This is just revolting beyond measure. Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, who claims to be a member of the Democratic Party, recently took a secret freelance trip to Syria without informing either Paul Ryan or Nancy Pelosi, as would be customary. And on her return, she tried to keep up the secrecy, refusing to say whether she met with the country’s murderous autocratic president, Bashar al-Assad.
On Wednesday, with pressure mounting, she finally admitted she did just that, shocking the hell out of Republicans and Democrats alike. After all, who would grant Assad legitimacy like that? Yet Gabbard still refused to explain who had paid for her excursion—only to later claim it had been funded by an obscure group from Ohio (which is not, you might note, the state Gabbard represents) that doesn’t even have a functioning website.
But we don’t even need to know Gabbard’s true benefactor to know where her heart lies: with Assad. Following her visit, Gabbard issued a statement that will fill your throat with bile:
As I visited with people from across the country, and heard heartbreaking stories of how this war has devastated their lives, I was asked, "Why is the United States and its allies helping al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups try to take over Syria? Syria did not attack the United States. Al-Qaeda did." I had no answer. […]
I return to Washington, DC with even greater resolve to end our illegal war to overthrow the Syrian government. [...]
Originally, I had no intention of meeting with Assad, but when given the opportunity, I felt it was important to take it. I think we should be ready to meet with anyone if there's a chance it can help bring about an end to this war, which is causing the Syrian people so much suffering.
The U.S. must stop supporting terrorists who are destroying Syria and her people. The U.S. and other countries fueling this war must stop immediately. We must allow the Syrian people to try to recover from this terrible war.
Here, Gabbard fully embraces the Assad/Putin line that sets up both the rebels resisting Assad and the United States (which supports the rebels, not Al Qaeda) as the bad guys in Syria, when it’s Assad who has murdered hundreds of thousands of his own citizens during his country’s six-year civil war. But did Gabbard speak with the families of any of those victims? Since her trip could only have been undertaken with the blessing of the Assad regime, of course she only met Assad supporters. How embarrassing that she either doesn’t realize that—or thinks we’re stupid enough to believe she encountered a free and fair cross-section of Syrian public opinion!
It would be a lot easier to believe that Gabbard was sincere about her concern for the Syrian people if she hadn’t joined a small minority of Democrats in voting for a Republican bill in 2015 that would have made it almost impossible for the U.S. to admit new refugees from Syria. Instead, as the Daily Beast’s Tim Mak puts it, she seems to have a soft spot for dictators.
She has a soft spot for Donald Trump, too: Gabbard was one of the first (and only) Democrats to meet with him after he won in November, despite the fact that Hawaii was his very worst state (and despite the fact that, you know, he’s unprecedentedly awful and no Democrat should have anything to do with him). She also declined to criticize Trump when Mak offered her the chance; carried water for Republican mega-donor and casino magnate Sheldon Adelson by introducing a bill to outlaw online gambling; won’t support an assault weapons ban; and attacked Barack Obama for refusing to use the magic incantation of “radical Islamic terrorism.”
In fact, she’s become a darling of the right, and it’s not hard to see why. She’s almost a Hawaii version of Joe Lieberman: a Democrat who enjoys making headlines by attacking other Democrats and feels more at home with Republicans. She's definitely not the kind of Democrat we need, and a district as blue as hers should be represented by a progressive, not a crypto-conservative.
So who’s going to step up to primary her?
