill was seen
as a critique of Moody's anti Muslim policies. Now, it
would be too much for me to say that there

(58:17):
was definitely quid pro quo here, But in two thousand sixteen,
the Indian government announced the Winders the winners of the
Padma Awards, which are a very prestigious which are very
prestigious within the Hindu faith. Only two non Indians received awards.
One of them was why Lana Chris Butler's wife worked
with Tulci Gabbard's husband and mama for it? Yeah? Oh yeah,

(58:48):
I mean I shouldn't laugh like that after talking about
what was essentially the Muslim equivalent of Christal knock. Yeah,
that was terrible story. But you but you got the
release valve Reddy Bam put some nas in that tank. Yeah. Um,
speaking of genocide, no, something else. Uh, corruption at the

(59:16):
highest levels of power, getting farther way or closer. Speaking
of it's defending dictators. You know who doesn't these ads
and products? I hope they don't. I hope they enjoyed.

(59:40):
I just learned that our primary sponsor is the app Dictator,
which is the word dictator without the O at the end,
which is a dating app for dictators. So we should
probably re record this. Nope, and yeah, if you've not
downloaded it, you probably don't need too. Yeah, but if

(01:00:01):
you want to fuck Rodrigo do Terte, it's the only
app for that. Together, we're back. You're talking about Tulsi
Gab Gabbards. Yep, now tab the old t Gabs tab Gabs.

(01:00:27):
In her defense, she does not just support dictators who
offer her Guru the religious legitimacy that he sought for decades.
She's just generally a big fan of brutal strongman ruling
in parts of the world with large Muslim populations. Over
the last few years, Tulsi has cultivated a surprising support
of the Syrian regime of Bashar al Assad. In January
two thousand seventeen, Tulsi Gabbard received an invitation from Bossum Quamum,

(01:00:51):
a former executive director of the Arab American Community Center
for Economic Services or Access. The group wanted to pay
for her to fly to regime controlled Syrie. Yeah. Gabbett
accepted and went on a fact finding mission, which just
so happened to include a surprise meeting with Bashar al Assad.
When she was critiqued for meeting with a dictator who
had murdered half a million people, totally defended herself by

(01:01:12):
saying she felt it was important to take the meeting.
I think we should be ready to meet with anyone
if there's a chance that could bring about an into
this war which is causing the Syrian people so much suffering.
I wonder who's causing most of that? Good question, Just
the war, just vague levil war. Yeah, this conflict individual yea,

(01:01:33):
and serifying people on both sides. No, she's not, there's
there's fine. Yeah, it's frustrating. Well yeah, um, I don't
know what she intended to do on this trip to
find facts, and generally isn't meeting. Meeting with people to
stop bloodshed is good, even if those people are monsters.

(01:01:57):
But if you're doing well exactly, Yeah, it's well, maybe
I should go forward a little bit. Now, there are
a couple of things that are sketchy here. One is
that Qualtum, the guy who um invited her, has some
very shady ties to a group called the Syrian Social
Nationalist Party. You reverse it and it's fine. You reverse

(01:02:24):
it and it's fine. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, in a
different order. Why don't they just call themselves not Syrians?
It's right there, come on, damn it. That is really good. Um. Now,
the Syrian Social Nationalist Party is a secular pro assad
political party in Syria. As you can probably guess from
the name their fascists, but since they're secular and support

(01:02:46):
brutally cracking down on Islamic movements, Tulsie is more or
less fine with them. She has called us AD a
brutal dictator, but has also written that every Syrian soldier
we in our Saudi partners kill is one less soldier
available to fight against ISIS. Yes, the real killers in Syria.
Yeah it's um Yeah, now not that like fuck Isis obviously,

(01:03:09):
but um really missing some key details of this conflict now.
Tulsi has also dabbled more than a scouche in war
crimes denial. She's refused to name Bashar Lassade as a
war criminal in interviews or as an enemy of the
United States, and she also used her two thousand twenty
campaign website to push conspiracy theories. In a section of

