What happened to Tulsi Gabbard?

Once upon a time, Tulsi Gabbard was the beacon of progressive values in the Democratic Party. It doesn’t get more dramatic than her political somersault.

Tulsi Gabbard is a U.S. Army Reserve officer who served as the U.S. Representative for Hawaii’s 2nd congressional district from 2013 to 2021. Born on April 12, 1981, in Leloaloa, American Samoa, Gabbard moved to Hawaii with her family when she was two years old. She is also noted for being the first Hindu and one of the first two female combat veterans to serve in the U.S. Congress.

Tulsi Gabbard’s political career began when she was elected to the Hawaii House of Representatives in 2002 at the age of 21, making her the youngest woman ever elected to a U.S. state legislature at the time. She served in the Hawaii House until 2004, when she resigned to serve in the Iraq War. After returning from Iraq, Gabbard served as an aide to U.S. Senator Daniel Akaka, then won a seat on the Honolulu City Council in 2010. In 2012, she was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives.

Gabbard ran as a candidate in the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries. Her campaign focused on anti-war and anti-interventionist foreign policy. However, she did not gain significant traction and suspended her campaign in March 2020, endorsing Joe Biden. Gabbard did not seek re-election in 2020 and left Congress in January 2021. In October 2022, Gabbard announced her departure from the Democratic Party, which she criticized as being dominated by an “elitist cabal of warmongers.”

Somewhere along the way, Gabbard’s political compass went haywire. She began viciously attacking her fellow Democrats, shamelessly pandering to the Fox News crowd, and cozying up to controversial figures like white nationalist Stefan Molyneux and former KKK grand wizard David Duke. Gabbard also had the audacity to oppose the January 6th congressional investigations, downplaying the severity of the attack on the very heart of American democracy. As if that wasn’t enough, Gabbard started spreading pro-Russia narratives like a Kremlin-trained parrot. Ukrainian officials even accused her of spreading “Russian propaganda,” a badge of dishonor she seemingly wears with pride. Gabbard also flip-flopped on abortion rights, going from a pro-choice Democrat to a self-described “pro-life” advocate.

And now, after checking all the boxes on her “How to Woo the Orange Menace” checklist and completing her metamorphosis into a MAGA-hat-wearing, conspiracy-theory-spouting, Fox-News-pandering political chameleon, Gabbard has been thrown a bone at the feet of the Ochre Oligarch. Along with fellow turncoat Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Gabbard has been appointed to Trump’s presidential transition team, a ragtag group of sycophants and yes-men tasked with laying the groundwork for a dystopian future that would make George Orwell shudder.

So, what really happened to Tulsi Gabbard? She betrayed her party, her beliefs, and the legions of supporters who once believed in her, all for a taste of power and a front-row seat to the MAGA circus.