Tulsi Gabbard takes on her own party over ‘endless war’ in mysteriously-deleted viral campaign clip

There’s no point in knocking Trump out of the White House if a Democratic president has only more endless war to offer, Democratic candidate Tulsi Gabbard has declared in a deleted, then reposted campaign tweet.

“I might get in trouble for saying this, but what does it matter if we beat Donald Trump if we end up with someone who will perpetuate the very same crony capitalist policies, corporate policies, and waging more of these costly wars?” Gabbard asks a room full of supporters in the clip, to thunderous applause.

“The most attacks I get are not from Republicans,” the Hawaiian congresswoman continues. “They’re from Democrats, they’re from people in the mainstream media, they’re from people in the foreign policy establishment that you’re talking about, people who represent the interest of the military industrial complex.”

The clip, which went viral after reports that it had been mysteriously deleted from her feed, opens on an emotional testimonial from an Afghani immigrant explaining that she placed her hopes in Democratic Socialist Bernie Sanders in the 2016 election, only to be disappointed when the Democratic Party rigged the contest in Hillary Clinton’s favor. “How are you going to fight your own party?” she asks.

The tweet, which was supposedly deleted immediately after posting, went viral over the weekend, with supporters speculating that Gabbard had been intimidated into taking it down by the Democrats. For the 2020 election, the Democratic National Committee has required all candidates seeking its nomination to sign a “loyalty oath” pledging to support the Democratic nominee instead of running as a third-party candidate if they lose. Gabbard famously resigned from her post as vice-chair of the Democratic National Committee in 2016 to endorse Sanders, and the video suggests her loyalty remains to principles over party.

The video was reposted by Gabbard’s campaign Twitter on Sunday, leaving unsolved the mystery of its disappearance - but it certainly made for a good story, and probably contributed to the video’s spread.

Democrats have vociferously opposed Gabbard’s candidacy, hammering not only the “Assad apologist” and “Putin puppet” narratives listed on the Republican Party’s opposition talking points, but also dredging up her work with her father’s Alliance for Traditional Marriage as a teenager, despite her public apology for that work and the evolution of her stance on gay marriage in the intervening decades.

Despite a packed field of candidates - over 20 - Democratic voters have few choices outside Gabbard if they oppose American interventionism. Even Sanders has been reticent in speaking out against the Trump administration’s regime change campaign in Venezuela. Mike Gravel, the 88-year-old former Alaska senator whose campaign is run by a pair of 17-year-olds, is the only other Democrat to come out staunchly against foreign wars.

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