(01:03:30):
the site titled reports on Chemical Attacks in Syria, she
states there is evidence that both the Syrian government of
Bashar al Assad as well as the armed opposition groups
aligned against him, have used chemical weapons during the civil war. However,
I remain skeptical about two particular chemical weapons attacks. When
it called Chicon on April four, two thousand seventeen, at

(01:03:50):
the other at Duma on April seventh, two eighteen. Both
attacks occurred in towns under the control of al Qaida
linked opposition forces. Both attacks resulted in multiple civilian asualties,
and both were immediately blamed on the Assad government. However,
there is evidence to suggest that the attacks may have
been staged by opposition forces for the purpose of drawing
the United States and the West deeper into the war. Now,

(01:04:12):
Tulsie's skepticism here is based entirely on the work of
doctor Theater Postal, a professor emeritus at m I T.
He is a regular guest on Russia Today who usually
builds him as the m I T professor who doesn't
believe Bashar al Assad gassed his own people. Postal has
met with Toulci Gabber to talk about the Conchekun and

(01:04:32):
Duma attacks, and if you aren't well read on the issue,
his arguments can make a lot of sense, but they
are horseship. And I'm gonna quote now from an article
written in Bellancat by a guy who was admittedly sort
of my boss, Elliott Higgins quote. Postal is a controversial
figure with regards to the use of chemical weapons in Syria.
He first came to prominence with regards to the topic
following the August twenty one, two thousand thirteen Saran attacks

(01:04:53):
and Damascus, where he published a series of claims suggesting
the attacks have been staged. He became particularly notorious when,
due to his own lack of expertise and chemistry, he
approached the conspiracy theorist YouTuber Mariam so siously known as
Mimi al Laham, Partisan Girl, Syrian Girl, or Syrian Sister
for advice on chemical weapon manufacturing, despite only being a
chemistry student. Postal chose this Australian YouTuber, who, as he

(01:05:16):
stated in a two thousand and fourteen interview with the
conspiracy theorist Ryan Dawson, I knew to be a chemist
because I was watching her on Twitter. I could see
from her voice. I didn't know her and still don't
know her that she was a trained chemist to be
his only expert when it came to the chemistry of
the seren used in the August two thirteen chemical attack,
in particular to attack the work of chemical weapons specialist
Dan Cozetta regarding the use of hexamine in the Syrian

(01:05:38):
government Serian recipe. Writing for Bell and Cat Cheryl Roefer,
a chemical weapon specialist with decades of experience in the field,
stated the following about Postals analysis on the advice of
sous Le. Postal is operating from a naive set of
assumptions based on limited experience in a first year chemistry's
chemistry laboratory, presumably the experience of his informant. The result
is a wrongheaded approach to the problem and nonsensical demands

(01:05:59):
of Because at a nothing in Postals argument sounds like
it was written by a chemistr or someone with a
working knowledge of chemistry. So this is Gabbard source. There's
a lot more in the article, and I recommend reading
that article. Toulci Gabbard's reports on chemical attacks in Syria
a self contradictory, error filled mess um. The whole issue
of Syrian war crimes denial is too complex and nuances

(01:06:21):
to delve into in more detail in this episode. What's
important to understand in the context of Tulci Gabbard is
that this is part of a pattern of her apologizing
for dictators, and we are not at the end of
that pattern yet. You want to guess he's next, Uh No,
It's Trump's favorite dictator. It's it's the guy Trump named no, no, no,

(01:06:43):
this is the guy that literally named his favorite yeah.
Like I'm not joking or like like he literally said
my favorite dictator. Yeah No. Abdul Fata l Sissy compliments
everybody so much it's hard to keep trying how he compliments.

