What Is Tulsi Gabbard’s Deal?
S1: Is that Lisa. Hi.
S2: A little bit when I reached Lisa Lerer at the New York Times. This is one of the first things she said to me. Lisa thank you so much for doing this.
S3: Oh thanks for having me. I love talking about toxic hazards. Think about it. My sweet spot.
S4: I think a lot of people feel the way Lisa does. They want to talk about Tulsi Gabbard but at the same time they are not quite sure what Tulsi Gabbard is trying to tell them.
S5: I just find her really fascinating and I find her evolution really fascinating from this sort of darling. Star of the Democratic Party to kind of whatever she is now it’s just a great story.
S6: You know but her polling numbers.
S4: What are they right now.
S7: Well there.
S8: I mean it depends on the poll but they’re certainly in the single digits I was in Iowa this past weekend where they had this big party dinner the liberty and justice dinner used to be known as the JJ.
S7: It’s the last really all candidate events like cattle call kind of thing before the Iowa caucuses. So it’s a big marker in that state’s calendar in that state obviously plays a very crucial role in the nominating contests. And Tulsi Gabbard did not qualify to have a speaking slot so that gives you a sense of you know really how much momentum and organizational energy this campaign has.
S2: Not a lot. Yes not a lot.
S4: But Tulsi Gabbard has a different kind of momentum.
S2: Sure she’s running for the Democratic presidential nomination but her candidacy is being propelled forward by forces outside of the Democratic Party itself.
S7: Want to bring in now former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon the host of the new and I think the most confusing piece is her embrace of the right wing media. Look she’s I think she’s a rising star you know major Gabbert. You know when you were campaign manager Steve Bannon who of course really was the mastermind of Donald Trump’s rise Franklin Graham who’s a you know a titan of evangelical circles. Ron Paul radio hosts like Mike Stern of which they like her. David Duke has endorsed her though Congresswoman Gabbard has disavowed that endorsement.
S3: I mean you recently published a piece that you titled What exactly is Tulsi Gabbard up to. Have you figured that out. No.
S4: Today on the show what is Tulsi Gabbard running for and running against. And how far can a candidate like her push the Democratic establishment. I’m Mary Harris. You’re listening to what next. Stick with us.
S9: Tulsi Gabbard. Got a lot of attention when you first came to Washington back in 2013. She was the first Hindu in Congress one of the youngest people elected. She also proudly Hawaiian. She talked about bringing the aloha spirit to politics still does in the beginning. This was all pretty alluring to Democrats. So as soon as Gabbard got to Capitol Hill she was tapped for a plum position vice chair of the Democratic National Committee.
S7: She was sort of this outspoken economic progressive. She was a veteran. She was a young woman. She was a surfer. You know people like Nancy Pelosi said she’d be a big star.
S10: I think Rachel Maddow if I remember correctly had had praised her you get to be the vice chair of the National Democratic Party because your party thinks you’re going places.
S7: So she was seen as this progressive veteran who was very telegenic and had this great background in Hawaii and was someone that the party could sort of put forward as their their new face.
S2: But then she did something that pissed a lot of people off when Hillary Clinton was running for president.
S7: Well she backed Bernie Sanders bid over Hillary Clinton. And so that really isolated her from the mainstream sort of party center. I mean you have to remember it during that campaign Sanders was really seen as someone on the fringe maybe a socialist sometimes a Democrat who is challenging Hillary Clinton who the party had really kind of anointed as the next nominee. So when Congresswoman Gabbert left her position at the DNC which she had been given because she was this rising star to go and support Bernie Sanders that was something that really annoyed a lot of people in the Democratic Party establishment.
S2: Right. And it wasn’t just that it was she was calling for more debates because that would have been advantageous to Bernie Sanders.
S7: Right. And the concern that you know the Democratic establishments had people had and Allies of Hillary Clinton was that Hillary Clinton would get beat up in these debates and those attacks by Bernie Sanders while he was unlikely to capture the nomination was sort of the mainstream thinking in Washington she would be damaged heading into a general because of how he would frame her.
S2: I mean I think the endorsement of Bernie Sanders kind of got people interested in the idea of hold it. Who. Who is this woman. Like how did she get here. And a lot of people started talking about how she was raised in this pretty unconventional way where she didn’t go to traditional school. She’s raised Hindu but it was this in this kind of break off movement from the Hari Krishnas. Can you Can you describe a little bit how she actually became interested in politics in the first place.
