Former U.S. representative Tulsi Gabbard, who announced Tuesday that she was leaving the Democratic Party, warned that her former party is full of war hawks who are “leading us to nuclear Holocaust.”
In Washington, and especially among Democrats, there are “too many warmongers subservient to the military-industrial complex,” Gabbard told Fox News host Tucker Carlson. Gabbard has claimed that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has functioned as a “proxy” war between the U.S. and Russia. She has accused Democrats and Republicans of advocating the potential use of nuclear weapons over Ukraine’s sovereignty without considering the catastrophic repercussions. The specter of nuclear calamity has become more real in recent weeks as the Ukraine–Russia conflict escalates. Russian President Vladimir Putin threatened harsh retaliation after a sudden explosion disabled a bridge connecting Crimea and Russia last week.
“This is why it is such a dangerous situation that we are facing, as we are being pushed closer and closer very quickly, as you said, to a hot war, a nuclear war that would destroy the world as we know it,” said Gabbard, criticizing Republican senator Roger Wicker’s comments on Carlson’s show last December.
Gabbard has long stood out among Democrats in Congress for her outspoken defense of the First Amendment and her America First–style criticism of foreign military intervention.
However, the straw that broke the camel’s back and persuaded her to disaffiliate with the party she has represented for many years, she said, was her realization that the Democrats are “controlled by fanatical ideologues who hate freedom and despise the Constitution.” She said she has “always been an independent-minded person” whose main loyalties are to her country.
“I cannot be a member of a party that is against freedom and is actively trying to undermine it,” she said.
In her exit statement Tuesday, Gabbard declared: “I can no longer remain in today’s Democratic Party that is now under the complete control of an elitist cabal of warmongers driven by cowardly wokeness, who divide us by racializing every issue & stoke anti-white racism, actively work to undermine our God-given freedoms, hostile to people of faith & spirituality, demonize the police & protect criminals at the expense of law-abiding Americans, believe in open borders, weaponize the national security state to go after political opponents, and above all, dragging us ever closer to nuclear war.”
Carlson pointed out that some Republicans don’t demonstrate the level of energy and commitment to pro-America policies that she has to date. She attributed that reticence to fear of cancellation and the jeopardization of their political careers. “You might not be invited to the cool kids’ party” if you speak so boldly, she suggested.
Since her departure from the Democratic Party, the former Hawaii congresswoman said she hasn’t received any messages from colleagues except for one, who sent “three thumbs-up” emojis in a text.