(01:07:03):
In November two thou fifteen, Tulsi Gabbard traveled to Egypt
as part of a congressional delegation and met Egypt's dictator
Abdul Fata LCCI. The meeting itself was not a scandal.
CC is Egypt's leader, and congress people going to meet
with him is not an abnormal thing. What's weird is
how praise for Gabbard chose to be about a man
who has jailed sixty thousand of his own people for

(01:07:24):
political descent and murdered hundreds more. Gabbard said President LCCI
has shown great courage and leadership and taking on this
extreme Islamist ideology while also fighting against Isis militarily to
keep them from gaining a foothold in Egypt. She urged
her fellow elected leaders to recognize CC for his leadership
and to stand with him in this fight against Islamic extremists,
law and order. Yeah, great, great stuff, told us a

(01:07:49):
strong leadership. I like that. Jail the jail them, jail
them all. It's really terrifying. Yeah, that's a lot of
dictators to be this praise of UH and just coming
back around again to this Islamic extremists and other dyah. Now,

(01:08:12):
of course, Toulci Gabbard is running for president. She has
announced that she will not seek re election to Congress. Supposedly,
this is so that she can focus entirely on becoming president.
The reality seems to be that she was almost certainly
going to get her ass handed to her by her
left wing rival in her re election campaign um Now, nationwide,
Toulcie has consistently hung in and around one of the vote.

(01:08:34):
Her main marketing focus has been to build herself as
an anti war, anti intervention candidate, but she is not
anti war. She is anti U S soldiers dying in wars.
Her history has shown that she doesn't really care how
many non Americans die or live under tyranny as long
as American boys and girls don't wind up in firefights.
That's certainly a stance you can take if you want,

(01:08:55):
But It's not one I find particularly admirable. It has, however,
earned her a dedicated base of supporters, including Joe Rogan,
who had her on his popular podcast and said, Tulsie
Gabbert is my girl. I'm voting for her. I decided
I like her. I met her in person. Fuck it now.
Her base of support is certainly one of the more
confusing ones in modern American politics, and I found a

(01:09:16):
really fun summary of a bunch of her followers at
a rally in an Atlantic article. Quote Gabbert supporters are
a mix of old hippie peacenicks, cryptocurrency enthusiasts, people who
obsess over American imperialism, and former Trump voters. They are
also people who just love that she's a young woman
of color who always talks about what we in Hawaii
call that spirit of aloha. As she said at the
wing ding, aloha means so much more than hello and goodbye,

(01:09:39):
as some of you may be familiar. What it really
means is love and respect and a recognition that we
are all connected, and that we are all children of God.
We are all brothers and sisters, regardless of the color
of our skin, or where we come from or who
we love, or how we worship, or if we worship.
At a recent event in Los Angeles, you might, you might,
you might question that a little. At a recent of
it in Los Angeles, a woman told Baberte she had

(01:10:00):
cancer and attributed it to a wire on her roof.
I'm now electro sensitive, the woman said. She told Gabber
that she lived in her car and wanted to know
what the candidate would do about Federal Communication Commission standards.
This is something I'm looking more into as I'm hearing
from people like you who are raising these concerns, Gabbard replied.
A sixteen year old the event told that, Yeah, someone
else didn't say that. A sixteen year old at the

(01:10:27):
event told Gabbert he is frustrated that no one seems
to care about the concerns of young people. I'm smiling,
she told him, because I've lost track of how many
times I've been told that now. Gabbert has also attracted
quite a bit of support from literal Nazis, including David Duke,
Richard Spencer, and The Daily Stormer, who ran a campaign
to drum up the additional donor she needed to make
the sixty person threshold to qualify for the most recent

(01:10:50):
round of debates. They told their readers that doing this
would quote make the Jews go nuts because Gabbert's and
anti war candidate and they think Jewish people are pro war. Now,
I could go into this in more detailed, but I
won't because, to her credit, Tulsi has been vehement about
rejecting these people's endorsement. In November two thousand sixteen, David
Duke suggested she be made Secretary of State. Toulci Gabbert

(01:11:10):
immediately tweeted back to him, you didn't know. I'm Polynesian
slash Caucasian. Dad couldn't use whites only water fountain, No thanks.
Your white nationalism is pure evil. So she has been
very consistent in rejecting these funkheads that I'm not going
to hit her anymore on that issue. Nor do I
think she's a Russian assets has recently become a She's
not a willful asset of the Russian government, she's not