S7: Well actually she’s from a political family. Her mother was on the Hawaii State Board of Education. Her father was a Honolulu City Council member. He was a political activist and that’s come back to haunt her a little bit her father Mike Havard was one of the state’s leading opponents of LGBTQ rights. And he found an organization that was opposed to marriage equality and really tolerance for homosexuality. So that’s something that those are positions that she has had to renounce during the first days of her presidential campaign. So she’s from she’s from a political background. You know it’s just political background in local politics in Hawaii.
S9: But Gabonese politics could be unpredictable. Even before she endorsed Bernie Sanders her colleagues noticed she didn’t want to carry water for the party especially when it came to foreign policy. She walked this line as a member of the Army Reserve. She’d vote to support the military but on other things she’s kind of a wild card.
S7: So she also picked a few fights with the Obama administration that Democrats really didn’t like. Right. If you remember the whole fight of where Republicans demanded that President Obama use the term radical Islam. She was really the only Democrat to join that Republican call. And you know went on Fox News and made a big deal of the fact that the president would not use the term radical Islam. She dubbed herself a hawk on terrorism. Those were foreign policy positions that were really out of the mainstream of Democratic thinking and in some cases an anathema to what Democrats were trying to do.
S2: So she was already kind of getting attention from folks saying huh. This isn’t typically what we would expect from our junior congresswoman right.
S7: I think her focus on sort of the terrorism threat led to her sort of quasi support for Bashir al-Assad. I mean I think she would not consider herself a supporter of Assad but she’s been very reluctant to criticize him.
S11: Would you say he is to the United States if you cannot say that he is an adversary or an enemy. What is Assad to the U.S. What is the word.
S10: You can describe it however you want to describe it like how you just my point is that whether it is Syria or any of these other countries we need to look at how their interests are counter to or aligned with ours.
S7: And she’s argued that really the best way to defeat ISIS in Syria was for the U.S. to align itself with Assad and that of course you know means that really your aligning yourself with Russia and Putin. And so as things developed over the past few years and certainly with Russia’s intervention in the election last time around that’s led to a lot of questions about her.
S2: The thing I have trouble with when I look at Tulsi Gabbard sort of record and what she says about the issues is finding an overarching philosophy because I think it’s interesting that she talks about the military in a different way than a lot of other politicians do. Having served in the military but I can’t quite tell what the bigger messages about where we should involve ourselves and how we should behave abroad right.
S7: I think you’re you’re hinting at the central the central facet that people find confusing about Tulsi Gabbard is that there’s no there seems to be no intellectual consistency in terms of her message no foreign intervention then she’s reluctant to say sort of negative things about Assad or Modi or even Putin. She’s you know it’s just it’s confusing.
S2: I want to talk a little bit about the various people who have come out supporting Tulsi Gabbard because it is this really diverse like almost strange constituency where you know she was obviously closely aligned with Bernie Sanders she came out early to support him but then also you have people like Steve Bannon coming forward. You have people like David Duke you have a lot of fans on fortune. Have you been in those 4 chan discussions and can you characterize them a little bit.
S7: Well they call her mommy that’s her nickname and those forehand message boards. Look I think they people on fortune like these kind of candy to stir it up who take on the establishment who are fighting sort of mainstream figures and she definitely has positioned herself in that space. She is someone who has positioned herself as an opponent of the establishment even as she runs for one of the major party’s nomination.
S2: I mean I think Tulsi herself would say you know she wants to talk to all Americans. That’s why you see her on Fox News more than say Elizabeth Warren. And I wonder what you think about that as a political reporter.
S7: Well I think that’s fine and it’s certainly a fair argument to talk to all Americans. But I think first you have to win a Democratic primary. Right. And so you don’t win a Democratic primary by going on Fox News that’s not where your voters are. She has a very strong fan base. It’s not necessarily very large based on her polling numbers both in national and state polls. But it’s a very active and it’s very active online and it feels very strongly about Tulsi Gabbard and an iced tea from people have reached out to me you know e-mails or whatever sometimes these people are independents or Republicans they’re not sort of always some of them are traditional Democrats but not always. You know she has attracted people with a wide variety of views and they feel very strongly about her. And they also really feel that the mainstream media is out to get her.
