I got into a conversation with some friend’s about the Dem’s failure to prepare for the nomination hearings. I KNEW that there were multiple weaknesses in them, but I also knew that the Trump team had a strategy to push them through.
I saw lots of complaints about Dem Senators questions at the hearings. It is hard, especially when Team Trump uses these tactics:
1) Withholding evidence
2) No background checks by FBI AND the FBI doesn’t share the info with all committee members
3) Coach candidates to give non-answers and to give technically correct, but misleading answers
“It wasn’t an NDA, It was a “non- disparagement clause in the divorce proceedings”
Come on man! GIVE ME A BREAK!
4) Threaten people who have legit questions about their qualifications, or have issues about their character. See what they did to Sen. Joni Ernst.
I started looking into Tulsi Gabbard. Howie Klein wrote about her at Down With Tyranny. Will Senate Republicans Draw The Line At Tulsi Gabbard? Very Very Unlikely Subhead: Does Trump’s Crazy Hare Krishna Belong To Putin?
I learned a lot. There are multiple weakness that could be exploited if someone was in charge of a PR campaign to derail her nomination. I don’t know if anyone is, but I do know the people in charge of pushing nominees are ON THE JOB! They are busy, pre-emptively shutting down lines of attack on Tulsi.
In Howie’s piece he points to an Atlantic article, “Elaine Godfrey managed to do what few reporters have managed to do— a journey to the heart of Gabbardism. She started at just the right place too: the Chris Butler Hare Krishna cult Tulsi built her life around.”
That leader is Chris Butler, the founder of an offshoot of the Hare Krishna movement in Hinduism, called the Science of Identity Foundation. Butler’s followers know him as Jagad Guru Siddhaswarupananda Paramahamsa, and Gabbard, who identifies as Hindu, has called him her “guru-dev,” or spiritual master.
What Everyone Gets Wrong About Tulsi Gabbard
Other than raw ambition, only one through line is perceptible in a switchbacking political career
The Atlantic, January 21, 2025
Howie talks about meeting her:
When I first came across Tulsi Gabbard, she was two things to me: a right-wing Hare Krishna and a fanatic intent on persecuting the LGBTQ community in Hawaii. From the very beginning I saw her as, first and foremost, an enemy— and then as a brainwashed cultist moron.
Long before her sudden transformation into a Berniecrat— so still a right-wing, faux-Dem— she called me to ask for a Blue America endorsement. She didn’t really try to paint herself as a progressive and she came across as a garden variety careerist Democrat, not especially bad and not especially good. At the end of the interview, I asked her about the process by which she had come to change her position on LGBT equality. She immediately said she’d call back and then hung up abruptly and… never called back.
Howie Klein
Now, it might be interesting if some Dem senators asked her ask questions about her involvement with her Guru Butler. But if they did, she is prepared to take umbrage at it. Hegseth pre-emptively dismissed any concerns about his Christian Nationalism and nobody dug into it because it would require educating the public about its dangers.
The group in question, The Science of Identity Foundation, got ahead of any questions and put out a press release attacking the Media for how they are covered. They also got multiple groups to sign a letter to basically say, “Any attack on Butler & his group is an attack on all Hindus.”
So, if any media WANTS to talk about the group & her connection to them will need experts or groups not on that list who can say, “Look, don’t lump all Hindus together. This is what Butler has said on homosexuality, gay marriage, transgender, and abortions. This is what these 3 main Hindu groups have said on these topics, But Tulsi is her own person, ask her what her views are right now about these topics. What will come out is that she has “evolved” then “devolved” and “revolved.”
They could even go back to 1998, when here father Mike Gabbard put out a TV ad featuring a teenage Tulsi and her siblings that likened marrying someone of the same sex to marrying your dog.
(YouTube link, I’ll but a copy of the video below in case it gets removed.)
Now, in my attempt to find those experts, I got this excellent comment, her Hinduism isn’t the issue here; it’s her hate campaign against gay and trans people.
That should be the focus, but it won’t come up during her hearings because it won’t be deemed relevant. But it is, because her position of power would give her the ability to persecute and gather information on groups here in the U.S. who she hates, for whatever reason.
Jim Stewardson and my friends at Mind War suggested that I look up what Tulsi Gabbard had to say on Rumble (funded by Peter Thiel & now a publicly traded company) where she got big bucks for a few videos. I’m sure the Dems can ask her about how much she got when they get her TAX returns (if the FBI will provide it to them.) And seeing that Thiel companies (Palantir Technologies) is one of the big vendors to the intelligence community & Rumble is big in the misinformation & disinformation community, it wouldn’t be like a conflict of interest or anything… especially in the Trump admin.
Marcy Wheeler @emptywheel.bsky.social made a great point about the strategy behind Sen Kaine’s questions to Hegseth on the Nicole Sandler show last week.
Rather than saying, “Did you rape that woman?” he said “Did you cheat on your wife?” The more important question is, “Why didn’t you tell Donald Trump?”
This is, in my opinion, how Democrats should be approaching these hearings,
Marcy Wheeler on the Nicole Sandler show 1-17-2025
How can I describe the danger you pose to Donald Trump? How can I describe the danger you pose to the Republican project of, for example, really taking on China?
My point is It SHOULD be the job of the Dems who are going to talk to the media before, during and after these confirmation hearings to find weaknesses in these nominees that can be used to protect the American people.
I’m doing the best I can to help in advance. I’ve found a lot of damming videos of her on Rumble but the ones that won’t show up in the Senate hearings will be her anti-trans views because that’s been normalized on the right.
What MIGHT show up are ways that her flip flopping views might come back to hurt Trump, Trump cabinet members, rich gay donors, or Republican money making projects.