(01:11:32):
a Manchurian candidate, and she's not working with Putin. That
was what was so frustrating about that whole thing is
that it implied that she was knowingly uh colluding with Russia,
which is nonsense. Like if you're gonna say that, show
some proof otherwise you're just anyone the status quo or

(01:11:52):
like causes issues is seen by a certain uh yeah
group of people as being a Russian asset, which makes
sense I think in their mind because like, yeah, that's
the goal is to sort of destability things. But like
the idea anybody that's like that is seen but that way.
But yeah, she's yeah, like she's she's not a secret

(01:12:17):
agent or some ship like that. They might like her,
they might they definitely like her undeniably, like evidence of that.
Putin supporters are work with RT have given her a
lot of money. But I just mean, like she's probably
very attractive candidate for them, very exactly than being someone's

(01:12:38):
it's the same thing. It's the same thing with her
the support she's gets from literal nazis where it's like
that doesn't mean she's working with them. We we we
can look at, well, all of these terrible people really
like her. That should concern us without saying oh she's
a sleeper nazis right, look at why and like what
are the similarities there that might yeah, want I give

(01:13:00):
you pause, not just like oh yeah, she's going to
all these putin Nazi meetings. Like Russia today has been
very consistent about promoting clips from Gabbard speeches where she
urges the US to avoid foreign intervention. Um. And there's
significant evidence that Russian botanuts have worked to help spread
the popularity of her campaign. UM, which is not because

(01:13:21):
Russia is anti intervention. Russia intervenes all over the goddamn
place with soldiers and weapons, and they're very uh happy
to do so in a number of countries. They just
don't want the US there because it's competition. UM. So
they're fine with Gabbered for that reason, and they want
to support her campaign. Um. That said, I still think
the shadiest thing about Congresswoman Gabbared is her relationship with

(01:13:44):
cult leader Chris Butler. She has been extremely disciplined about
avoiding any direct mentions of Butler or admitting ongoing involvement
with the cult. It is entirely possible that she has
no continuing relationship with Butler and just decided to have
a campaign almost entirely staffed by his people for some weird,
unrelated reason. I tend to have a conspiratorial view on
this issue myself, doing in large part to a New

(01:14:06):
Yorker article titled what does Toulsi Gabber believe? Quote? She
is resisted telling the story of her spiritual journey this summer.
When I asked her about the teacher who led her
to Hinduism, Gabbert grew evasive. I've had many different spiritual
teachers and continue to she said, There's not one that's
more important than the others. No, she said, Now, when pressed,
she did admit that Chris Butler was one influence on her,

(01:14:28):
but denied that he was in particularly prominent one. Now,
the author of that New Yorker article actually interviewed Chris
Butler too, and while he was as well disciplined enough
to avoid saying anything damning. Fuck, if it isn't tempting
to read between the lines of these next few paragraphs,
I'm gonna quote. Butler recognizes the usefulness of a concise,
recognizable label, especially in politics, and so he suggested to

(01:14:50):
Gabber to compromise. I told her, why don't you use
the phrase transcendental Hinduism. Indeed, during a recent conversation in
the congressional dining room, Gabber did precisely that at Gabbert
and Butler both say that the Foundation is a resource,
not a religious organization. There is no official hierarchy and
therefore no system of accountability besides Butler's own conscience and
the conscience of those who are devoted to him. And

(01:15:12):
one lecture, he acknowledged the potential for skepticism, offering followers
his version of Pascal's wager. If I'm not the representative
of God and you dovetail your will with mine, then
your life is destroyed, he said. And if I am
the representative of God and you don't dovetail your will
with mine, then your life is wasted. And yet he
allows that he does have disciples who call him Jagad
Guru or teacher of the World. What the Jagad Guru

(01:15:35):
title conveys is that what is being taught is not
just for a certain group of people. Butler says, it
is something that everybody can appreciate, and it's for people
all over the world. A Guru, Butler once explained, is
supposed to be a bona fide representative of the Supreme Lord.
Not coincidentally, Butler speaks lovingly of Gabbert, whom he's known
virtually all her life as a girl. He remembers she