S2: I mean you asked Gabby’s campaign about her support from sort of fringe year groups and they declined to respond to that strike you as odd.
S7: You know what I did find that a little bit odd because they spend there’s a lot of time complaining about how she’s not being covered by the media and how the media even the New York Times and CNN as she calls us how the debate we sponsored is out to get her. But I gave them multiple opportunities to comment. I asked for an interview to sit down with her and those were all turned down. So I did find that a bit confusing. The complaints that the media is not covering her. And then when the opportunities presented not to not to take it.
S12: Can you talk about how Tulsi Gabbard campaign is running a little bit differently than other people in the race. Yes.
S7: So it’s very small and it’s a lot of members of her family are very involved. Her husband is the videographer her sister is really running the operation. Many of the people employed by the campaign have ties to her religion a local Hawaiian paper did an investigation where they went to the how they track down the house of one of her top paid consultants and he was living in Alaska and sort of this remote place and wouldn’t come to the door and it was sort of unusual for a political consultant. So it’s a very small operation really run by people who are very very loyal to Congresswoman Gabby and a lot and a fair number of those people. It’s also a bit of a family operation.
S12: I can see how that’s comfortable but I could also see how that means your worldview stays rather compact.
S7: Yeah. I mean I have heard from people inside the campaign that there are questions about where there she is hearing criticism and whether there are folks there to tell her perhaps this isn’t working or that isn’t working and that you know is a perpetual problem in presidential campaigns that nobody really wants to tell their boss the boss they’re doing something wrong. But that is the difference between candidates who take off and candidates who end up making mistakes as is the ability to correct for and understand those missteps.
S9: Now Gilbert’s candidacy is at this turning point with polls consistently putting her campaign in the single digits. She seems to be lashing out even harder at her own party. Last month she threatened not to show up at the Democratic presidential debate saying the system had been rigged. A few weeks later she called out Hillary Clinton saying she was the queen of warmongers although you could argue that Hillary Clinton started that fight. Can you tell the story of exactly what she said. Because I think there was actually some confusion about that at first.
S7: OK so Hillary Clinton has been out in public a little bit lately because she’s promoting a new book that she wrote with her daughter Chelsea. And as part of that push she was interviewed by David Plouffe who of course was Barack Obama’s campaign manager in 2008 on a on a podcast. And at one point Plouffe and Hillary Clinton start discussing possible strategies that Trump and the Republicans would use in the election and she says you know that first Republicans will demonize the Democratic candidate and then she said Republicans and this is where things got to got controversial. Republicans would encourage a third party candidate so that voters disenchanted with the president you know in the Democrats could have another option.
S13: I’m not making any predictions but I think they’ve got their eye on somebody who’s currently in the Democratic primary and are grooming her to be the third party candidate. She’s a favorite of the Russians.
S7: They have a bunch of sites and bots and other ways of supporting her so far and her staff later said that she was you know referring to Tulsi Gabbard in her comments. So basically what Hillary Clinton was arguing although she was not using Tulsi Campbell’s name was that the Russian that Russian propaganda machine the kind of you know Internet trolls and operators that were meddling around in the 2016 election would come out and back Tulsi Gabbard and really she was saying they already are out and backing Tulsi Gabbard and that could cost Democrats the vote in the same kind of way that impacted her race.
S2: Is there any truth to that that the bots are out there you know pushing Tulsi Gabbard message.
S7: So honestly it’s really hard to know because the platforms have gotten gotten much better at sort of taking out the most obvious bots by operations so it’s hard to know whether that’s happening. We do know there has been some analysis of Russian state television you know outlets like R.T. or Sputnik and they do tend to cover Tulsi gathered more than they would they cover other candidates at her level. You know the 2 to 4 percent level in the race. But you know what does that mean they’re backing her. I don’t know it’s hard to know. But I think what’s interesting in this is that Tulsi Gabbard jumped on Hillary Clinton’s claims and in fact she was the one who said that Hillary Clinton claimed that she was being quote her words groomed by the Russian government to undermine America. So Tulsi Gabbard campaign saw this as a really useful talking point for them not only because it got her attention you know widespread media attention but it also helped her make the argument that it wasn’t that her message didn’t have appeal with voters it was that she was somehow being hurt by that the Democratic Party forces.