(01:15:56):
had a real gravity and seriousness that was beyond her
years nowadays. But the regards Gabbard with fatherly pride, likening
himself to a music teacher watching a star pupil excel.
He's taught one of his students cello, he says, and
he sees that, Oh, the student of mine is now
playing cello in the Philharmonic Orchestra, and that's beautiful. Okay,
it certainly sounds like they continue to have a relationship,

(01:16:17):
even certainly does certainly sounds like some call herself a disciple. Um,
he's got a huge amount of influence on her life,
and her campaign certainly sounds fucked up. So yeah, that's
Tolci Gabbert, friend to dictators, Islamophobe, occasional progressive and possible

(01:16:37):
sleeper candidate for a surfer bro Hindu could leader. Aloha. Yeah,
is going to be a fucking ride. I don't know
why you say aloha. I say aloha goodbye. Uh wow.
That was really really interesting and so much about her. Yeah,
to start telling you to people when they asked me

(01:16:57):
why I don't like Tulsie, I'm happy to more ammunition
because like, and then what's what's after she doesn't get
the nomination, you know, because there's where it's terrible for everybody,
no matter what. She's been very consistent about saying she
would only run as a Democrat. Um, so, at least

(01:17:17):
at this point she's she's saying she definitely would not. Yeah,
she's gone on Tucker Carlson Show to make it clear
that she's not going to run as independent. Yeah, so
I don't know what's going to happen. Um, you know
you can trust politicians when they say something. Then's the
thing everyone says about politicians. Yeah, there's one thing we

(01:17:38):
know about the trustworthy. I love being asked about the
the radio waves burning your brain, and her ants are
being oh, yeah, we're very much looking into it. We're
definitely looking into whether or not those radio waves are
burning your brain. Got people looking into it right now.
We're very much and we're very much, big league greatly

(01:18:00):
looking at it. In fairness, I'm not sure how you
handle that question. If you're like IOE gets that question,
like what do you what do you say? Like, I'm sorry,
you're crazy. That's not the right response. I don't know
what responses it's just the similarity of like we're very
much looking into it. It's like, wow, that is that

(01:18:20):
is a take. Yeah, yeah, okay, cool. Thanks. You guys
find this surprising interesting, very interesting? Yeah, some of it, well,
actually the cold stuff is very surprising. Actually, that is
truly a wild story. Do you want to go to

(01:18:41):
Hawaii and try to join the colt? I do love
back from Hawaii. Welcome to the Worst Year Ever? Will
join a Hindu transcendentalist cult together and stop gay people
from getting married? Everything is so not part Yeah, no, no, no,
we're doing it. Oh no, no, yeah, we are for sure.

(01:19:03):
Has her father's opinions on gay marriage, her family's opinions
that evolved. I don't think so in case the case
of her dad, But I really don't. You know, there
was only so much time to look into stuff campaigns
in that radio show. It's hard to believe that. He Yeah,
it's a hard transition to but I'm sure she's asked
him to tone it down. I don't think any one

(01:19:25):
of the families actively fighting against gay marriage now, just
because like you know, they're not dumb. They know where
the wig blow. Yeah, you gotta you gotta fight against
trans rights now that you've lost the game marriage yeah yeah,
which yeah, and again I'm not sure if their attitudes
on that, um, but yeah, Tiga gonna be a funny,

(01:19:52):
funny one. So she's up about three or four points
that in that pole I mentioned, Oh good in that
one pole on that one day. I don't think poles
are worth it. Same um, Thanks so much for the
sitting through this long episode, because you guys, you can
find us all online at worst your pod on all

(01:20:13):
those social media places, you know, like the instants, in
the twitters. I'm Katie Stole. Yeah, you're talk to Mr
Cody and you are Robert Evans, and I think we
all need piles of medicine and hot. I'm ready for
reapping my cold medication. So great, thanks Cody. Al Right, guys,

(01:20:39):
we're out for the week until next time. Remember, if
you're going to join the cult, join a cult that
surfs everything everything I tried. Dan Love Worst Year Ever

(01:21:00):
is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts
from my heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app,
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The Cult of Tulsi Gabbard

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