S14: Let me tell you what this is about. This is about Hillary Clinton sending a very strong message saying that because I am and have long been calling for an end to our country’s foreign policy of waging one regime change war after the next the likes of which we’ve seen in Iraq and Libya and ongoing in Syria and because I’m calling for an end to this new Cold War a nuclear arms race that I am a Russian asset and that I am a traitor to the nation that I love and that’s so extremely online that any attention is good attention.
S2: Just keep stoking it.
S7: Yeah and look some people who have had interactions with the campaign say that is part of their philosophy that all attention is good attention and that’s how they view it. So whether that attention comes from Tulsi Gabbard or comes from Hillary Clinton attacking her. That’s that’s great. And look there are plenty of people in the Democratic Party who are really do not like Hillary Clinton.
S9: So this gave her an opportunity to really take some punches at this very well-known very famous still controversial figure in the party at the end of October Gabbard announced she would not be running for re-election to Congress in 2020 choosing instead to focus all of her attention on this longshot presidential bid. This decision it just intensified all the questions about what Gabby adds up to and whether she might stay in the presidential race even if she loses her party’s nomination whenever she’s been asked she said absolutely not she is not running as a third party candidate but that has not done anything to hamper the speculation.
S7: And I think you know all this is also wrapped up into this intense sort of PTSD. Democrats have from the last election Democratic Party strategist establishment types politicians and voters are so traumatized really by their loss in 16 that they see everything I think through that lens. And there’s this deep rooted fear that someone will emerge as as Jill Stein like like figure and in a tight race will cost them the election. And I think when Democrats look on that stage they see Tulsi Gabbard as the candidate most likely to fill that role even though she has said again and again that she has no plans to do that.
S2: What do you think she’s thinking about next steps could be in the event she’s not the presidential nominee.
S7: You know she hasn’t said anything but generally politicians don’t say when I don’t become president I’m going to do X Y and Z. Right. Everybody is going to be president until they’re not. But of course reality that’s not what people are doing there behind the scenes sort of plotting out their next moves and I have no idea whether Tulsi Gabbard is doing that and she hasn’t said at all what she might do should she failed to win the nomination which is what it looks like now at least. And so unless something in the contest changes radically. But there’s certainly a lot of speculation and I’ve heard all kinds of theories. One of course is that should President Trump win re-election that she would go into the Trump administration. And that sounds perhaps set its face really confusing because she’s of course running for the Democratic Party nomination. But what people who sort of speculate on that they point out that she met she was one of really very very few if any Democrats who met with President Trump when he was president elect. That and her sort of support from folks in Trump’s circle has led some Democrats to speculate whether she would go into the administration should he win a second term. Mm hmm.
S2: I’m curious what you think Tulsa’s candidacy says about politics right now about.
S12: About what she’s saying about how the political world works.
S7: Well I think it’s a couple things. I think we’re in a period where parties are on the decline where the two mainstream parties don’t have the same level of control that they had anymore. And there’s sort of an ironic twist this because I think Tulsi Gabbard is sort of creating this narrative of this rigged system of this smoke filled room when reality her very existence her very presence on that stage shows that there is no more smoke filled room that that’s gone that really anyone who can get attention online and builds up a little money from a viral moment can run for president and possibly have a place on that stage. And we see that in both parties of course. You know you look at Donald Trump and you see that same phenomenon. He certainly was not the pick of the Republican Party establishment that much is pretty clear. So I think her presence on the stage even as she spends all this time attacking the establishment really shows how very weak parties and party establishments are in America right now.
S15: Lisa Lerer thank you so much for joining me. Thanks for having me. Lisa Lerer is a political reporter at The New York Times. She writes the newsletter on politics and that’s the show. What next is produced by Mary Wilson Jason De Leon Daniel Hewett and Morra silvers. One more thing to tell you about before I get off the air here. If you live in New York a bunch of the smart women at Slate are going to be doing a live show and a debate watch party who I’m exhausted just thinking about it but I would love to see you there. We’re going to be talking a bit. Then we’re gonna watch the Democratic debate. We’re even considering bingo cards. There’s definitely going to be a couple drinks involved. If this sounds fun to you it is happening November 20th in Brooklyn. More details are at Slate dot com slash live.
S9: Slate dot com slash live. Thanks for listening. I’m Mary Harris. I will talk to you tomorrow.
